Finally got around to picking up Erasure's Total Pop!: Deluxe Box—40 Hits today. Nice pictures in the extremely lengthy booklet inside, though the text inside never really manages to sum up the experience of growing up with Erasure as a large chunk of your formative teenage-years soundtrack.How could it?
Disc two is the real winner, because, well, most of us already have or had the first Pop! at some point, no? The remastering is super, by the way.I think if I were held at gunpoint given the option to choose only 10 singles off this collection to be able to ever hear again, they'd be:
1. "Ship Of Fools"
2. "Stop!"
3. "You Surround Me"
4. "Chorus"
5. "Am I Right?"
6. "Always"
7. "I Love Saturday'
8. "Stay With Me"
9. "Fingers & Thumbs (Cold Summer's Day)"
10. "In My Arms"
Wow, that was, like, Sophie's Choice painful! Which would you pick?
I haven't dived into the "Erasure At The BBC 1986 - 2005" DVD included, with all the Top Of The Pops, etc. performances, but am doing so tonight. I also wish great album tracks like "Home" off Chorus and "Miracle" from I Say, I Say, I Say were on here. But "Miracle" is on the DVD, from a May '94 appearance on Later With Jools Holland!
Finale note: Hearing "I Love Saturday" and "Stay With Me" fully remastered, on great speakers, will blow you away. Trust me.
Also, if you haven't yet read last week's Throwback post, centered in part around Erasure's "Always," do so now!
Couple other things:
* New Towleroad post is up.
* Daily Beast writeup of Pet Shop Boys' Yes is up.
* Follow my ass on Twitter. Pinch it if you want.