Robyn Hitchcock - Obliteration Pie - Alternate Version (2003)

In 2003, Robyn Hitchcock released the album "Luxor." But he usually has many more songs than can fit on an album, and it's rare that he writes a bad song, so his outtakes are generally pretty good. Thus it was a good idea that he released an album that mostly consisted of "Luxor" outtakes called "Obliteration Pie."

However, the album only came out in Japan, and wasn't released until 2005. Furthermore, it was a hodge-podge, because it also included some a couple of live performances, as well as some old songs that were rerecorded with different arrangements in 2005. Furthermore, the musical style varies wildly from a cover of the disco song "Funky Town" to an acoustic instrumental to a live track that's just a spoken dialogue. It's as if Hitchcock was deliberately trying to make an album that didn't have a good musical flow.

This is my attempt to make "Obliteration Pie" sound like a coherent album. I removed the live tracks, since they are well known songs of his ("My Wife and My Dead Wife" and "Chinese Bones") with nothing special about them in terms of the performances or arrangements. I also removed the rerecorded songs done in 2005 (I'm putting them on a 2005 compilation instead). That leaves the actual "Luxor" outtakes. I've reordered them for a better listening experience.

Note that one of these outtakes, "(A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs," is a song that Hitchcock would become very fond of. He would put a different version of it on his 2006 album "Ole! Tarantula," and he still plays it in concert. I'm including it here because this is its first studio recording, and this version is different than the "Ole! Tarantula" one.

The seven "Luxor" outtakes on "Obliteration Pie" only make for 33 minutes of music, which is a bit short for a typical album. So I've included two more songs from 2003 to fill it out. One, "Uncorrected Personality Traits," is a very well known number from his 1994 album "I Often Dream of Trains." But that version, and nearly all of his live versions, are done acappella. This version is done with acoustic guitar, so it's quite different. The other additional song is an original, "You Want Me to Go," that has never been released anywhere.

01 City of Women (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Funkytown (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 My Dreams Are Scars (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Butterfly (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 I Fall into Your Eyes (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 [A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations] Briggs (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Madelaine (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Let the Sun Begin (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Uncorrected Personality Traits [Non-Accapella Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 You Want Me to Go (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Little Kara Discovers the Ice Cream Van (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122306/RobynH_2003_ObliteratinPieAlternate_atse.zip.html

The album cover is just the official "Obliteration Pie" cover, completely unchanged.