Chalkhills Digest, Volume 15, Number 22

                 Monday, 19 October 2009

Topics:

               Off Topic: Beatles Rock Band
              Harry Partridge's New Cartoon
            UFFINGTON HORSES and other things
    "The Disappointed" is the MySpace song of the week

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I can't stand it when he sits there crying.

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Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:28:12 +0000
From: <homefrontradio@hotmail.com>
Subject: Off Topic: Beatles Rock Band
Message-ID: <COL107-W170B6C04547B3BE3162BF6D0DE0@phx.gbl>

So, George suddenly plays the 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' and 'Taxman'
solos...  So, Ringo is drumming on 'Back In The USSR' and 'Dear Prudence'...
So, John bothers to contribute to 'Here Comes The Sun' and 'I Me Mine'...

So, the parts are ridiculously over-complicated, to the extent where I
actually picked up the guitar and played the 'Ticket To Ride' riff, the
'Here Comes The Sun' intro, and the bass to 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds'
using no more than two fingers, mainly to prove to myself that Real Guitar
Is Far Easier.

Hell, even with the lack of a scowling-Yoko-Ono-sitting-on-an-amp when you
fail; or not being able to earn bonus points for talking John down off the
roof during 'Getting Better'; or being forced to play one of the hideous
'Love' mashups when I could have just played 'Tomorrow Never Knows'; or the
fact 'I Am The Walrus' is more like 'Cello Hero'; and the fact that my first
play pick, 'Wild Honey Pie', wasn't on there; 'Beatles Rock Band' is still
very goofy fun.

Unfortunately, none of my friends want to look *that* uncool, so I'm missing
the 'band' from the whole Rock Band experience, so if anyone on the list is
looking for some XBox Live Play with a somewhat-arthritic,
but-still-wanna-be-Paul-McCartney, send me a message.

I suspect i'm not the only one on here who bought it, and it would be far
less painful for all involved if I could play with someone who doesn't
accidentally hit the high harmonies in 'Ticket To Ride' by virtue of their
voice breaking; or by telling me with great authority that "You can tell
these guys were totally influenced by Panic! At The Disco's 'Pretty Odd'
album".

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Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:46:36 -0500
From: Ned Hurley <nedison@hotmail.com>
Subject: Harry Partridge's New Cartoon
Message-ID: <COL109-W51C927125B1DD659122FABBBD40@phx.gbl>

Not sure if you've seen this yet, but the new cartoon by Andy's son, Harry
has a brief mention of 'Rock Band: XTC' that made me fall over with
laughter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw-delgGVmw

Thought you might want to share this on the site

Ned Hurley
www.youtube.com/nedison

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Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 05:56:26 +0000 (GMT)
From: Paul Culnane <paulculnane@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: UFFINGTON HORSES and other things
Message-ID: <504850.7537.qm@web26108.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>

Hello to everybubble.  Hope you are all cruising nicely.

I haven't been on this mailing lists for some time, many reasons for
that, but hey ho.  Forgive me if some of this following stuff has been
covered before.  But here we go anyway.
You know those ten-minute things they use on TV to fill gaps between
programs?  Okay, there was this mini-doco about horses (narrated by Tom
Baker, of Dr Who fame).  What should occur during it?  Yes, the chalk horses
of Uffington.  And sure enough, there she appeared, OUR horse, filmed from a
helicopter above, and it looked beautiful, and I fell off my own horse.  I
should vouchsafe that Terry Chambers has that image painted on the doors of
his dartboard (that's a whole different story), but I have a similar
painting of it too, proudly displayed on my XTC-dedicated wall.  Oh, we
anal-retentive obsessives fella I got to meet in cyberspace.  No names
(clue: surname is flash red car), but he wanted to track down a recording of
XTC at the Marconi Club, Sydney, 1979.  I thought I could oblige, but my
copy went astray.  Felt guilty, ya know?  But he scored a copy elsewhere and
sent one to me.  I'm telling you, if someone decided to combine the 1979 and
1980 recordings of XTC's aussie concerts on CD, they would represent the
most incendiary and exciting shows they ever put on, anywhere.  They were so
on fire when they came to play for us.  You can hear it in the vibes.  Just
tears of joy for me, oh yeah!
I reckon someone within the Virgin or maybe Geffen empires should finally
pull their finger out, and give us a definitive DVD set of all the video
clips and rarities (I gather that Colin was working on such a project, but
for one reason or another, he abandoned it).  Come on, powers-that-be.  Some
of us NEED it.  And when you finally do, follow the example of, say, the
Police, whereby their hits DVD was mixed in 5.1 surround with all the bells
and whistles.  I could cope with an update of "Look Look" like that.  How
about you?
Now, someone fill me in here: I read in "Record Collector" magazine that
fresh "deluxe" re-issues of some classic XTC albums are mooted.  What's the
go with this?  If this is true, the cynic side of me says that Andy is
really milking it.  On the other hand, if it's done properly, maybe with
bonus tracks of demos and so forth, fine.  Chances are I might shell out my
hard-earned yet again, 'cos even though I've got the full essentials, I
remain a die-hard fan.
If ya wanna go to my little page feel free to do so:
www.myspace.com/realmcpugg   (yeah, I know it's more "fashionable" to Book
your Face, or go tweeting (Twitter rhymes with?...), but Mice Pace, for me,
remains the best source for discovering new music, and making friends (oh
yes, that is so true) and all that.     There on my little site you might
find an overdose of T.REX and stuff like that, but if you re-arrange the
consonants slightly, you all find it spells XTC!

I'm watching ZZ-TOP videos just now, and that's alright by me.

"You play hard to get, 'cos you are teacher's pet"

Love and PeACE
~~p@ul
Canberra (aboriginal word meaning "The Meeting Place")
Australia

"you reap what you sow, but you sew what you rip"

ICE/CU[b]E Productions Australia

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Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2009 16:48:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Todd Bernhardt <beat_town@yahoo.com>
Subject: "The Disappointed" is the MySpace song of the week
Message-ID: <363526.15642.qm@web32002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Hi:

Over at the XTCfans MySpace site (http://www.myspace.com/xtcfans), the
song of the week is "The Disappointed."

If you want to know Andy's connection to polar explorer Ranulph
Fiennes or why he loves cross-fades so much, check out the XTCfans
blog site at http://blogs.myspace.com/xtcfans.

Once, I had no sympathy
For those destroyed and thrown away by love...

-Todd

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End of Chalkhills Digest #15-22
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