"a bit harsh"

A good one coming from a well known Andybasher.

No offence

I've long known Andy to be something of a tantrum-throwing child for a long time. He complained about "Nigel" getting much more attention than his songs on D&W. It became their biggest hit to date. And still writes the song off as being nothing special. And didn't like "Hop" either, the other hit from '79. He's always been a bit jealous of Colin (looks, hits, talent) which I've never fully understood. The AV (one and two) sessions were reportedly extremely unpleasant. I'm sure Colin just wanted to get on with it unscathed, much like a long-suffering wife.

XTC as a dysfunctional nuclear family: Terry is Dad, Dave is Mom, Colin is (oldest child) Daughter and Andy is youngest spoiled-Son. Barry is middle child, son who goes off to college to get away from this lot.

My goodness… and now to crown it all, Freud enters the debate…

This is messy, maybe I shouldn't have voted! I think they may have suffered more than not suffering, so I voted yes. When I listen to the tracks from Apple Venus 1 and 2, they both sound similar in production. We know that 7 Wasp Star tracks were started during the sessions for Apple Venus 1, so are we positive Dave never contributed to Colin's WS tracks at all? Still I think Colin would have benifited from Dave's contributions on WS, especially his wonderful lead guitar work.

I don't know how XTC works, or worked, and I'm not going to speculate. I will say this though, regardless of quantity, Colin is in my mind every bit the songwriting genius Andy Partridge is. We're arguing over production values, instrumental parts, etc, etc (which I love to do, don't get me wrong), but the songs are what matters and Colin has them. So Dave never wrote an XTC song, maybe he didn't fight for it?

The last thing I'll say is I think XTC as Colin, Dave, and Terry would have been good. I'm not saying better, but I think Colin would have delivered the goods if he had to. All I can say is, it's unfair to label Andy a genius and not Colin. Andy has written great songs, and okay songs, just like Colin has. Quality over quantity in my mind.

This is Colin talking, on the myspace blog, about Frivolous Tonight:

"We tried several pianos. We were working in Kent, down at Haydn Bendall's studio. Andy had gone off to America to see his girlfriend, and drop in at TVT [Records -- Andy was working on obtaining a record deal for the band at the time] to see how the American deal with going. He said, "Go ahead and work on your songs. " So I took a couple of weeks out with Dave -- we had a lot of fun together, with Haydn. Really, when Andy came back, there wasn't a lot for him to do. He put some guitar on the two tracks that I did on that record, but we could have probably left it off. Otherwise Dave and I pretty much played all the instruments."

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It's funny because once you really look into XTC history and bootlegs you find a lot of Colin stuff. When you think about it, it's pretty brilliant for a non guitar playing bass player to become a more than apt guitar playing composer in such a short time. His early stuff wasn't always great, but as time progressed Colin started writing great songs that didn't make the cut in my mind.

The prime period for Colin was probably 85-87, at least in my mind. I think if at that point it was an Andy less XTC they could have made an album full of Colin songs that may be considered a classic these days. That may be blasphomy to many, or sound absurb but I think it's possible. Imagine if you took all of Colin's songs from the two dukes albums and Skylarking, it's great little album. I'm not knocking Andy in anyway mind you, just given Colin a little praise too.