Off the top of my head, I would expect:

English Settlement:
Cockpit Dance Mixture
Heaven Is Paved With Broken Glass [the other mix]
English Roundabout/Scissor Man/Cut It Out [live]
maybe other live stuff?

Skylarking:
Quicksilver
fleshed out versions of "Let's Make A Den", etc.
maybe Andy's little intros to the album tracks as played on the radio show?

Oranges & Lemons:
Ella Guru
Living In A Haunted Heart
The Good Things
Skeletons
My Paint Heroes
maybe fleshed out versions of some of the above - minus "The Good Things"
the King For A Day remixes
selections from the acoustic radio tour?

The discography at the idea site offers suggestions, at least for ES, that reveals that there's stuff that no one still has no real clue about.

English Settlement:
"Hangin' Around" (unreleased);
"Heaven Is Paved with Broken Glass" ("Ball and Chain" single B-side);
"Lazy Day Play"* (unreleased);
"My Brother Ralph"* (unreleased);
"Snowflakes in a Mound" (unreleased);
"Still at War with the Japs"* (unreleased);
drunken session
"Shavin' Brush Boogie";
"Pupil Hayes"
"Community Worker Breakdown"
"Communication Breakdown")
"Whole Lotta Age"
"Orange Dust"
"Orange Dust Slight Return";
"Silver Sewing Machine"

I've heard the Drunken Session, and of Course Shavin' Brush Boogie is hidden COMC, but it's still a possible 2nd disc inclusion.

...and wasn't the "Young Cleopatra" band demo done at this time? Much superior to the FW version and I'd love a cleaned up version.


As for Skylarking and O&L I'll agree with favoritething. What he lists are what I'd think of as possibilities- except for Quicksilver, which I believe is actually a very early song ('76 Sun demo)- I have no idea why it was put on that one Skylarking Demos bootleg.

After 20 minutes of looking thru the February UNCUT for Andy's blurb, I finally remembered it was MOJO and found it.
But two pages before I found it, there was a blurb on Forum and longinlook fave, Harry Shearer, who in resonse to a question as to his favorite album, cited "Apple Venus."
He further stated that "I both treasure and bemoan" the fact that he will never hear it played live.
Kind of similar to many forummers' sentiments.

I forgot to mention that I expect some totally unheard Colin demos on these reissues!

....and what about the complaints about the re-releases in the Theories, Rants etc. section on page 14 by some "Fintan Murray, Lisburn, County Antrim"???? How dare you! ....hahahahaha.

(Hello backporch first post!....thank you...thank you).

Could someone clear something up?

I purchased the Japanese LP Sleeved CD reissues. I purchased the Caroline (US) reissues as well. In terms of packaging these were a step up from the ugly Geffen (US) issues. And were a touch louder than the late 80's Virgin (UK). That's 21 CDs in all (Dukes anthology included). Now I have to buy these all over again?

Sure, some of the wrong masters (O&L, The Big Express) were utilized...but...I don't understand - if Andy had any issues with them why did he not protest as such on any of the Idea/Ape/Chalkhills sites?. It's not as though he fought the good fight or anything, urging fans NOT to buy them. Was the mastering not overseen by any band member? This just tastes like milking the cow/flogging the horse here...just a touch. Does it not? It was bad enough selling us the AV material again...in a box....five years after the initial release.

Another thing why 'Rag & Bone' (again?!?) when a new B-Side collection with ALL of the B-sides is long, long-overdue (Goodnight Sucker, Heaven is Paved (original), Cut It Out, My Paint Heroes, all of the Live B-Sides). And issue them properly - chronological order, no mind-numbingly contrived and overused crossfading/overlapping.

Same for 'Beeswax' (obviously) and 'Explode Together'. Just issue Go 2 with Go + (and "Sargasso Bar, Instant Tunes, Strange Tails/Tales). And Mr. Partridge's Take Away too with liner notes, outakes, etc. It's unfortunate these never had their own identity in the digital age.

Rag & Bone is very low (db-wise) too. All the material would do nicely with decent levels.

It would be nice if all of the outtakes (as they appear on the idea site) are included. And it would make sense, but sadly doubtful. Look at the Coat box set. Sargasso Bar (my fave GO 2 outtake and Barry's best submission IMHO) was omitted! There was lots of room for it but it was inexplicably excluded. As were "Let's Ban The Bomb", "Refrigeration Blues", "Quicksilver", "Saturn Boy" (XTC version) and countless others.

Believe it or not my questions are not that rhetorical. Does anyone know why the first remasters were green-lighted and released with so many supposed problems? And what exactly is coming out this year.

There's no denying the last reissues weren't done in the best way, the need for remasters were evident, they were done quickly, album notes and covers were messed up- no real extras were included. Andy and Colin were sick of Virgin and Virgin were sick of them and they weren't really involved in the remaster process. It was very much a money grabbing gambit from Virgin, Pony Canyon and Caroline's viewpoint... Caroline even reissued "The Compact XTC fer chrissakes.

So now they're being done again, under the auspices of the parent EMI label and I guess relations are healed enough so there's some further cooperation and APE is even being allowed into the game... although that actually confuses me a little, IDea was created to publish XTC... there really should be a formal merger of the two or something.

I'm sure the reason is still "money" for the large part- and I can't begrudge them too much on that I guess. Gotta do business and if there's a demand they/we will come. In diminishing numbers maybe.

And there were those that avoided the original remasters because of their lack of extras... Myself, I was very lucky to find most of them at a used CD shop, actually only bought two of them new, still don't have the WM remaster and I don't know if I would have picked up as many as I did if I hadn't gotten them used.

If these extras are good, I will very likely buy them. If the remastering on the album tracks isn't different or if the packaging isn't anything special, may just buy MP3's, but I'll be getting something out of this.

Let me be up-front with you. I am a fool, so I probably will pick them up sooner than later. Although, probably not on release day.

The packaging was actually fairly nice on the Caroline issues. The cover art was faithfully restored, the CDs sounded better than prior CDs (the LPs are still where it's at though). As for the liner notes...well. I didn't mind the miniature LP inserts so much but the two-page ads for the entire reissue campaign was a bit much and multiple pages of the black sea cover art made little sense. I like that the cover art never looked better (Drums & Wires & The Big Express - neither one's art sides were cut off) although the Nonsuch cover was pretty bad. The White Music reissue was pretty nice.

And the Japanese reissues (miniature sleeve reproductions) were all beautifully done.

Does anyone have any definitive info yet as far as what's coming out and what's not?

Well, this just popped up on CD Universe:

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Says it's on the Ape label, plus:
"With Book; Limited Edition; Remastered"

Just "25 O'Clock"?