‘Everything is
refracted through the unique prism of XTC and, in this circus of
intertextuality, some tracks sound more like them than they sound like anything else.’
Chips From The Chocolate
Fireball (1987)
by The Dukes Of Stratosphear
In 1985 and again in ‘87, a quartet of musicians
masquerading under the names of Sir John Johns, The Red Curtain, Lord Cornelius
Plum and E. I. E. I. Owen, undertook two trips back through history. No-one
knows quite how they facilitated these expeditions, whether it was as stowaways
on a fully-fledged starship like the USS
Enterprise or in a less conspicuous time-travel vehicle such as the Tardis. Perhaps more humbly, they
blundered through a portal in a wardrobe. Some say that, like a certain little girl called Alice
What is known for sure, however, is that when they emerged
on both occasions they found themselves where they had always wanted to be: in second
half of the 1960s in the land
of Psychedelia
When The Dukes reappeared from these long, strange trips,
rich with the lore and liberty and love they had learned of that bygone time,
they returned to their recording studio with a sonic guru known as Swami Anand
Nagara and created two musical journals of their adventures. Although these
dazzling records were not hits, people were fascinated as to how they had made
them. Simple as ABC really, said The Dukes - when you know how. Come now, asked
the people, are you sure you don’t mean LSD? Ah, well, replied The Dukes, their
eyes all a-twinkle, more like XTC, actually…
*
* * * *
It has long been an open secret that The Dukes Of
Stratosphear were really XTC as they were at the time: Andy Partridge (‘Johns’)
– guitar, chief songwriter & vocalist; Colin Moulding (‘Curtain’) – bass, second
songwriter & vocalist; Dave Gregory (‘Plum’) – keyboards & guitar; Ian
Gregory (‘Owen’) – drums; brother of Dave and one of a number of session
drummers used following the departure of Terry Chambers in the early 1980s.
XTC will appear in their own right later on in this series
of Underrated Albums – as will a couple of other famously pseudonymous bands,
The Rutles and The Traveling Wilburys – but here I shall only consider XTC’s
holiday tripping alter-egos, The Dukes.
Chips From The
Chocolate Fireball is made up of the mini-album, 25 O’Clock (1985) and the full album, Psonic Sunspot (1987). It comprises sixteen tracks*1 co-produced by
the band with John Leckie (‘Swami’), who soon after would be at the desk for eponymous debut album, The Stone Roses (1989), an epochal record regarded as an Acid-Psych
classic. The Roses gained not only plaudits but platinum discs; The Dukes had
not charted at all, but their influence – and indeed, their influences – reverberated beneath the
surface of the psych-revival of the 1980s*2.
When considering CFTCF,
it is of key importance to understand that it is not simply the work of a
band paying homage to exponents of ‘60s Psychedelia. Not all of the songs celebrate
a particular act – and when they do it is sometimes amidst additional traces of
others from the era (for example, early Bee Gees, Cream, The Idle Race, Moby Grape, Tomorrow, Traffic and The Zombies). Everything, in any case, is refracted through the unique
prism of XTC and, in this circus of intertextuality, some tracks sound more
like them than they resemble anything
else.
‘25 O’Clock’, however, is a fairly straightforward genuflection
in the direction of American Garage Band par excellence, The Electric Prunes,
although it starts with heavily amped ticks, chimes, alarms and riff a’la Pink
Floyd before rampaging away in a souped-up take on ‘I Had Too Much To Dream
Last Night’. A psychotic rant about tiring of waiting for a woman to come around
set to a blizzard of backwards guitars and treated keyboards, it has a terrific
tune and is a cracking opener.
‘Bike Ride To The Moon’ also inescapably recalls early Pink
Floyd with Partridge effectively mimicking Syd Barratt on a characteristic piece
of whimsy about being caught in space without a repair kit to fix ‘a cosmic
flat tyre’, amidst another hell-for-leather orgy of interplanetary studio
effects. Clearly inspired by Jeff Beck period Yardbirds, the breakneck pace is
maintained by ‘My Love Explodes’, in which a Bowiesque Starman of Love is at
hand to take on the loveless ‘straight plastic bowler men’ and ‘blow ‘em out of
town’.
In the first of several spoken-word links between tracks, a
horrified bowler man damns the song as ‘an abomination’ before ‘What In The
World’ imagines a future featuring ‘blue’ housewives, role-reversal, hash-tea
and free acid as if to further ramp up the outrage. The high watermarks of The
Beatles’ studio experimentation are indelibly referenced here and Moulding, who
authors this song, especially evokes McCartney’s inventive bass-playing from
that 1966-68 era. A strong bass can be a deceptively key element in much
Psychedelia - and it is Moulding’s plunging riffs, foregrounded in the mix, which distinctively anchor
this album.
Another killer riff, this time on guitars, arrives with
‘Your Gold Dress’, along with much panning, phasing, whooshing and a dash of
sitar – all of which may bring to mind The Pretty Things crossed with The
Yardbirds and Pink Floyd. The hazy vocal describes the ‘whirling’ frock in a
way which recalls Klimt’s painting The
Kiss whilst at the same time referring to ‘a thousand melting Dali
guitars’.
‘The Mole From The Ministry’
comes drenched in piano and mellotron and is not only a brilliant
pastiche of ‘I Am The Walrus’, but also takes in a 1968 ‘phantom’ single by a
mysterious band called The Moles – rumoured to be an incognito Beatles, but
actually Parlophone label-mates, Simon Dupree & The Big Sound. With
Pythonesque Gumby vocals on the verses threatening to turn your ‘perfect garden
into mountain range’ and Partridge cutting through on the chorus like the ghost
of Lennon warning, ‘I’m the bad thoughts inside your head / And you shouldn’t
think me’, it’s wonderfully authentic and one of the album’s highlights.
Classic popsters, The Hollies may not be the one of the
first bands that spring to mind when considering ‘60s Psychedelia, but they had
their moments and Moulding’s ‘Vanishing Girl’ with its sparkling guitars and
harmonies nails them unerringly, although it’s more ‘Look Through Any Window’
than ‘King Midas In Reverse’. When it ends, we hear the voice of an Alice-like little girl, describing the Wonderland-like collection of oddities
that stream out when she opens a suitcase. This, and subsequent surreal
interjections, are reminiscent of those on Pop-Psych classics such as Traffic’s
‘Hole In My Shoe’ and Simon Dupree & The Big Sound’s ‘Kites’*4.
This leads us into ‘Have You Seen Jackie?’, a four-square
romp pleading for tolerance for ‘an odd little fish’ suffering from
gender-confusion. Lyrically, we’re in the territory of ‘I’m A Boy’ and ‘Lola’,
although musically the song doesn’t really resemble either The Who or The
Kinks. Emerging out of vague foghorn sounds, ‘Little Lighthouse’ cleverly constructs
a metaphor for the lighthouse as a love- goddess:-
‘She’s a little
lighthouse
When she
opens her huge eyes
And streams
of diamonds shoot out
‘Til we’re
wading waist deep
In her
brilliant love’.
Decorated with flourishes of trumpet, it is driven along by
Moulding’s bouncy bass (for good
measure, he throws in Bill Wyman’s closing fret-run from The Rolling Stones’
‘19th Nervous Breakdown’ at the end).
Preceded by another fragment of Alice In Wonderland nonsense, a discordant piano stutters into the
rollickingly inconsequential tale of a Great War veteran who married the woman
who nursed his wounds. The sort of track that might have found its way on to a
Kinks album, ‘You’re A Good Man, Albert Brown’ ends with a Small Faces knees-up
and a bout of Goonsian laughter. It’s not bad, but is only half as good as
‘Collideascope’, which sounds like a John Lennon rewrite of The Move’s ‘Blackberry Way
‘You’re My Drug’ melds The Byrds’ ‘Eight Miles High’ and ‘So
You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star’ right down to the latter’s clicking
guiro riff*6. Quite what the pronoun denotes in ‘You’re My Drug’ is anybody’s
guess – mine is that it refers to music-
and perhaps especially Psychedelia - which, of course, can induce mental and physical
sensations similar to and, in many cases, better than chemical or herbal drugs.
Talking of artificial stimulants, Moulding’s ‘Shiny Cage’
with its ‘Double-deckers of smokers’ recalls McCartney’s middle-eight section
in ‘A Day Of The Life’ whilst the torpor of humdrum diversions suggested in the
rest of the song is delivered via a tune redolent of Lennon’s Beatles’ songs, ‘I’m
Only Sleeping’ crossed with ‘I’m So Tired’. After another cameo from the
Wonderland girl describing ‘a giant cranefly’ who ‘turned into a splendid cream
bun’, the McCartneyesque ‘Brainiac’s Daughter’ goes on its jolly, nonsensical
way, complete with Swanee Whistle.
‘The Affiliated’, a vaguely Kinksy number, begins with a
heavily strummed guitar and a pub piano, its plodding tempo accompanying a tale
about a bachelor who virtually lives in his local Working Men’s Club - until a
Latino rhythm heralds the appearance of a woman who spirits him away into
marriage and serial fatherhood. It’s a typical ‘slice of life’ piece by
Moulding and probably belongs on an XTC album more than here.
Last up is ‘Pale And Precious’, providing a strong finale in
the form of a wonderful homage to Smile-era
Beach Boys (although I think there may also be an affectionate nod in the direction
of The Flowerpot Men’*7). Lyrically, it’s another hymn – like the earlier
‘Little Lighthouse’ – to a radiantly inspirational goddess. It features
keyboards, percussion and theremin remarkably true to source as well as
suitably stratospheric harmonies and one of Partridge’s strongest vocals.
Partridge had several ideas for further excursions into the
land of Homage including projects involving Merseybeat, Bubblegum and Glam
Rock, but these were apparently more or less strangled at birth by Virgin, the
record company XTC would eventually leave to go independent*8.
Partridge & co. were also unhappy with Virgin’s cover
art for CFTCF, a garish,
cheap-looking mess which served the album badly. The original sleeves for The
Dukes’ records were much more simpatico with the music inside them – as can be
seen above. Ironically, the next XTC album, Oranges
& Lemons, with its Yellow
Submarine style cover painting (see below), would have better suited The Dukes…
N. B.
*1 – The Dukes’ two sets have been reissued separately and
feature some bonus tracks. Occasional tracks have trickled out subsequently, but
to date no comprehensive anthology has appeared. Until it does, you might like
to visit www.songlyrics.com, where you
can listen to this album along with an additional five tracks.
*2 – Although The Dukes’ influences were mainly British,
they can be seen to be roughly in line with the so-called Paisley Underground
movement in the *3 – ‘We Are The Moles (Pts.1 & 2)’ appeared on the a and b sides of the stunt single which enjoyed a reasonable amount of airplay, but failed to burrow into the chart.
*4 – It’s ironic, given the abiding popularity of ‘Hole In
My Shoe’ and ‘Kites’, that neither band liked the songs, both of which provided
them with their highest UK chart positions (# 2 and # 9 respectively). At least
Dupree & Co (including the three Shulman brothers, who went on to form
Gentle Giant) had the excuse of having ‘Kites’ foisted upon them by their
management from outside the band. Dave Mason, who wrote ‘Shoe’, left Traffic
shortly after.
*5 - The Billy Cotton
Band Show actually began with the rotund bandleader bawling ‘Wakey,
Wakeyaaah!’ and – so, I’m reliably informed by Wikipedia – latterly featured
jokes written by future Pythons Terry Jones and Michael Palin.
*6 – I’m guessing that it might be a guiro on ‘You’re My
Drug’ – it might be some form of fish or frog stick (the multifarious family of
percussion instruments does have such aquatic-sounding sub-species…)
*7 – The Flowerpot Men’s ‘Let’s Go To San Francisco’ was a
cash-in UK
*8 – XTC made two more albums for Virgin: Oranges & Lemons (1989) and Nonesuch (1992), followed by Apple Venus Vol. 1(1999) and Wasp Star
(AV Vol.2 - 2000). Since then the band has been effectively defunct.
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