XTC : Classic or Dud.

k shakey & abbbb plz send me ilxmail (me = AA + working email addr), I will dispatch within 48 hrs

there are roughly 10 btw, may require a few emails

you have the same stuff Autumn Almanac has...?

(me = AA + working email addr)

Transistor Blast is indeed great btw. Beautifully packaged, too, with each disc in its own coloured jewel case, all in a cardboard sleeve that looks a bit like an old radio.

Drums & Wireless is a good album to have, too – more BBC sessions. I can't remember whether there's overlap between the two but I don't think there is.

btw I've just taken Abbbottt's lead and have chucked my XTC collection (354 tracks, excluding Dukes) on shuffle. I've not heard this stuff properly in years so having a ball iirc.

I really should grab Transistor BLast.

Webmailed you SchlAAfsack!

Got 'em.

sorry I am easily confused by the internets

[chucked my XTC collection (354 tracks, excluding Dukes) on shuffle

lol so I guess we are having a lil online XTC listening party eh

I am being reminded that Andy Partridge has written a fair amount of songs I actually find painful to listen to fwiw (Stinking Rich, That Wave)

ya me too. I don't know how email will work but will try that first off.

xp yeah, a few stinkbombs in there, although to be fair Stinking Rich was aimed at tiny kids so sucking was sort of a prerequisite.

ha, rip van ruben didnt make it onto any of the warbles? great tune! definitely one of the most maddening examples of songs that didn't make it onto a proper album when "wounded horse" and "standing in for joe" did

Most of Wasp Star too sadly....

xp I know, weird eh? It's a stonking Red Rocking Horse-style gallumping bouncefest, completely successful but totally forgotten. I don't get that either.

Looking back, Wasp Star was probably as good an indication as any that XTC had to stop. One more album might really have been quite embarrassing.

"Easter Theater" came up, too, and its lyrics had always slipped by me. "chocolate nipple brown"! Best song on the album tho, imo.

Kind of wish I hadn't looked up the lyrics just now, though – think I like "we don't need a new life" better (which is how it sounded to me).

I really wanted to like WS but it was scuppered by Gregory's absence (nlike AV oddly) and I'm guessing Moulding had all but lost interest judging by his descent into brown jumper MOR piffle.

aw I like the Easter Theater lyrics, the adult-reflecting-on-childhood-romance angle

Easter Theatre is awesome, and has one of his best middle eights.

oh wait I'm thinking of Harvest Festival

yeah the Easter Theater lyrics are sorta stupid

I'd say about half of Wasp Star is great, altho it would've been improved by Gregory's presence, no doubt. The stuff that's bad is REALLY bad tho.

"We'd applaud a new life" makes more sense. I just liked the weird outlierness of "we don't want a new life" in this pastoral fertility orgy. It's like finding out the person you're married to doesn't like peanut butter. you still love them, but you have to think about it for a moment.

I could never get what that line really was "we'd have bought a new wife"? what?

XP - Shakey, just realised so am I! Ha!

Easter Theatre sounds like one of those puppet pantos staged with a paper stage and paper puppets. I don't know what you call them.

xxxp ahaha I thought it was 'we uphold her new life'

Oh and Harvest Festival is lovely.

Oh man, another thing I wanted to bring up – XTC has to have the most instances, for me, of needing a Britishes to Americans dictionary. So, what means the line in "Respectable Street" about "the caravans that never move from their front gardens"?

That moment at the start with the chair sounds..

Abbbottt, just a dig at families buying a mobile home then never getting around to using it.

XTC has to have the most instances, for me, of needing a Britishes to Americans dictionary.

That's weird and slightly annoying, because AP confuses everything by singing in an American accent. You can't do pastoral Englishtry with a US accent.

Respectable Street is a genius song in retrospect. All about those sorts of people with a completely unfounded sense of entitlement. My parents are a lower-class version of that, complete with the expensive but dormant caravan in the backyard.

A Cmaj7/G Fmaj7 (addB)
And what a year when the exams and crops all failed
F# /E# E C# B
Of course you passed and you were never seen again
A Cmaj7/G Fmaj7
We all grew and we got screwed and cut and nailed
F# /E# E C#
Then out of nowhere invitation in gold pen

So the "caravan" is more like a Winnebago than one of the things that Mr. Toad hung out in?

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:wUPCMVFelgnFJM:http://www.ibspro.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/caravan.jpg&t=1

Basically one of these.

Yeah, motorless, towed by something.

Maybe 'Mobile Home' isn't the right phrase, more Mr Toad than RV :)

I was imagining someone squeezing through a yard full of these

http://gypsywaggons.co.uk/ukvardos/wooden/wd75.jpg

which always made me think 'wtf?"

^^^Andy Partridge's house

Dukes of Stratosphear HQ tbh

Check yo headz email. You will have to rename file 2 from .zig to .zip coz gmail thought it contained a terrorist (it does not contain a terrorist).

btw chipping in to say that Harvest Festival is one of Partridge's 5 greatest-ever lyrics

weird I haven't received anything yet...?

was looking forward to receiving a terrorist

I got it, thx so much AA!

whoa, what is the story behind "Candymine"?

that's on Fuzzy Warbles. it was part of Andy's half-baked "sequel" idea for the Dukes (ie, a bubblegum glam record with lots of stupidly obvious sexual innuendos. Other songs included "Visit to the Doctor" and I think one other...?)

"Cherry in your Tree" I think?

great songs obviously

haha I wish that whole thing happened. I want to get the Fuzzy Warbles "stamp box" so bad!

Sorry for Candymine fail. Shakey, do you have an incoming email limit? They're all under 10Mb so

Oh and I have the stamp box. It's ace but sits on a shelf unloved along with every other interesting CD pack I've ever bought.

I don't have a mail limit, I'm wondering if it went to my junk folder or something tho