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Chips from the Chocolate Fireball | 
| Artist: Xtc
Label: Virgin
Category: Music
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £4.98
You Save: £4.01 (45%)
New (25) Used (6) from £3.95
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 37105
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 724385073229
EAN: 0724385073229
ASIN: B00005AV1R
Release Date: June 11, 2001
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Tracks:
| • | Twenty Five O'clock | | • | Bike Ride To The Moon | | • | My Love Explodes | | • | What In The World | | • | Your Gold Dress | | • | Mole From The Ministry | | • | Vanishing Girl | | • | Have You Seen Jackie | | • | Little Lighthouse | | • | You're A Good Man Albert Brown (Curse You Red Barrel) | | • | Collideascope | | • | You're My Drug | | • | Shiny Cage | | • | Brainiac's Daughter | | • | Affiliated | | • | Pale And Precious |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
Chips from the Chocolate Fireball by the Dukes of Stratosphear--vocalist Sir John Johns, bassist The Red Curtain, guitarist Lord Cornelius Plum and drummer EIEI Owen--was a cunning ruse, an academically brilliant pastiche executed by Swindon's XTC in the mid-1980s. In terms of humour and artistry, the 16 tracks included here outwit The Rutles by some distance. The attention to detail is astonishingly refined: Yep, there's mellotrons, garage-band guitars, gongs, bongos, phased vocals, tapes going backwards, sitars, snippets of pot-headed fairytale poetry and a fair amount of cheekily crafted impersonation--Lennon's "I'm Only Sleeping" on "Collideascope", Younger Than Yesterday-era Byrds on "You're My Drug", the brilliant Syd Barrett-eque "Bike Ride To The Moon (with Andy Partridge's affected Cambridge accent) and a host of other ideas cribbed from the likes of the Electric Prunes, the Idle Race, Tomorrow, the Move, Smile-era Beach Boys, the Hollies and--most of all--the Beatles. Chips From The Chocolate Fireball is possibly the most admirable instance of fraudulence in the history of pop. --Kevin Maidment
From Amazon.com
XTC created the Dukes of Stratosphear almost on a lark, as an excuse to play the kind of music they grew up listening to and playing. The invention of the pseudonym gave them the opportunity to wear on their sleeves the influences they had only hinted at as XTC. The Dukes released two records between 1985 and 1987 and they are both compiled in their entirety on Chips from the Chocolate Fireball. Listening to Chips is like sifting through a '60s psychedelia bin at a good used record store. The only thing missing are the pops and crackles as you drop the needle onto the neglected vinyl. The best of the era is recreated here with reverence and an amazing attention to detail: Syd Barrett's childlike lyrics, the Blue Cheer fuzz-guitar frenzy, dissonant Sgt. Pepper strings and horns, and good old Brian Wilson-style indulgences. The record opens with "25 O'Clock," which instantly recalls the Electric Prunes' "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night." From there the references become more obscure: the Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction" is invoked by the bombastic guitar sludge of Sir John Johns (Andy Partridge) and Lord Cornelius Plum (Dave Gregory) on "My Love Explodes," while "Bike Ride to the Moon" is demented enough to have appeared on Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Other high points include the Hollies-inspired "Vanishing Girl" and the Beatles-style piano stomp "You're a Good Man Albert Brown." The record closes with the priceless "Pale and Precious." With its dead-on Wilson brothers harmonies and faux theremin, the song plays like an undiscovered gem from the Beach Boys' Smile sessions. --Paul Ducey
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 The exploding alter ego September 22, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I remember looking at the first 'Dukes' LP while browsing in a record shop and being amazed when, years later, I read that it was a disguised XTC record. Considering that I already had most of their albums, it was almost embarrassing to be fooled. But had I listened to it I'd still probably have been fooled, at first anyway. Its six tracks are bursting with fuzz guitar, reverse drum loops, booming bass, freaky mellotron and, in short, is a manic piece of psych. Superb.
The second album, comprised of the other ten tracks here, is very good but doesn't sustain the standard of the earlier album. As it progresses, it sounds more and more like a regulation XTC album. The songs are good but don't stand out quite as well. Comparisons to The Rutles are a little misleading. This is certainly much better than The Rutles first album, but their agenda was blatantly imitative of The Beatles, designed to serve Eric Idle's parody. Though the Dukes give many nods to bands of the 1960s you have to work a little harder to pick them up. Ultimately, this is music that stands up in its own right.
Nostalgic Full Circle November 29, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I played this (and enjoyed it immensely) while driving in my car accompanied by my 13 year old daughter and three of her friends. While I was nodding at some of the many cameos and references to other groups, the kids just took it at face value and absolutely loved it anyway which is a far greater and much deserved compliment. The songs are beautifully musical and laden with affection for their influences, but they stand up by themselves without needing the prop of "tribute" to justify their existence. Perhaps this compilation should have been released as a straight XTC album somewhere between Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons, with no reference to tributes or influences at all. It deserves to stand on its own feet without being seen as merely an indulgence or pet project of its creators, and I think as other reviewers have rightly stated, nobody would mention Oasis without acknowledging XTC's greater ability to write not just "Lennon songs" but Lennon Beatles, McCartney Beatles or George Martin Beatles as distinct sounds. Personal favourites include Vanishing Girl, Little Lighthouse, and You're my Drug (all could have been top 20 hits in the sixties), but the groove stuck permanently in my head is the glorously cheesy guitar and mad pounding drum riff from "Your Gold Dress", a song that so captures and encompasses all the self indulgent, self regarding sour psychadelia of the late 60s "underground" and offers it up for the froth that it really was. Never mind Syd Barrett, who remembers Pete Brown's Piblokto?? Yes this is a clever album but more importantly it's realy really enjoyable.
Psych explosion ! September 15, 2005
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
XTC's time machine lands in 1967,with paisley swirls dancing upon a string tape-laden Mellotron. A masterpiece of two albums - 25 O'clock and Psonic Psunspot ( get them on vinyl if only for the covers ) is this CD only release, and it is a worthy addition to the collection of anyone with ears to hear. There's so many influences being channelled here that to list them would be pointless. ( And probably had already been done ). Suffice to say, any pop/ psych combo from 1967/68 gets a musical nod from Messrs Moulding, Partridge and both Gregory brothers. It goes without saying that the musicianship is excellent, use of period backline, guitars and keyboards faultless, and attention to detail inspiring, particularly Dave Gregory's carefully crafted guitar parts, and Colin Moulding's inspirational basslines, even more so when apparently he was the least enthusiastic about the project. Everyone should have a copy of the album - essential listening, especially with headphones on...pan-tastic heaven! Even the original atomic run out groove message is on there.. class!
Psych explosion ! September 15, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
XTC's time machine lands in 1967,with paisley swirls dancing upon a string tape-laden Mellotron. A masterpiece of two albums - 25 O'clock and Psonic Psunspot ( get them on vinyl if only for the covers ) is this CD only release, and it is a worthy addition to the collection of anyone with ears to hear. There's so many influences being channelled here that to list them would be pointless. ( And probably had already been done ). Suffice to say, any pop/ psych combo from 1967/68 gets a musical nod from Messrs Moulding, Partridge and both Gregory brothers. It goes without saying that the musicianship is excellent, use of period backline, guitars and keyboards faultless, and attention to detail inspiring, particularly Dave Gregory's carefully crafted guitar parts, and Colin Moulding's inspirational basslines, even more so when apparently he was the least enthusiastic about the project. Everyone should have a copy of the album - essential listening, especially with headphones on...pan-tastic heaven! Even the Tuli Kupferberg-esqe run out groove message is on there.. class!
Classic compilation of XTC-alter-ego... July 4, 2004
23 out of 29 found this review helpful
Chips from the Chocolate Fireball (sadly not reissued with the artwork that came with the originals- though with a pleasant remastering)was a 1987-compilation taking in the two mini-LPs released by The Dukes of Stratosphear. The Dukes...were the alter-ego of XTC, developed in the period following their live retirement & loss of drummer (English Settlement onwards). They memorably got a thank you on the sleevenotes of Skylarking (1986)! Like The Rutles, The Dukes... took pastiche to a deeply original level- rather than plumping for a record of cover-versions, The Dukes got at one with their psych-selves & recorded songs very much in the style of various 60s heroes- from The Beatles to The Yardbirds to Pink Floyd to The Move to The Electric Prunes to The Hollies to The Zombies to The Byrds to...It got stuff out of there system and appeared to contribute to the originality of the great XTC LPs Skylarking & Oranges & Lemons (1989). The Dukes...weren't the sole act getting psychedelic in the 1980s- psych-peers at the time included Banshees/Cure-side project The Glove (influenced by The Prisoner & Yellow Submarine amongst other things), the so-called Paisley Underground & the classic World Shut Your Mouth/Fried double-set from Julian Cope. The first six songs come from 25 O'Clock (1985), which is the superior of the two mini-LPs; the title track has a vocal very reminiscent of Julian Cope, while the first two opening tracks smack very much of Syd's Floyd (with nods to I Had too Much to Dream Last Night, Time & pre-Dark Side Floyd too!). They make an exercise in postmodern intertextuality fun though!; this CD remains perfect music for parties! My Love Explodes has a feel not unlike Over Under Sideways Down, while What in the World (which almost became a film!) is a great song written by Colin Moulding, at one with 60s psych and surrealdom: "2032 housewives shock in blue/What is the world coming to?/What in the world...2033 Cannabis in tea- what in the world?- Acid is free- what in the world?...2034 women fight the wars- men are too bored, they're scrubbing floors..."! Moulding nods also to Manfred Mann and Yellow Submarine-Beatles (Only a Northern Song, Hey Bulldog); Your Gold Dress sees Andy Partridge nod to several bands at the same time (notably Satanic Majesties Request-Stones)& should appeal to anyone who likes Lenny Kaye's Nuggets compilation (perhaps more the Nuggets II British sequel?). 25 O'Clock concludes on the deeply strange The Mole from the Ministry, which nods to a George Martin-produced oddity called We are the Moles! There are plenty of nods to Sgt Pepper/Magical Mystery Tour-Beatles (Strawberry Fields, Walrus, Day in the Life); this shows just how pedestrian Noel Gallagher has been in his attempt to mimic Lennon & co! The rest of Chips...stems from the 1987 follow-up Psonic Psunspot, which is almost as great as 25 O'Clock & easily a work of genius! Partridge & co display their pop-song prowess (always a constant of XTC- the thinking-persons Beatles/Kinks)- the jangly Holliesesque Vanishing Girl, more Floyd-nodding tracks (Albert Brown, Collideascope) & a nod to Younger Than Yesterday/5D-Byrds (there are even spoken word parts that make you think of Alice in Wonderland & the early releases by The Orb!). Shiny Cage is a brilliant nod to Revolver's I'm Only Sleeping- Moulding easily matching Lennon here!; as great is Pale & Precious- which no doubt nods to Smile/Smiley-Brian Wilson- this is very much a precursor to Oranges & Lemon's Chalkhills & Children (Brian Wilson lost to Albion...) Chips...is a great compilation & a hugely influential record- co-producer John Leckie would be employed by The Stone Roses to get that authentic 60s sound on that overrated debut LP! A CD all homes should have, even if only in 2033!
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