Pet Shop Boys - Tracks Poll

Alfred, is that dvd compilation any good? The commentary I mean? (I know the videos are)

Left this track out and am now regretting it :( (sorry for the info, won't reveal anything else)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F9yfAcnXk8

some gaps on that commentary, but some lolz to be had as well xpost

Which dvd? PopArt?

Let's put it this way: if there were no DVDs and you just had the commentary to play, you would still have a ball.

The early 00s reissue liner note Q&As with Chris Heath are a treat. I could read/listen to them talk about their music for hours.

Yeah, those reissue booklets are essential.

would like to vote in this but all i have is a greatest hits comp and "actually"

Transcribed here.

xpost - I'd still vote if I were you. Probably not everyone will agree but to me the PSB are a 'singles' act.

Ah, just vote anyway. The true heads will see it right. I'm going to even though I've just counted how many tracks I like and only came up with a dozen - turns out they're not as good as I thought they were.

just fill in the rest of your ballot with random tracks from Alternative and you'll be fine

urns out they're not as good as I thought they were.

I thought the same about you.

ha!

ive got 14

SB's for Kismael?

*Ismael?

Neil/Chris chemistry in the discussion of Don Juan is A+

Neil The basic song was written in the Seventies, in about 1978, before I knew Chris. It was written on the guitar and was supposed to sound Spanish, which was why I thought of reviving it to go on the b-side of 'Domino dancing'. While Chris complains that I write songs about Russian history all the time, this is about the Balkans in the 1930s. I was trying to write lyrics in the style of Facade by Edith Stilwell, a sequence of poems she wrote with music by William Walton. Facade was very controversial when it was first performed at Cheyne Gallery on King's Road as Edith Stilwell declaimed it through a curtain with a megaphone while the music was playing.

Chris Was it slightly pretentious?

Neil In the Balkans in the 1930s, they were caught between Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany leading up to World War II. They had all these funny monarchies. There was King Zog of Albania, King Boris of Bulgaria and Prince Paul, the Regent of Yugoslavia, and they were all trying not to be allied to Hitler while trying to stop Stalin annexe half their lands. Don Juan is supposed to be Hitler or Stalin but I could never quite work out which. I think its Hitler. It's always interested me, that area. I suppose it's the hopelessness of it. The song attempts an Edith Stilwell use of words: 'an impasse has been reached with the teacher of the rich'. It's like someone coming to their senses: throughout all this decadence and complex language, they have this flash of complete reason.

Chris Then it goes into a bit which is like 'Flash dance (What A Feeling)'.

Chris' interjection is like a sudden major chord thrown into a ballad.

lol I was about to post "Don Juan" but chose this instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFsuUPbxLnA&feature=related

I really love their b-sides a lot

A New Life is wonderful.

"To be honest, it's a very minor work" - Neil on "Was That What It Was?"
WTF? :/

he's right

I mean really now re "Jack the Lad":

Neil It started with a knock-off of one of Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopedies. We'd had the idea that there was going to be a Neil track and a Chris track on the 'Suburbia' single; Chris's track was 'Paninaro' and this was mine. The idea of calling a song 'Jack the lad' came from Big Audio Dynamite, whose song 'E=MC2' had a very similar chord change to 'West End girls'.

On 'EM02' there's a sample from the film Performance which says, 'who do you think you are- Jack the lad?' and I had been reading about Lawrence of Arabia at the time, and about the spy Kim Philby: people who go too far, and people who practice deception. The second verse refers to the fact that Lawrence of Arabia is supposed to have been homosexual - 'telling lies in public, breaking codes at home, underneath the blankets...' When I say, 'Are you only Jack the lad?',

I'm saying: are you just messing about? 'To feast with panthers...' isa reference to Oscar Wilde who said that when he was going out with all these rent boys it was like feasting with panthers because they were all so dangerous and it was all likely to destroy him. Which, of course, it did. Lawrence of Arabia, Oscar Wilde and, in the third verse, Kim Philby-they each lived as an establishment figure but lived another life at the same time.

The song is asking why they're doing it. It is just for bravado? 'Are you only Jack the lad?' Or another Suggestion, 'They must have hurt you, Jack'. Is it some kind of resentment against your fellow upper class people that makes you want to betray them? It's a sort of anti-bravado song in a way. It's saying: why not come to terms with all this resentment you have? 'We all fall' - everyone makes mistakes.

When I sing 'this is your only religion' I'm suggesting that to not be restrained has become the main point of their lives. To never want to grow up and face responsibilities. I'm kind of talking about myself there as well.

just fill in the rest of your ballot with random tracks from Alternative and you'll be fine

― chupacabra - a delicious burrito (DJP), Thursday, June 23, 2011 9:16 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

^this. Preferably from CD1

CD2 has its share of greatness, too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u994yjpfOBg

"Euroboy"!!!

Almost tempted to vote for the book 'Pet Shop Boys vs America', but as it's a tracks poll...

quote from discogs:

Somewhere around the Very album, they started to loose their inspiration, which by now is on miserable levels. Comparing to the stuff like Actually, Introspective and Behavior, everything later is getting more weaker. I don't know what happened to them, but somewhere deep I know they're missing their own vibes. That's for sure. Domino Dancing, Left To My Own Devices and DJ Culture, this kind of inspiration - that's what true PSB lovers miss. Even their 2-girl tribute band from Sweeden remade just their older songs.

lol

ultra-harsh. at least 5 of the songs that will deffo be on my ballot are post-Very.

And that critic must have forgotten that people get old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6ozNtnaxGk

There's plenty of great material post-Very, I just think they're not as good at deciding which cuts should make it to the albums and what their order should be.

I had to pretty much completely rearrange Fundamental and Yes to enjoy them. I took out some songs and added b-sides and different mixes and reordered them and ended up with 2 great albums. I mean, how can you leave out "Fugitive" or "This Used To Be The Future" from the main sets?

"Minimal"! "Indefinite Leave to Remain"!

I kept those.

I don't think I will have more than two votes on my ballot from post-'Very'. It was an age/life thing, I got into completely new music then and didn't care much for Bilingual, and lost track of them completely after that (always keeping the old music close at heart, but not dipping my toe in the new albums.

But I do relish the opportunity for ilm to point me to all the gems I must have missed out on after 'Very' (apart from the hits that I know). That's what makes these polls so great.

They didn't lose their songwriting or production chops post-Very: Yookay and American culture changed. As the "eighties" (which I'll use as a synecdoche) receded and became another nostalgia piece the PSB lost their immediacy in the minds of the public. In the UK they still scored lots of top ten singles and albums coasting on their reputation. For better or worse, for reasons beyond an artist's control, the times in which the artist lives matters; it nourishes the muse. The Boys simply didn't fit the laddishness of British AND American culture.

When I reviewed Bilingual for my college paper, my editors were amused; the Boys were already seen as throwbacks -- only three years after Very received their loudest acclaim and actually got American college airplay! But the timing is interesting: 1993 is really when The Nineties began in both the UK and America. The Boys were anachronisms.

Thus, it didn't matter how good the records continued to be: "Se a Vida E," "Before," "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk," "New York City Boy." Their moment was gone, and after a while their inspiration wilted.

"It's not as easy as it was, or as difficult as it could be."

Also: don't overlook the silent diffusion in America of the knowledge that they were gay. And British. Being British was a bad thing in '94 and '95 unless you were Tricky and Oasis.

I got into them in the late 90s and people in the US either thought "lol80s" or "lolGAY". I remember being really surprised at their larger acceptance when I moved to the UK as well as the middle-class family audience when I saw them in Germany.

I didn't like "Numb" until England went out of the 2006 World Cup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZByrHy7nrE

Great writing, Alfred.

And I do mostly agree, they lost 'their moment'. I have been continuously surprised that they remained such a high profile the last decade in the first place. Which is a massive accomplishment, re-inventing yourself, or rather, re-inventing your audience. Because next to the hardcore fan base they managed to attract new fans in three decades.

For me personally though, and this goes for a lot of people I know, I just took a different turn after 'Very'. I can't put my finger on it now, but the people that grew up and were young and heavily into music around 'West End Girls' got on, enjoyed the ride up until Bilingual, and got off at the next stop after that one.

It says something about their continued vitality that their last album nearly debuted at #1 in the UK and they themselves could inspire this response at Glastonbury last year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y8JyDbwmRg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWJtWuMoeNs

all of the aforementioned CD reissue booklet interviews are here:
http://www.petshopboys.net/html/interviews/Interviews-1d.shtml

the very reason You Tube was invented is basically this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGg3e_PBLX4

still the best documentary/tv stuff i've ever seen about the boys

"and if they stop liking pop music, they'll hear a hard days's night on the radio and they'll suddenly remember the first time they fell in love or what it was like doing their O-levels or something"

Opening made me wish for a Pet Shop Boys edition of In Our Time.

Been listening to Discography and Please today and finding the sonic palette a little...samey. Good background music for getting some work done, though. Sorry PSB fans!

I was surprised to see the performance they gave recently after receiving some kind of UK music lifetime achievement award - the entire crowd, straight and gay, male and female, was enjoying and singing along to tracks that made either a minimal impact in the US or are seen as "lol80s or lolGAY", e.g. "It's a Sin". To the extent anyone knows that here, it's as a gay anthem, not just an anthem. My straight peer group knows "West End Girls" and perhaps "Opportunities" but that's about it, and even most of my gay peer group is mostly clueless about them.

My first PSB albums were Bilingual and Nightlife at age 16; I'm not sure how I would have reacted to tracks like "You Only Tell Me You Love Me" and "New York City Boy" if I had grown up with the pre-Very stuff. There is certainly a different vibe, I'd argue a less universal one. Those albums made a lot of sense to me but neither the production nor the lyrical content obviously resonates with the typical "West End Girls" fan, let alone the typical American listener.