....the thing about the tracklist is, as mentioned by others, that it's largely singles rather than album tracks or even live tracks (the latter can show the true spontaneous inventiveness of a band). For mine, really essential Oils is stuff not necessarily what the band regards as "essential" (though it's interesting to know their perspective), but what fans regard as such.

 

A great example of this (and perhaps something to guide the way for the box set) is by one of my alltime fave bands, Canadians The Tragically Hip. Some 'workers may be familiar with them from their co-writing/performing the Land single with MO. They also toured with MO in Canada in 93 as part of a Big Day Out style tour the Hip curated called Another Roadside Attraction...and despite being the headline act in their own country, still felt intimidated to be following MO onstage, as per this quote by one of their guitarists:

 

“They were so powerful that we were like, ‘How do we go on after that?’ We were close to sick, but you can’t stop it — the show was coming,” Langlois says. “Then we went on and, you know, the audience responded. It felt like an arrival of sorts.”

 

They have been (and after nearly 3 decades, still are) as big in Canada  as INXS/Oils/Chisel are/were in the Australian context, and in 05 put out Hipeponymous ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipeponymous ), which in a nutshell was nearly 40 tracks selected by fans, plus a couple of newies, plus a concert DVD, videos DVD and a short film using some of the songs. I guess it's really a halfway point between Essential Oils and a full box set.

 

So, without wishing to set up some sort of Commonwealth cross Pacific rivalry, surely the boys from Sydney Australia can meet if not exceed the efforts of the boys from Kingston, Ontario, eh?

 

Cheers,

David