Andy Partridge started playing in bands in the early 70's, forming short-lived outfits with names such as Stiff Beach, Tongue, and Stray Blues, before he formed the ad-hoc Star Park, which was just anybody that he could get together for a gig. At the same time, Colin Moulding and Terry Chambers were introduced to each other, and they found that they got on pretty well, so would jam together with guitarist Steve Phillips. After agreeing that Phillips wasn't really up to it, Moulding recalled the guitarist that he'd played with in Star Park called Dave Cartner, who joined them to make a trio. They tried writing songs together, but of the three, only Moulding was producing anything substantial, so they drafted in Star Park's other member Andy Partridge, and after a school session he joined the newly christened The Helium Kidz. They played 3 to 4 minute pop songs in the glam style of The New York Dolls, wearing lots of make up and high heels, but Cartner spent increasingly less time in rehearsals after he got married, so the other three threw him out of the band. As a trio The Helium Kidz did a few gigs in London in 1972/1973, and in 1972 recorded demos of six of their songs, including an early version of 'Neon Shuffle'. Another half a dozen demos were recorded a couple of years later, but by 1975 the band's name had changed to XTC, and the rest, as they say, is history. Luckily those demos have survived, and show a very different sound to that which we would come to know and love, but you can still hear the spark of an emerging talent in these tracks, which are surprisingly professional for such a young band.
Track listing
01 Star Park 02 Yabber Yabber Yabber 03 Saturn Boy04 Walking 'Cross The Ceiling05 Neon Shuffle06 Do You Really07 Adrenalin08 Private Eye09 In Love With The Hurt10 Shark In The Pool11 Cafe12 Saturn Boy II
For anyone who wants to burn this collection to a CD, SmithWorksGrafx has designed some groovy artwork for it.
