The first three of these were released in the late '90s, and in early 2000 there began to be talk of another (titled King for a Day, and recently released). With the ready and able help of my friend and bandmate Harrison Sherwood, I was able to realize a long-time desire to take the song "Procession Towards Learning Land" — a bit of synthesized madness written and recorded by Andy Partridge and released as a b-side around the time of the group's 1983 album Mummer — and re-do it in a completely non-synthetic way, using only percussion and voice as the source instruments.

The music is made up of drums, cymbals, voices, kazoos, and handclaps. Harrison displayed saintlike patience as he twiddled knobs, provided an extra hand when necessary for the cymbal chokes, and accompanied me on the handclaps. He also displayed considerable technoexpertise as he turned his home office and computer into a multi-track recording studio.

If you'd like to listen and you have an MP3 player on your computer, just click on the link below to download and play it (fair warning: it's a big file, and may take a while to download if you connect to the Internet through a phone line). If that doesn't work, right-click on the link, save the file to your hard drive, and use whatever media player you have on your computer to play it.

Later, I recorded some other XTC songs with Harrison for King for a Day at Nonsuch Productions, Rob Cosentino's excellent digital studio in Bowie, MD. "Radios in Motion" is from the band's 1977 debut, White Music. Harrison handles lead and backing vocals, and plays guitar and bass; I sing backup, and play drums and keyboards. Though the arrangement of "Radios" is pretty faithful to the original version, "Holly Up on Poppy," from 1992's Nonsuch, is re-arranged to sound as if it were played by the frenetic, new-wavey 1977 band. I sing, and play drums and keyboards; Harrison plays guitar; and special guest star Anthony Setola plays bass (and how).

Wanna hear them? Follow the instructions above with the songs below.

The most-recent XTCovertune, one of a set of seven demos that my former band, Scooby Don't, recorded at Rob's, is a Colin Moulding song called "Ten Feet Tall." It also managed to make it on to King for a Day. I sing lead, and play drums; Harrison sings backup and plays guitar, and Charley Gilbert sings backup and plays bass. Here it is:

Finally, for the 1998 fan tribute (titled Modern-Time Neros), Harrison and I contributed a bluegrassy arrangement of "Crocodile," also from Nonsuch. Also recorded in the fabulous and spacious studios of Chez Sherwood, this one features Harrison on lead and backing vocals, guitar, and banjo; me on backing vocals and bass; and John Relph on mail-order mandolin (John sent in his contribution via mail, he didn't buy his mandolin through the mail ... I think). You know what to do:

If you'd like to find out more about XTC, please visit the band's Web site. You might also want to check out the Web site of Andy Partridge's cool little record label, APE. And, to be a little immodest, I'd recommend that you visit the MySpace XTCfans site, which I run with Rob Cosentino. I've also been conducting a series of interviews with Andy about the songs we post each week; you can find those on the MySpace XTCfans Blog.

If you want to know more about the band, you should definitely check out John Relph's Chalkhills, the oldest and most comprehensive resource on the Web about the band, where I have five interviews with band members, including one done with the reclusive Terry Chambers, XTC's original drummer. You can find that here.

Finally, if you'd like to hear my interview with Ian Gregory, the drummer who played with XTC's alter ego, The Dukes of Stratosphere, visit Wes Long's excellent site, Optimism's Flames. It's not for the faint of bandwidth; you'll need a broadband connection to fully appreciate all the treasures on Wes's site. Bug Wes if you want him to once again post the full interview. In the meantime, you can find a psychedelic psnippet of my interview with Ian here.

Thanks for listening! If you'd like to tell me what you think, write me.