As the story goes, Magazine got formed because Howard Devoto thought the Buzzcocks were already sounding too “old hat”. Which makes My Mind Ain’t So Open a perfect intro to this new sound he had in mind. A little too smart for punk, a little too vicious for pop. The 1980s were still two years away but stakes were already clarifying. They’d be like the 1960s all over again, except this time it would be love and spite, not peace.
“As the story goes, when Keith Levene split Public Image Ltd, he had a few recent master recordings under his arm. Which is a good thing. Else we probably would never have heard the likes of Blue Water, which first showed up as a b-side in 1983. Deep and weird and exactly the kind of thing you wanted cranked to the nines on your ghetto blaster when the drugs were all kicking in and you had an abandoned industrial zone to explore, with a fog moving in from the harbour and twilight looming.” (Philip Random)
XTC were never quite punk; they were too pop savvy for that. Though they were there from the beginning, tearing up facades with the best of them. So maybe just call them a damned good band who, by 1982’s double-vinyl English Settlement, were taking off in a pile of different directions uniquely their own, with Ball and Chain reminding us that they still had the pop.
Randophonic 