Tanya’s Army Of Awfulness: XTC - SERGEANT ROCK
Actually the XTC single is called Sgt.Rock, where Sgt is the abbreviation for Sergeant. Which is not surprising for XTC, a band so poor at spelling that they could not spell their own name. Even the home counties numb-nutts that were EMF knew that Ecstacy starts with an E. Unless they were taking advice from the E-Zee Possee (more poor spellers) who foolishly believed that Everything Starts With An E. Actually what Mr E.Z.Possee actually should have noticed was the following things started with an e:
1) The Word Everything
2) Everything that begins with an E
3) All his GCSE results.
But I digress.
Sgt.Rock is a song about the wussy boys from XTC being a bit rubbish with girls. But rather than get a haircut, stop playing parochial post punk limerick pop and hang out in trendy bars, XTC decide to enlist. Believing that a buzz cut and access to automatic weaponry would be the secret to their problem with girls was foolish in itself, but not as foolish as enlisting to work with a completely fictional comic-book army instead of the real one. Sgt. Frank Rock, of Easy Company, was never shown to be a dab hand with the ladies in his US comics G.I.Combat or Our Army At War, and the very existence fo girls was pretty much shunned by adolescent boy comics. Unless they were Baronesses work for the RATZI’s.
Andy Partridge’s problem with women is very clear from the lyrics where he calls them anything but. Sgt Rock is apparently going to help him “make the girl mine”, “help with a maid“, is an “expert on mademoiselles“, can diffuse “any bombshell“. Yeah, but what is he like with women? Frankly calling in Sergeant Rock for relationship advice is like phoning Spider-Man to get your plumbing done.
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staggerlee on June 5th, 2007
Well, yeah, it’s not anything like their best song, is it? Andy P hisself cringes when it’s brought up — hates its guts. If I recall, he was trying for some kind of campy extended metaphor, based on Andy’s lifelong infatuation with comic books and toy soldiers, that just didn’t pan out. So it goes.
emma on July 25th, 2007
Erm isn’t it meant to be an ironic comment on macho values? ‘Sgt Rock is going to help me, make the girl mine, keep her stood in line’. ‘If I could only be tough like him then I could win my own small battle of the sexes.’ Think the implication is meant to be that this won’t work in actualite!