So today was a strange day with two separate deliveries. One was well-received, the other not so much. Video 04 below was actually filmed before 03, with my lunch and several deep breaths into a paper bag between the two recordings. Let’s start with the good news in 03.
‘A Pain That I’m Used To’ was only physically released in 2005 as a disc in the UK and reached number 15. In the US, it charted rather better with the (digital only) song reaching number 6. The track features one of the worst intros in recorded history in my opinion which has me reaching for the volume every time.
‘Martyr’ was released a year later in 2006 to promote The Best Of, Volume 1 and topped the charts of Italy and Spain. Unlike ‘A Pain..’ this non-studio album single completely passed me by as I did not buy the best of compilation album when it came out. I already owned a bunch of other singles collections so at the time couldn’t see the point. It’s a song I’ve been listening to a lot more this year and it’s certainly a grower.
I’ve not had chance to listen to any of the 6CD boxed set which was the final item in video 03. I’ll try to remember to give an update about that in the future. I did listen to the third disk (7) from X2 yesterday – the first live tracks disc – and it’s really great. They’ve done a good job of making it sound like one cohesive live performance with a bit of banter from a very young sounding Dave Gahan in between songs.
Now the not so good news…
I’m not sure what I’m looking for anymore
I just know that I’m harder to console
This set of six boxed sets of singles did not come cheap and so to find them in such a bad state was pretty disappointing. I think you can see the realisation cross my face toward the end of the video that all was not well and that scourge of stored items in garages and lofts across the land – mildew – had come to spoil my day. Yes the seller had posted lots of photos but there was no mention of the problem in the item description and the emphasis was on how great it was they were sealed (not something I was that bothered about to be honest).
I spent most of my lunchbreak trying to clean the boxes. I know mildew is a pretty pervasive thing once it’s got ‘rooted’ and so I’m not sure if these will be okay in the long term, but I will certainly try to look after them a bit better than the previous owner (despite being sealed some of the staples in the booklets inside each box were a bit rusty, so it shows that wherever they were it was damp).
At one stage I was ready to throw the boxes in the bin, but after carefully cleaning one of the boxes inside and out with hand sanitizer I think it’s worth seeing if the pesky stuff will grow back or whether that’s done the trick. There was no way I was going to leave the plastic wrappings on any of these boxes anyway as I wanted to listen to all the discs. It’s a question of time.
couchmagpie 