This is one of my favorite songs to sing, whether I am listening to it or not, but there is just something fun about it. In particularly I love this line.

I'm on my knees but dancing!

That sums up just about every extreme feeling I've ever had toward a woman, emotionally or physically. I was on my knees but dancing last night.

This album is Volume 2 of Apple Venus. On Day 16 I posted a song off that album, I Can't Own Her, yet another song about longing for females.

Apple Venus and Wasp Star are two incredibly fine albums full of a lot of excellent songs. They're clearly the work of a pair of highly accomplished songwriters, being the only remaining members of XTC at the time, Andy Partridge (one of the greatest, if not the greatest, living voice in pop music) and Colin Moulding (who's aged voice has become incredibly soothing to hear). Everything is paced and balanced wonderfully. Apple Venus' opener, River of Orchids is beautiful. The song that appears on Wasp Star after this one, The Wheel and the Maypole is the perfect follow up, and the perfect way to end the series of albums.

If there's one thing that I can complain about when it comes to XTC, it's that other people look at me like I am fucking crazy when I listen to them (the same goes for most of Peter Gabriel's work), but I think that is just because I am a victim of my age, of surrounding myself with people my age who listen to, say, Mudvayne, and, uh, KoRn. In short, XTC's music, I love it, I love these two albums, I love almost every song off of them, but I don't get to listen to them much because I end up skipping them instinctively while others are in the car.

But it's OK, because I can sit down any time I want and lose myself in the cacophony of these albums, and I even get choice: Do I listen to to the lovely sweeping beauty of Apple Venus, or do I listen to the more rock-oriented Wasp Star and bounce around like a giddy school child?

A lie for a lie, but a truth for the truth...

It's true, the Church of Women will have you give praise with a laugh, bark, and stutter.

Oh, extra note: it's fun to listen to these two albums and hear all the little guttural grunts and stutters that Andy Partidge punctuates all the songs with. As far as I can remember it's not prevalent on any XTC record up until this one. The stutter is obviously obvious, and the occasional "ung"s he elicits... but if you listen even closer, with some good speakers, you can hear background grunts and groans really low in the mix. Kind of fun. Lots of layers to this stuff.

I spent my nineteenth year in San Diego, living pretty much alone (in the room the size of a small walk-in closet), with no friends or contact with people outside of work. It was lonely, and as I get older I look back and realize that it made me a little nuts. I discovered a lot of music in this period, though, and one band was XTC.

I had a huge crush on this partially deaf girl I worked with named Sarah (one of many Sarahs in my life, but that rings true for anybody: pretty sure there's a reason love interests in the media are always named Sarah, it's such a common name). She rocked dual hearing aids and we made a nice team at the hospital I worked at: if she didn't understand something someone said, she would just look at me and I would repeat it loudly and clearly. I consider this a skill, now, since I would often repeat things I wasn't even listening to. Not that I can pay partial attention to anything these days and retain it at all.

I would drive to work, hearing this song, and it would give me hope that some day I'd take her out with me somewhere and maybe hold hands or something. I'm not sure why. It's just a reflection of my lunacy at the time. I never even made a proper move on her. It's OK: I later learned that she had hairy legs and had a boyfriend she never told anybody about in the whole year I was subtly making passes at her. I ended up sleeping with my supervisor instead.

Apple Venus, as an album, is lush and vibrant, almost too much so. (Look forward to "Easter Theatre" come that time of the year.) Any time this song, or any others from the album, come on in my car, I skip them if other people are present. I don't assume anyone would want to hear anything other than XTC's 80's output, and even then, not quite sure.

Point: Andy Partridge has the best (living) voice in music, so I decree. It's a shame he's turning into an old hermit who doesn't record normal music that normal people can listen to anymore.