Tuesday, February 20, 2007

XTC - Peter Pumpkinhead Defined

"MY OGGGHHHHH MY DON'T IT MAKE YOU WANNA CRY!!???"

This video has a strong JFK thing about it. I never saw this when it came out. I was off running around having adventures instead of being glued to the tube watching life zip by. In many respects this video is painful to watch. Not because of the murder of JFK.... but becuase it tries too hard to center around this theme.

After Andy Partridge spoke out in the book XTC I gotta wonder who really pulled the strings in the creative look of this piece. The band was always butting heads with creative people and record company execs EVERY STEP OF THE WAY.

There is never any mention of JFK on the album NoneSuch.... which is odd how this comes about. If you want a clue about what this song is REALLY about check this out.....

lekkermeisje78757 (1 week ago)
The truth is, the only one who'll ever really know what this song is about is Andy Partridge. I recall seeing him on 120 Minutes about the time that this came out and he told this long story about his children carving a Jack-O-Lantern and how it rotted and he wanted to immortalize it. :-)It doesn't matter--I'm a huge XTC fan and I've been really enjoying seeing their old videos and (especially) live performances here. I wish I could have seen them.

This review is a little closer to what I think the song is really about... more or less. I too had a character who literally had a pumpkin for a head... who .. takes on the Roman Catholic church and gets... crucified of all things.. I even drew illustrations for it -- and then later abandoned the entire thing altogether. This thing really stuck close to me for years.

Although I admire this song deeply I feel the song is a bit long and could have been shortened up a bit. I crawled through the entire XTC catalog and often got very lost in it.

Cantu writes for the fascube network - This entry was published on Feb. 20, at 10:50 pm.

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