Erasure Live!

So I was wondering, after a grown-up Debbie Gibson and reconstructed versions of When in Rome and A Flock of Seagulls headlined San Diego Pride Festival 2006, could organizers top such a gay-friendly '80s pop-music extravaganza? Did they ever!
Erasure duo Andy Bell and Vince Clarke played a mix of their older and newer hits during a one-hour-plus set in Balboa Park early Sunday evening.
For a while, I thought I would miss the show. I had to work Sunday - unusual for me - and just 20 minutes before Erasure was set to take the stage I was still sitting in the newsroom waiting for my editor to clear my story. Somehow I managed to race from the office to the park in my car, walk the half mile or so from the zoo parking lot to the festival area and find Rex, with a few minutes to spare.

The crowd was decidedly Erasure-friendly, obviously filled with guys between 38 and 45 who, like me, came out in the late '80s and early '90s. Erasure's songs - Chains of Love, Oh L'Amour, Home, A Little Respect - were our anthems.

And don't discount Bell's role in the global gay rights movement. He was openly, unashamedly and undeniably homosexual from Erasure's earliest days in 1985, when the only other widely known gay pop musicians were drag queens.

Here's a video montage of today's show that Rex shot: