Jackson Free Press

The Fuzzy Warbles Collectors Album 9 CD box set brings together over 100 songs from XTC frontman Andy Partridges' songwriting archive. Recorded over the years, whilst Andy and XTC were signed to Virgin Records and later to the Idea and Ape House labels, the material is spread across eight volumes featuring songs and alternate versions of many XTC favorites that never made it onto the respective final albums or never made the cut when the final tracklistings were decided. There are also songs Andy never got to complete that he's re-visited and finished off especially for this Fuzzy Warbles series. The Fuzzy Warbles Collectors Album is being released domestically late Fall by Ape House via Virtual Label, distributed by Ryko Distribution.

"By 1967 the poor machine gave up the ghost of Our Man Flint and ceased to function anymore. Nevermind, I was becoming interested in a new noise making device, the guitar. Then it all becomes a bit of an Op Art blur. Guitars, Kinks, Beatles, Stones, Small Faces, Sgt Pepper's, Satanic Majesties, girls, youth clubs, wrist ache and The Monkees. Aha! The Monkees. Important for me as they further compounded the Hard Days Help ethos that groups live together in a kooky house, have adventures and get girls without trying. This sucker was reeled in. Two friends of mine, Steve Warren and Brian Foster, seemed plugged into the mainline of their favourite bands by getting Beatles Monthly and The Rolling Stones Book respectively. These were pocket sized magazines full of photos and fan news. I should therefore take Monkees Monthly. Now, this august periodical held a drawing competition with the princely sum of £10 as a prize. I could draw, I loved to caricature and if I could win that money perhaps I could get a better tape recorder to capture my early musical fumblings.

Bloody flip! There it was in issue 23, December 1968. My scruffy, scratchy cartoon of Mickey Dolenz (the easiest one to draw) had won, along with four others, £10. I think we got hold of that second hand Grundig for about £21. My dad generously helped me with the extra cash. It was so heavy and chunky with smooth ivory coloured push buttons and a funny optical eye device which I never knew what it's purpose was. Something about the amount of tape left on the reel?

Do you know, I think just having a recorder again really went hand in synapse with me
opening up as a person. My inquisitiveness grew with each sound I taped or each album I
heard or each chord or lick I learned. By 1970 my tastes were getting pretty out there. I'd been exposed to Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Terry Riley and a host of others. Why, I could make sounds like that! Home recording took a more serious turn. That was not just a gas fire or paraffin stove, it was a percussive device of awesome scale when struck with a knitting needle and slowed down. A reverberative gong from the palaces of Saturn, the gold door of the sun slamming shut. A kid's glockenspiel could twist into the fuzz dimension when recorded ultra loud and blended with it's own feedback. Those brass flower vases, when struck together, emit a note of E (but only when my mum went out to bingo). I stumbled on the fact that I could D.I. (direct inject) my guitar into the Grundig and, using it's tiny elliptical speaker, could broadcast glorious piping fuzz tones out to friends in the street below from my bedroom window. I think I was beginning to grasp how records were made. I kept hearing about musique concrete and how it's done by chopping up tape. Trouble is I can't afford to hack up my only spools, tha'll have to wait. "