Since they don't tour or make videos, XTC gives interviews. Lots of them. Colin Moulding, the group's soft-spoken bassist reckons he and his partner, guitarist Andy Partridge, have done something like a million since they began promoting their new album, "Apple Venus, Vol. 1," last fall.
When I mention that most groups tour to support a new album, Partridge laughs. "That's an interesting word, 'support,' " he says. "If it has to be supported, then we'd rather the record company support it."
The comment is interesting, since the band no longer records for a major label, having painfully extricated itself from the clutches of Virgin Records. They recorded "Apple Venus" themselves and then signed distribution deals with regional labels. We're sitting in an enormous conference room of one of them, Pony Canyon, which is putting a lot of money and effort behind the record in Japan, where XTC is a cult band of enormous influence. The Japanese version of the CD contains a special booklet filled with gushing testimonials by everyone from the hotshot J-pop producer and singer-songwriter Tamio Okuda to indie babe Aiha Higurashi of Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, who took their name from the XTC song "Big Express."