Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like XTC. Nobody, that is, except the countless hundreds of thousands who find the British beat foursome’s relentless archness...a bit much.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for Andy Partridge, who composes the songs that Colin Moulding doesn’t, to encourage his chums to renounce the quirkiness, as American critics insist on putting it, that has traditionally been their stock in trade. It seems, you see, that our Andy’s quirkiness is congenital. “I was always the class jester at school, and then always the joker at college,-” the.sallow, plumpish, bespectacled, and hugely amiable singer/guitarist reveals in a West Hollywood hotel’s laundry room, where he’s washing a load of clothes that no self-respecting New Romantic would polish shoes with. “I’m no practical joker, but I’ve always been known for what I believe is called acidic wit.”