ABC Music Humpday Videos - "X" is for XTC

Here's something from XTC that sounds like it could have been lifted from a very swanky spy flick:

(click here to listen to snippets of the tracks)

From wikipedia's entry on XTC, Skylarking (album):

"Considered by many to be their finest album, Skylarking is a "life-in-a-day" semi-concept album which displayed songwriting and arranging heavily influenced by The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Kinks. The title of the album was inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem To a Skylark and many of the songs expand on the pastoral themes of their 1983 album, Mummer, most notably "Summer's Cauldron" and "Season Cycle".

Although I never saw this video during the song's heyday in 1986,  I enjoyed XTC's other videos, particularly the controversial, "Dear God".  The info below explains the clothing worn by the band members which makes sense since the sound of "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul" . Turns out that "The Prisoner" is about a British spy!:

"Promotional videos were made for "Grass" and "Dear God" (both directed by Nick Brandt). The Channel 4 music program The Tube also produced videos for "The Meeting Place" and "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul" with the band wearing costumes from The Prisoner."

XTC was one of those 80's bands that wrote intelligent lyrics. Andy Patridge was brilliant in terms of his songwriting with songs like  "No Language in our Lungs", "Senses Working Overtime", "Generals and Majors", "Making Plans for Nigel", and "Earn Enough for Us". The year after XTC released "Skylarking" brought us their alteregos, the band The Dukes of Stratosphear (complete with fake names), releasing an homage of 1960's pop and psychedelia, "Psonic Psunspot" (contained the cheerful hit, "Vanishing Girl", another one of my favorite songs). That's also one of my favorite albums. My good friend N had the actual LP.  You only had two choices back then: LP record and cassette!

So sit back and relax in that Eames Chair, dial down the lights, drop another olive in your martini and relax to the soothing sounds of "The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul"....