― Koens (Koens), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 20:58 (nineteen years ago) link
― daavid (daavid), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 21:01 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 21:02 (nineteen years ago) link
― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 21:03 (nineteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 21:12 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 21:14 (nineteen years ago) link
May take a minute to load.
― Koens (Koens), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 21:25 (nineteen years ago) link
― Seb (Seb), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 21:25 (nineteen years ago) link
― Susan Douglas (Susan Douglas), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 21:31 (nineteen years ago) link
― Koens (Koens), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 21:45 (nineteen years ago) link
― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 22:07 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 23:09 (nineteen years ago) link
― James, Wednesday, 15 June 2005 23:50 (nineteen years ago) link
Basically, it's like New Order but with a witty gay dude as a singer/lyricist instead of an illiterate moron, not a bad idea!
Opportunities seems to define the 80s pretty well, or at least the 80s as I imagined it was in NYC from movies as a child...Gordon Gecko, Less Than Zero, etc...
So, yeah...Pet Shop Boys...sweet.
― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Sunday, 19 June 2005 20:11 (nineteen years ago) link
Yes!
― John Bullabaugh (John Bullabaugh), Sunday, 19 June 2005 20:41 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Monday, 20 June 2005 00:40 (nineteen years ago) link
(nb I love New Order, esp. nowadays)
― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 20 June 2005 02:03 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 20 June 2005 02:06 (nineteen years ago) link
Good dance floor is a different matter, House was the real problem for PSBs. Their great love is hi-energy/italo disco and that slightly naff sensibility worked great when remixed by mid 80s greats like Pettibone. Like Madonna, who similarly does disco naiff really well. they produced some thrilling pre-house disco moments when guided by the right collaborators. However come the great death of songs that was House they sounded very old fashioned. At the time I was surprised that they never did a blue monday.. ie a real vocal less dance floor hit. Maybe they had house alteregos? Or maybe Chris isn't actually as good as Neil thinks he is. That is probably the million dollar question.
Few real club classics despite two decades of trying - they work better as home music than house...
― Guy Beckett (guy), Monday, 20 June 2005 09:17 (nineteen years ago) link
― kit brash (kit brash), Monday, 20 June 2005 12:06 (nineteen years ago) link
― Guy Beckett (guy), Monday, 20 June 2005 15:49 (nineteen years ago) link
― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Monday, 20 June 2005 15:54 (nineteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 20 June 2005 15:58 (nineteen years ago) link
― Guy Beckett (guy), Monday, 20 June 2005 16:07 (nineteen years ago) link
― Guy Beckett (guy), Monday, 20 June 2005 16:08 (nineteen years ago) link
"At night, the people come and goThey talk too fast, and walk too slowChasing time from hour to hourI pour the drinks and crush the flowers"
which I've always wanted to believe is a back-handed allusion to "in the room the women come and go talking of michaelangelo."
― Paul Ess (Paul Ess), Monday, 20 June 2005 17:12 (nineteen years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 20 June 2005 18:43 (nineteen years ago) link
Basically, it's like New Order but with a witty gay dude as a singer/lyricist instead of an illiterate moron
This is officially the most ridiculous thing I've heard all week.
― J-rock (Julien Sandiford), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 00:51 (nineteen years ago) link
How exactly is that the Pet Shops have 'gone wrong' as it were? I am well aware of the truth of this assertion, but it seems a little curious that they should have done so. "Behaviour" and "Very" are utterly terrific records, and such a sharp fall-off seems implausible.
"Before" was clearly an effort to make that elusive club anthem alluded to above, as was "Paninaro '95", and neither was quite brilliant, if certainly neither bad. I must admit I am very fond of "Single Bilingual", the title-track and single of their 1996 album; it has a very amusing lyric, a sing-song melody and thunderous, stampeding South American percussion. But the album overall didn't quite work, did it? And since then I only really know the singles, which are sometimes decent but ultimately *aren't essential*, and that would never have been right for prime PSBs.
― Tom May (Tom May), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 00:54 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 01:03 (nineteen years ago) link
But Spencer posits more of a class battle, I'd guess, between the Essex, left school at 16, boys and the ex grammar school student favourites. I have always felt that Depeche Mode were the outsiders - less dancefloor, more synth rock after they abandoned clean cut pop. Would you see Soft Cell & Human League as in some way bridging the gap?
All, except probably NO who were more generally liked, developed rabid cult followings. Both PSBs and Erasure fan clubs for example seemed to have become key meeting places for gay teens. Though fan clubs lie outside my direct experience and I have only heard annecdotal evidence...
― Guy Beckett (guy), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 08:05 (nineteen years ago) link
― brittle-lemon, Tuesday, 21 June 2005 08:22 (nineteen years ago) link
There is no way the PSBs spent two decades, or anytime at all, in my opinion trying to make club hits, their music is intentionally camp and ott to avoid becoming middlebrow or accepted, at least that's what I would very very strongly believe. They coated everything in pop to avoid becoming middlebrow or canonical in a traditional way.
― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 17:00 (nineteen years ago) link
― Seb (Seb), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 17:23 (nineteen years ago) link
My point was that House was a disaster for them. Prior to house djs like Mark Moore would drop PSBs records in with Italo-disco, Jam & Lewis tracks etc And they were hanging round in clubs themselves. After 1987 you never heard PSBs played by any decent club dj. They sort of lost their confidence and held onto an outdated sound. Why they didn't start DJing is an odd question..
― Guy Beckett (guy), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 17:37 (nineteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 17:38 (nineteen years ago) link
― n/a (Nick A.), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 17:42 (nineteen years ago) link
and I don't think "pop" is or ever was an outdated sound, their music is no less weakened by time than that of the house music guys of the era, indeed stands up alot more than most.
regardless of where they performed, I simply don't hear the PSBs as music of any era (except perhaps the very late stuff) as failed attempts at house. They are a pop act, they never wanted to become fully house, what would have been the point? Would have been just jumping on a bandwagon.
Is there even one house track on their "Back To Mine"?
Not to say they didn't like house music, of course they did, but what you like and even what you perform at does not equate to wanting to be that sound. They are the essence of pop, a concept which has infinite possibilities, far beyond those of actual genres like house.
And I say this as a house fan/DJ. I only play one PSBs record ever, when I DJ, "Some Speculation", but I don't choose not to play the others because I think "these are crap house tracks", I don't play them because they are NOT house, the PSBs never could be anonymous enough to make house music and that is no failure in my eyes, for a band with several albums and that kind of career. Far far far from it.
― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 17:44 (nineteen years ago) link
"Always On My Mind " (#8)"Domino Dancing" (#5)"Left To My Own Devices" (#8)"So Hard" (#4)"How Can You Expect..." (#19)"Where The Streets Have No Name" (#4)"Can You Forgive Her" (#1)"Go West" (#1)"Absolutely Fabulous" (#7)"I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing" (#2)"Paninaro 95" (#4)"Yesterday When I Was Mad" (#4)"Before" (#1)"Somewhere" (#19)"To Step Aside" (#1)"Break For Love" (#1)"I Don't Know What You Want..." (#2)"New York City Boy" (#1)"Sexy Northerner" (#15)
― Seb (Seb), Tuesday, 21 June 2005 18:40 (nineteen years ago) link
― brittle-lemon, Wednesday, 22 June 2005 03:00 (nineteen years ago) link
1. Discoteca2. Single3. Up Against It4. It Always Comes As A Surprise5. Hit and Miss6. Before7. Se A Vida E8. The Survivors9. Red letter day10. Betrayed11. To Step Aside12. Saturday Night Forever
― brittle-lemon, Wednesday, 22 June 2005 03:09 (nineteen years ago) link
― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 03:32 (nineteen years ago) link
"Chris: This is where we invented left-field New York Deep House music."
― D. Bachyrycz, Wednesday, 22 June 2005 04:05 (nineteen years ago) link
― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 04:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― brittle-lemon, Wednesday, 22 June 2005 04:52 (nineteen years ago) link
They might post-rationalise a distaste for house, but in being cut off from the great youth movement of their time the PSBs were caught like the rat pack in the mid 50s surveying rock n roll. It was a moment of crisis. I am not devaluing what they did after 87 but it was a key moment for them.
― Guy Beckett (guy), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 08:50 (nineteen years ago) link
I think this is true, but I don't think it was because the PSB cared less about having a dance floor hit. (For example, they've continued to use trendy remixers that they suspect will be the next big thing.) Rather I think it's mostly because the nature of dance music in the UK changed in the early 90s, becoming more of an specialized industry that could be a little snobby about "pop" acts and their "extended remixes," as well as a more segmented one (thus house became more distinguished from hi-nrg and the latter consigned to G.A.Y., etc).
― brittle-lemon, Wednesday, 22 June 2005 08:59 (nineteen years ago) link
― jones (actual), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 14:24 (nineteen years ago) link
― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 22 June 2005 14:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― biz, Wednesday, 22 June 2005 14:33 (nineteen years ago) link