Reviews of Rag & Bone Buffet
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Chapters.ca
1999
Rag & Bone Buffet, Rare Cuts And Leftovers
XTCCompilations of rare music do one of two things for a band: focus on either the good or the bad. With a group as consistently solid as XTC, you know that it can only be the former. Rag And Bone Buffet brings together songs from across their entire career, reaching all the way back to 1978 on 'Looking For Footprints.' Some old hits - 'Ten Feet Tall' and 'Respectable Street' - lure in those looking for an alternative glimpse at past memories, but true XTC fans will have quite a bit of new stuff to add to the palate.
Chicago Tribune
Thursday, September 19, 1991
TEMPO
Home Entertainment...Recordings
by Greg Dunlap
XTC Rag & Bone Buffet (Rare Cuts & Leftovers) (Geffen)
Like all compilations of rare cuts and B-sides, this album has its ups and downs. The Todd Rundgren-produced "Extrovert" beats anything XTC did with him on Skylarking by a mile, and other tracks like "Tissue Tigers" and "Scissor Man" show conclusively why the jagged tense rhythms and hyperactive songwriting of Colin Moulding and Andy Partridge have brought XTC a growing base of fans for the past decade. However, it's pretty obvious why the boring "I Need Protection" didn't make it onto any finished products, and while the two Christmas tracks are kind of neat, they pale in comparison to the furious energy of a cut like "Strange Tales, Strange Tails." The un-initiated should look back to the White Music or Black Sea LP's before picking this up, but Rag & Bone Buffet is a must for all XTC fans.
[Thanks to David Crosby]
Minnesota Daily
Headline: Rough mix
Publish Date: 07/26/1991
Sometimes a washed-up management company gets their has-been band to pick 60 minutes of hits and releases them just to stay in business. Others decide that, in order to keep a pet project on the ``new releases'' shelf at Musicland, they must dig out all of the throw-away cuts and press them on a ``rare releases'' album. In either case, it's hit or miss, and, with All the Stuff and Rag and Bone, we find one of each. The Ramones have long since fallen into the ``good ole days'' file, but their compilation release All the Stuff (and More) Volume II is still worth a listen. Nobody makes three chords, monstrous distortion, and pitch-sensitive yelling so much fun. Listening to ``Rockaway Beach,'' ``We're a Happy Family,'' and ``Teenage Lobotomy'' conjures up all the crazy schemes and grudges that high school evoked. And with each song lasting only about 2 1/2 minutes, the nostalgia trip isn't long enough to feel gushy. XTC's album Rag and Bone Buffet -- Rare Cuts and Leftovers is like a midnight Ben and Jerry's craving. Driven by the delectable memories of previous flavors, the poor soul races to the store, spills the extra change and ravenously digs in. The only problem is that, halfway through that carton of ice cream, he invariably gets sick and can't figure out what drove him to gorge himself in the first place. Such is the case with XTC's new compilation disc. XTC is perfect when they are on, but an hour plus of XTC's weak spots makes you wonder whose idea Rags and Bone Buffet was. If they want to break through to even bigger success, releasing a pile of half-assed blurbs is not the way to do it. (Salisbury) Contributor: Mark Salisbury
Chicago Tribune
Friday, July 12, 1991
FRIDAY
Take 2
FRIDAY'S GUIDE TO MOVIES & MUSIC
New albums
by Chris Heim
XTC SERVES UP A FAIRLY TASTY BUFFET OF LEFTOVERS
XTC circa 1980: Scraps from the past on Buffet.Recycling may be a fashionable idea, but it isn't a new one. Grandma and Grandpa remember the old paper drives, while across the ocean in England the rag and bone man, who collected bits of clothes and bones to be resold, was long a familiar figure.
Recycling has a long history in the music business as well, and in keeping with that tradition, British avant-popmeisters XTC have just released Rag 'N' Bone Buffet (Geffen). The album serves up scraps from a decade's worth of XTC exertions. Like any pick through the garbage heap, it offers both surprising and valuable discoveries and outright trash. But when the band is as witty and inventive as this one, even the throwaways have a certain charm.
Included in the Buffet are 24 B-sides, alternate takes, tracks that never quite made it onto an album and other oddities. "Looking for Footprints," the oldest song in the set (1978), was originally recorded for but never appeared on the band's second album, Go 2.
"Mermaid Smiling" was briefly on the Skylarking album, but when the B-side, "Dear God," became a left-field hit, the "Mermaid" had to make way for "God" in subsequent pressings. An electric version of one of the band's first hits, "Ten Feet Tall"; a dub version of "Roads Girdle the Globe"; a live performance of "Scissor Man"; and a vocal version of "Happy Families," which made a cameo appearance as an instrumental on the radio in the film She's Having a Baby, are among the tracks that have been saved from the dustbin of musical history. Speaking of history, the set concludes with a clever little number called "History of Rock 'N' Roll," which wittily and quite successfully summarizes four decades of rock in all of 19 seconds.
Rag 'N' Bone Buffet is the 11th U.S. release for XTC and comes on the heels of a feast of reissues. Geffen recently brought out the band's first five albums (White Music, Go 2, Drums and Wires, Black Sea, Mummer) on CD and added bonus tracks not on the original albums to each.
[Thanks to David Crosby]
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