Chalkhills, Number 80

                 Friday, 16 February 1990
Today's Topics:
                      Battery Brides
                  XTC Stickers Available
                        Submission
                       XTC at play
      Dukes of the Stratosphear: little girl voice.
               _Skylarking_ and "Dear God"

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Date:         Tue, 13 Feb 90 21:16:06 EST
From: Ben Zimmer <ZIMBENG@yalevm.bitnet>
Subject:      Battery Brides

John asks:
>Back to the important question of the week: what does "Battery Brides
>(Andy Paints Brian)" mean?
Well, I remember reading a back issue of _Little Express_ in which Andy
explained what it meant... unfortunately, I don't have it with me. Is Battery
a place in England?   All I remember is that he added "Andy Paints Brian"
because he thought it was the kind of song Brian Eno would do.

                                                         Ben Zimmer
 "Post-punk funk with a
  touch of modernism..."

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Date: Wed, 14 Feb 90 04:55:42 PST
From: ESDP TECHNICAL EDITOR <wilson@pneuma.enet.dec.com>
Subject: XTC Stickers Available

I know where at least one XTC sticker is available, for those interested.
It is (approximately) 4 X 4 of the "Drums and Wires" album cover. I am
not sure if other XTC stickers are available, nor do I know
what the prices are. Location? Newbury Comics record/comics store in
Framingham, MA. Please write me directly at my MAIL node if you
want directions to the store. Also, I believe T-shirts of the same album
are available.

Comparing Robyn Hitchcock to Andy Partridge is like saying that milk is
like orange juice simply because both are liquids. If anything, Hitchcock
sounds more what Syd Barrett would have sounded like had he not stopped
writing songs. Hitchcock and Partridge have different approaches to
songwriting; it's a shame to see such a flippant, misleading comparison.

"They Might Be Giants" have some interesting songs, but sound nothing like
XTC, in my opinion. I can't understand these flippant comparisons! They
probably arise because the writers of rock magazines have a hard time
describing on paper what a band sounds like.

There is no substitute for the unique sound of my favorite band - XTC!

When's the next album coming out? They're writing songs for it? (Drool,
drool) What about touring? (Excuse me, I'm having an attack!)

Seriously, I heard a LIVE version of "Generals and Majors" a few weeks
ago. What album is this from?

Bye for now,

Wes

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Date: Wed, 14 Feb 90 14:47:56 -0500
From: William H Stoner III <bilbo@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: Submission

Howdy,

I was just wondering what other XTC discs have things missing?
I went to a record convention last week and picked up a boot of the
called 'Black Sea Tour '81'.  It was of suprisingly good quality, it
sounded like it must have been a professional job.  Do they have any
officially released live stuff?  I also got a UK made "Love on a farm
boys wage" single which had some stuff.

Also this boot had "Life begins a the hop" I imeadiately checked my copy
of drums and wires and found that it wasn't on there.  I actually noticed
because I was recording it.  So what other XTC discs are "incomplete"?

I introduced myself to them back in june with "The Big Express" and my
collection now contains: Drums & Wires, The Black Sea Tour (boot),
English Setllement (geffen), The Big Express, Mummer, O&L, Mayor of
Simpleton EP, Love on Farm boy's wage EP, and the Dear God /Homo Safari
disc. Which of the Safari tunes came from which albums? I know 5 & 6
came from Mummer b-sides but waht about the others (and who wrote them?)

Are there any good videos out there, live or otherwise?
And I read a couple issues back that the Compact XTC is going
to be released by Geffen, is this true? And if so what's on it?
That's it for now
bilbo
--

"It takes forever if you go by inertia,             |  William H. Stoner III
        no time if you don't believe,               |  Systems Operator OSU CIS
                don't believe in time."             |  bilbo@cis.ohio-state.edu
        -JANE SIBERRY  "The Very Large Hat"         |

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Date:    Thu, 15 Feb 1990 16:43:47 CST
From: GJJ5315@star.tamu.edu
Subject: XTC at play

 	I've been finding a lot of pseudo-subliminal messages.  I don't
know if they are correct of not:

        "Mike quit playing with yourself"-Bike Ride To The Moon

        "Any changes made here will be made over my fucking body"
                                         -Collideascope

Recently I was listening to "Great Fire" and I keep hearing "fuck" on top
of "...been as good as this."  I kept relistening to this with an open
mind, but I still hear "fuck".  What do you think?

	As an aside to the Dan Rather quote concerning LSD, some people
that I talked to think that "That's Really Super, Supergirl" is the
world's greatest acid song.  "Even better than King Crimson!!"

Oh well.

Gary Jedlicka
GJJ5315@Star.tamu.edu

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Date: Thu, 15 Feb 90 18:50:32 PST
From: bell%hair.wpd@sgi.com (Sam Bell)
Subject: Dukes of the Stratosphear: little girl voice.

Does anyone know who does the voice for the 'Alice in Wonderland'esque
segments sprinkled through the Duke's album?  For instance the one
between 'Vanishing Girl' and 'Have You Seen Jackie?'.  On my CD some
of these are tacked on to the ends of tracks (but are not included in
the tracks' run time) and others are at the beginning of tracks.  Weird.
Anyways, I was wondering who does the little-girl voice.  Is it a
real girl (in which case I may be in love) or just Andy on helium
(in which case I just embarrassed)?

							-Sam

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Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1990 21:01:37 PST
From: John M. Relph <relph@presto.ig.com>
Subject: _Skylarking_ and "Dear God"

(Bird Rendell H) <rhb9805@usl.edu> asks:

>Is it true that a song [from _Skylarking_] was bumped to make room
>for "Dear God"?

Yes, it's true.  The original release of _Skylarking_ (both in the UK
and in the USA) has the song "Mermaid Smiled" just following "Another
Satellite".  The 12-inch single for "Grass" had been released a few
weeks prior to the album release, in the UK only, and was available as
an import to the USA.  As the album started to get some airplay, a
number of radio DJs found the flip side to "Grass", probably because
of requests, and started to play "Dear God".  Its popularity was
enhanced by threats to a radio station (in Florida, I think) by
Christian fundamentalists.  So Virgin UK and Geffen US re-released the
album with "Dear God" inserted following "The Man Who Sailed Around
His Soul", and removed "Mermaid Smiled".

Andy and Todd Rundgren had this to say regarding the change in the
playlist:

    WXRT: Dear God was originally left off the American
    release.  Was that the band's decision or the record
    company's decision?

    Andy: It was my decision initially or my idea initially,
    seeing as it had been such a burning desire to write a
    song about that subject, religion (and it's such a massive
    subject), I thought that the song I'd written, when all
    was said and done, was not...  I didn't get out of it all
    that I wanted to express because it's the biggest subject
    I can think about, mankind's belief in the world and who
    supposedly put it there and who controls it and where
    they're going afterwards.  I wanted to write a song about
    that for many years and I thought that when I was finished
    that I hadn't put all my thoughts into it.  How the hell
    do you precis that kind of thing in 3 and a half minutes?
    It's the sort of thing that you could fill up a twelve
    album box set with and still not have even scratched the
    surface.

                             -------

    Todd: I developed an overall concept with a running order
    and everything for the whole record.  And when we started
    the record we set about to kinda fill in the concept.  And
    with very few changes that's more or less the way the
    record is now.  One of the changes is that Andy came up
    with a song that I didn't necessarily think fit into the
    concept but Andy wanted to have on the record, and that
    song was called "Another Satellite".  And to get it onto
    the record we had to remove a song and the song that got
    removed was "Dear God", not by my choice, but other powers
    decided that "Dear God" was to be removed from the album.
    But alternatively they used it as a B-side to a single and
    the single appeared here as an import and suddenly
    everybody started playing the B-side of the single , which
    was "Dear God".  And the upshot of that was that Geffen,
    the record label, decided that "Dear God" indeed should
    appear on the record.  They placed it in what was its
    original place in the running order and removed a
    different song, which was "Mermaid Smiled".

                             -------

Hope that answers a question or two.  And perhaps inspires a few more.

	-- John

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