Isn't is funny when you only like half of an album, but you love that half so much that it more than makes up for the half that you don't like.

The Innocents has some history behind it for me, because I owned it on cassette back in 1988 when it first came out. I was only 9 or 10 years old then. Then, at some point along the years, it went missing. I remember getting into Rock and Heavy Metal in the early 90s, a phase that probably a lot of adolescents go through. All my old electronic cassettes got lost along the way. I probably threw them in the bin as some sort of a rebelion. Amongst them were also 2 Pet Shop Boys albums (Actually & Introspective) and a compilation tape called the Electric Eightees, which featured bands like Five Star and Duran Duran (Planet Earth).

I had bought the Pet Shop Boys ones on CD several years ago, but this Erasure album didn't resurface until I found it on sale for £1 (cassette) in a charity shop back in the Summer. The songs I love are: A Little Respect, Ship of Fools, Hallowed Ground, Heart of Stone, Yahoo, Witch In The Ditch, Weight Of The World, When I Needed You. You can listen to clip of these here.

I often listen to this tape at full volume in my car. However, since finding the above site, I now realise that my car stereo plays tapes slightly fast, and I have therefore spent the last 6 months listening to Andy Bell sound slightly hyper.

There are several great things about Erasure which make them wonderful. Firstly, the songwriting is top class. Then you've got Andy's voice, which is pretty damn good. Last but not least though, is the music of Vince Clarke. The synth sounds on their songs are so consistently top class, and even sound great in my car's crappy stereo (which plays slightly louder one side, so the mix sounds slightly wrong). It's got to be said, Vince Clarke is a musical genius. Especially his bass lines! Nobody does synth bass like him!

At some point I'm going to download all my favourite tracks illegally and put them all on one tape to listen to in the car. I'm also going to become a drug dealer.