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Skylarking: Deluxe Edition (Corrected Polarity)
Limited double 200gm heavyweight vinyl LP pressing cut at 45 RPM featuring corrected polarity CD edition. Includes 16 page booklet with song notes by band members, lyric sheet, and both sleeves (original design + released version). Digitally remastered edition of the 1986 album by one of the UK's finest bands. It looked perfect... on paper. Take XTC (a band whose name was, by this point, routinely prefaced with the words "quintessentially English.."), add Todd Rundgren, musical Anglophile and legendary producer (whose name was always prefaced with "studio wizard"), place in a studio together in Woodstock for several weeks and expect an album of Abbey Road proportions to appear when finished and... it almost worked out that way. For starters: Todd R. and Andy P. didn't get on... at all. Recording sessions were tense. Then Todd locked the band out of the studio while mixing the album, leaving depressed band members to return to the UK uncertain as to the value of what had been recorded. Then, there was the issue of "Dear God". Relegated from the album for fears that the same sort of people who object to pubic hair on album sleeves might object to songs about God - especially in the USA, yet issued in the US as part of a 4 song promo 12" single to promote an album on which the song didn't appear by Geffen Records, which then, unexpectedly, became a hit song with people interpreting the lyrics as they wished, necessitating the re-sequencing of the album to include the once rejected song which, in turn, helped the album to become a slow burn/steady seller all around the world and XTC's best-selling and best known album to date, leaving all participants belatedly happy.