turned out to be almost on the entire record." He had been a longtime fan of XTC and prepared for the recording by asking them for their favourite records "so that I could maybe get a little further inside their head". One of the recurring in-jokes during the sessions was a spin-the-wheel dial used for determining takes. The wheel's labels were "Great – best take ever", "better than the Beatles", "pretty good", "okay", "not so good", "possibly acceptable", "pretty bad", "weak", "horrible", "dreadful", and "the worst shit I'd ever heard". Another in-joke was the "Colonel Cunt Hat" and "Thumb of Decision" that anyone would wear if it was thought that they had a poor attitude. During one early session, Mastelotto recalled: Dave Gregory, in his words, took credit for "quite a lot [of] the arrangements and the overdubs". He was frustrated that his suggestions to Fox were almost always deferred to "the songwriter", which meant either Partridge or Moulding. Both Gregory and Moulding characterised Fox as subservient to Partridge's studio indulgences, which they termed "Andy-ness", and felt that it had a negative effect on the album's sound. Guests who visited the sessions included Elvis Costello, who was next door recording his album Spike (1989), KROQ disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer, Chris Squire of Yes, David Byrne of Talking Heads and actor River Phoenix. Partridge has said that Phoenix was an "utter and anal" fan of the band, and urged him to phone a friend who was "also a big fan", Keanu Reeves. Equipment and mixing Moulding used primarily a Wal bass with a Fender P-Bass as backup. Partridge played a Squier Telecaster and a Martin D-35. Fox, who had a background as a session keyboardist, supplied the group with numerous digital and analogue synthesizers (mainly an Emulator III and a Roland Super Jupiter). A variety of drum machines were also used and mixed in tandem with Mastelotto's live drumming. Care was taken to ensure that the percussion was tuned to each song. The group also frequently used the "warp" feature of an Akai sampler to bend percussion notes. Many details, such as different hi-hat patterns, were not chosen until the mixing stages—when it was decided to include all of them. Partridge reflected that "the finished songs" were perhaps "a little too busy all the time ... But it was a case of, you just left everything in the mix to perhaps