Caputh, if you're already an xtc fan, I'd get Coat of Many Cupboards or Transistor Blast if you don't already have them. Each are 4 mostly-full disc collections.
Fuzzy Warbles, while a very colorful collection, each disc has 50 minutes or less of music. There are many interesting demos of xtc songs, many other songs taht only see their release here, children's songs, experimental things and a bunch of other things that are probably useful only to hardcore nuts. My favoritres are often songs that aren't available anywhere else.
The book is interesting as it gives a lot of background on inspiration of songs, method of production, history of take told for purpose of inclusion, yaddada.
Worth it, if the interest is already there AND you have a lot of time. If your wife likes the music of xtc in general, it might be a nice present.
But I would get the aforementioned Transistor or Coat of Many if you haven't heard them yet.
Transistor Blast has two discs of bbc studio recordings of many xtc 'hits' in alternate recordings -- different than and often superior to the album versions. The other two discs are live recordings for the bbc before a crowd: March'78 and Nov'80. Essential IMO.
Coat of Many Cupboards is a career-wide retrospect but which does NOT include things from either Apple-Venus/ Wasp-Star or their demos. But while having a few album or single-versions of 'definitive' type songs, the wealth here is in the many demos and live versions that aren't available anywhere else.
I'm thinking you already have Apple-Venus/ Wasp-Star and/or their 'Homegrown' demos. Four short discs (under 60 minutes a piece) but the music is all pretty wonderful. Also a nice present.
I originally purchased the fuzzy warbles two-by-two as they first came to light on the xtc site and tehn on Andy's website ape.co.uk. For the pre-order sale they were signed by Andy -- with a gold pen--and were hyped as beating the boots that were out there.
The sound is good, the wealth of material kinda embarassing, but when it's good, it's really good. I listened to them a lot more than the xtc records when they came out.
Then made an 80 minute comp of my favorites and still listen to that, 6-8 years later, often to pick me up. But the tone of all of it is both light and dark. where the music is light the lyrics are often dark. Where the lyrics are light and uplifting, the music is often unsettling.
xtc is one band I've pretty much obsessed over off and on over the last 28 years, so it is difficult to write these dry explanatory notes.
Another set of new material that is excellent if you like the dukes of stratosphear are the two new discs with all the extras on those. Nice art but even more music as it is nearly twice the length of the Chips From The Chocolateball comp that was the only place to get that on cd for 20 years. Oh and it sounds great.
Personally I like the additional demo material like with the warbles set as it gives a much wider range for the songs, supplying context and in some cases rdaically different arrangements, showing the band or Andy as a much richer songwriter than the original releases could show.
If this is all too much information, go back to the first paragraph
you can hear samples from FW2 here on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Fuzzy-Warbles-V-2 ... =1-3-fkmr0samples for Transistor Blast:
http://www.amazon.com/Transistor-Blast- ... 017&sr=1-1samples for Coat of Many Cupboards:
http://www.amazon.com/Coat-Many-Cupboar ... 099&sr=1-1
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