S/D: Fuzzy Warbles (an XTC thread)

Having had the knob twiddling talents of Ian Cooper at Metropolis Mastering, weave his magic over the tracks, Volumes 7 and 8 are now complete. Andy has deliberately left some of the best tracks till last. The full tracklistings for each volume are below.

The artwork is nearing completion by Andrew at Cactus Design, the covers are done and we are on the final tweaks, so they will be ready for release in the Summer.

These two volumes will complete the Fuzzy Warbles Series.

Well almost......!

Fuzzy Warbles Volume 7
7.01. 2 Rainbeau Melt
7.02. Thrill Pill
7.03. Sonic Boom
7.04. I’m Unbecome
7.05. Ballet For A Rainy Day
7.06 1000 Umbrellas
7.07 Ejac In A Box (MGOO)
7.08. C Side
7.09 Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her
7.10 Ladybird
7.11. Candymine
7.12 Visit To The Doctor
7.13 Cherry In Your Tree
7.14 Desert Island
7.15 Scarecrow People
7.16 Hold Me My Daddy
7.17 Books Are Burning
7.18 Bobba De Boop De Ba De Boobay
7.19 Open A Can Of Human Beans

Fuzzy Warbles Volume 8
8.01 Through Electric Gardens
8.02 Skate Dreams Wet Car
8.03 The Bland Leading The Bland
8.04 Silverstar
8.05 I Gave My Suitcase Away
8.06 Extrovert
8.07 Another Satellite
8.08 These Voices
8.09 Song For Wes Long
8.10 Happy Birthday Karen
8.11 REM Producer Enquiry
8.12 The Loving
8.13 Shalloween
8.14 Was A Yes
8.15 Genie In A Bottle
8.16 Disque Bleu
8.17 Poor Skeleton Steps Out
8.18 I Don’t Want To Be Here (original demo)
8.19 Chalkhills and Children

If that's it, then I have a bunch of cuts from my Audiogalaxy sharing days that never made it into Fuzzy Warbles - "Rip Van Ruben," a rawer and better version of "Young Cleopatra," "Monkeys in Humanskin Suits" (or did he put that somewhere? I lost track).

ew.

His Beefheart impression on the Alan Burston song is pretty funny and unexpected though.

"Dame Fortune" is a nice start, a fairly complete tune, with some standard XTC elements in place - strummy acoustic guitar, a catchy vocal melody, uber-wordy lyrics, a fuzzy little solo. The aforementioned "Howlin Burston" is moderately entertaining just to hear Andy do something completely diff't with his voice. "Don't Let Us Bug Ya" is pretty good, maybe a little too much with the lyrics - one of the rejected James n the Giant Peach songs. "I Bought Myself a Liarbird" = bitter pop confection. "Space Wray" is him doing a weird sci-fi surf-rock instrumental thing that works pretty well. "Goosey Goosey" is pretty good. The rest didn't leave much of an impression on me, but that's just from one listen...

So can anyone give us the S/D off these? I've really no interest in downloading eight volumes (funny how, in retrospect, Oranges and Lemons basicallly killed my extreme love for XTC - if you'd told me in 1989 that I wouldn't be bothered to listen to AP's demos, I would've scoffed)

I'll take a stab at picking the best new, unreleased items. I love the demos of XTC tunes for the most part (especially the stuff from _Oranges & Lemons_ and later).

FW1:
Dame Fortune
Don't Let Us Bug Ya
Everything
Goosey Goosey
Wonder Annual

FW2:
I Don't Want To Be Here
Obscene Procession
Ra Ra For Red Rocking Horse
Ship Trapped In The Ice
Young Marrieds

FW3:
Goodbye Humanosaurus
My Train Is Coming
This Is The End
When We Get To England
Work

FW4:
All I Dream Of Is A Friend
Blue Beret
Gangway, Electric Guitar Is Coming Through
Bumpercars

FW5:
Broomstick Rhythm
Don't You Ever Dare Call Me Chickenhead
My Land Is Burning
Young Cleopatra

FW6:
Difficult Age
End Of The Pier
I Can't Tell What Truth Is Anymore
In My Hand
Shaking Skin House
The Stinking Rich Song
The Tiny Circus Of Life

FW7:
Candymine
Sonic Boom
Visit To The Doctor

FW8:
I Gave My Suitcase Away
The Bland Leading The Bland
Shalloween
Through Electric Gardens

Hinges:
Now We All Dead

Fun Fact: Through Electric Gardens was written about my suburb's own theme park.

Bland Leading the Bland is one of my top 10 songs ever, partially because the sentiment reflects how I feel about my own existence. Bogans shit me.

My S/D is the same as Mr Odd's plus the following:

Born out of Your Mouth
Summer Hot as This
It's Snowing Angels
Lightheaded (how the HELL could you leave this song off, it's freaking sublime)
The Art Song
Zoned Right Out on Life
Where is Your Heart
I Defy You Gravity (can't believe you didn't include this either)
2 Rainbeau Melt
Open a Can of Human Beans
Song for Wes Long (dubious inclusion)
Happy Birthday Karen (again, dubious)
Was a Yes
Disque Bleu

Minus a few too but I cbf typing any more.

The continuing WOW ANDY PARTRIDGE BOX FUZZY WARBLES thread...

Have some of that thread too!

Lovely!

Well, I was trying to keep it down to 5 per disc, 40 tracks is roughly a 2CD collection. All of the stuff you mentioned is great too.

Did you read the numerous interviews Andy did when the box came out last year? He's a card! So direct and entertaining. Although some of the comments must've put the nail in the XTC coffin as far as Colin's concerned.

Yeah, it's over. I reckon Andy'd be hard to work with though.

He does a lengthy song-a-week interview with someone for a myspazz site. I can't remember who, but it's on the Chalkhills site somewhere.

Much as I hate promoting anything Murdoch has anything to do with, here's a link to some of it. The rest is accessible from here.

Tragically underrated collection, if you chop out all the early cuts of released songs and the self-indulgent answerphone messages.

Had he released just the all-new proper songs as a two-CD set, it'd be a must-buy for anyone who cares about music.

yes.

I wish he would get on with some solo records already, even a collaboration with someone decent would be enough.

Saying that I think there are half finished collabs kicking around where he has possibly fallen out with people, Robert from The Apples In Stereo for one.

Monstrance don't count as it's a different beast.

I have been living in the same house as the box set for six weeks

it just seems so daunting to try and haul it down and listen to everything in any non-tokenistic way

Best method is to start in the middle (i.e. vol 5)

Latter vols are scraping the barrel, early ones too pleased w/ themselves.

.. comparatively, that is.

There is a great fortnightly updated blog on the XTC fans MySpace page where some bloke interviews Andy about how he wrote a certain song (diff one every posting) with occasional backups/memories from Dave, they are very readable apart from Andy's bad pun logorrhea.

oops http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=34883466

I just listened to all eight and a half volumes straight. What a joyous, crazy, fun and challenging set of music. There are very few artists I could listen to that much at once. Even more remarkable is that I still want more!

...

the list of Andy Partridge song titles upthread is the most Andy Partridge list of Andy Partridge song titles imaginable