Touring years: 1977–1982 XTC Button, Edge club, Toronto In 1977 XTC were signed by Virgin Records. They recorded the 3D - EP that summer, and followe

Touring years: 1977–1982
XTC Button, Edge club, Toronto

In 1977 XTC were signed by Virgin Records. They recorded the 3D - EP that summer, and followed it up with their debut LP White Music in January 1978. These and future XTC releases would find Andy Partidge writing and singing about two-thirds of the material, while Colin Moulding would write and sing approximately one-third. (White Music also featured a cover of Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower", sung by Partridge.)

White Music received favourable reviews and entered the British top 40, but lead single "Statue of Liberty" was banned by the BBC for making allegedly lewd references to the famous statue ("in my fantasy I sail beneath your skirt"). The group also picked up a cult following in Australia thanks to the support of the nationally-broadcast music TV show Countdown, which screened all of the band's early videos (beginning with their first Australian single release - "This Is Pop") and the group made two well-received tours there in 1979 and 1980.

Their second album Go 2, released later in 1978, is noted for its distinctive typewriter-text cover (designed by Hipgnosis) and early pressings were accompanied by a bonus disc Go +, a collection of dub mixes of songs from the album. Following its release, Barry Andrews left the group and was replaced by guitarist and keyboardist Dave Gregory. Andrews went on to form Shriekback and also worked with Robert Fripp's League of Gentlemen. Coinciding with Gregory's arrival, XTC scored their first charting single in the UK with "Life Begins at the Hop", which also the first XTC single penned by Colin Moulding.

The replacement of Andrews' distinctive keyboard playing with Gregory's Sixties-influenced guitar style steered the band on a path towards a more traditional rock sound; Gregory also contributed occasional keyboards (and later, string arrangements). Their third album Drums and Wires contained the band's first major hit single "Making Plans for Nigel" (another Moulding composition), which caused a minor controversy because of its lyrical reference to British Steel.[citation needed] The album found the band branching out into more overtly political topics, culminating in the unhinged ranting of "Complicated Game", which became one of the band's most well-known non-hits. Drums and Wires also marked their first sessions at London's Townhouse Studios. The studio was at the time much sought after for its highly reverberant "live" drum room, and it was greatly favoured by their producer of the time, Steve Lillywhite and his engineer Hugh Padgham, who were at that time also working with Peter Gabriel and Genesis.

During this period, Partridge further indulged his love of dub by releasing a solo LP, released in 1980 under the name 'Mr Partridge'. The album, Take Away/The Lure of Salvage, featured radical dub deconstructions of music from the preceding XTC albums. Later the same year Moulding and Chambers released the "Too Many Cooks In The Kitchen" single under the name The Colonel.

Their 1980 LP Black Sea marked another significant step forward in both songwriting and recording, spawning the hit singles "Sgt. Rock(Is Going to Help Me)" and "Generals and Majors". In the film clip of 'Generals and Majors', Sir Richard Branson (founder and at the time chair of the band's record label, Virgin) has a cameo role and can be seen as one of the 'majors'. The song "Sgt Rock" namechecks the comic book character of the same name, reflecting Partridge's lifelong obsession with American comics, particularly the work of Steve Ditko.

The last major hit of XTC's touring phase was "Senses Working Overtime," the first single from their double album English Settlement and a top 10 hit in 1982. At the peak of their popularity, the band embarked on a major tour, but Partridge suffered a mental breakdown on stage during one of the first concerts of the tour in Paris on March 18, 1982.

During a concert promoting Black Sea at the Hollywood Palladium, after the opening acts Wall of Voodoo and Hazel O'Conner, someone at the back of the hall set off fire extinguishers about halfway through XTC's set, sending many concert goers scrambli