XTC / Live Boots – Official Bootleg to be issued on CD

Following the 2LP vinyl edition for Record Store Day, XTC’s 17 April 1981 gig at Emerald City in New Jersey will be released once again as Live Boots – Official Bootleg but this time as a 2CD set, in June.

Dave Gregory recalls this as “Gig 11 on a 19-date U.S. tour, planned to promote the living daylights out of our Black Sea album, this night was a return to a hot venue we’d previously visited in January 1980 as part of the gruelling Drums & Wires campaign…. XTC at that time was a performing machine capable of creating megawatts of excitement.”

Andy Partridge says: “We were tighter than a firefly’s fundament that night, even more astounding was the adrenaline-soaked speed we took every song at”.

This is apparently the first of a planned series of XTC official bootleg releases which draws from the band’s archives “with minimal audio restoration undertaken” by cutting engineer Jason Mitchell working with Andy Partridge.

Live Boots – Official Bootleg will be issued as a 2CD, set via APE, on 19 June 2026.

Tracklisting

Live Boots: Official Bootleg XTC / 2CD set

• • CD 1
    1. Real by Reel
    2. Life Begins at the Hop
    3. When You're Near Me I Have Difficulty
    4. Respectable Street
    5. Sgt. Rock is Going to Help
       Me
    6. No Language in Our Lungs
    7. Ball and Chain
    8. Paper and Iron
    9. Love at First Sight
    10. Roads Girdle the Globe
  • CD 2
    1. Scissor Man
    2. Towers of London
    3. Burning With Optimism’s
       Flames
    4. Making Plans for Nigel
    5. Living Through Another
       Cuba
    6. Generals and Majors
    7. This is Pop
    8. Helicopter
    9. Statue of Liberty
    10. Outside World