Pet Shop Boys: Search and Destroy

Destroy: Rent and Shopping. No really. Obliterate them utterly. Leave. No. Trace. Please, think of the children.

anyway, in anticipation of PSB's 'PopArt' retrospective, here's my:

2xCD80 'portable' Pet Shop Boys go!

disc1

West End Girls (edit)
Love Comes Quickly
It's a Sin
What Have I Done to Deserve This?
Always on My Mind (edit)
Domino Dancing (extended album version)
Left to My Own Devices (edit)
Jealousy (edit)
My October Symphony
Miserablism
Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes off You)
Can You Forgive Her?
Dreaming of the Queen
Go West
Before
Se a Vida E (That's the Way Life Is)
You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk
New York City Boy

(81:19 - my essential essentials, chronological by appearance as far as I know. Album versions except where noted - or not appearing on album - "edit" versions are from 'Discography' - same below)

disc2

Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)
Suburbia (edit)
Rent (edit)
Heart (edit)
I Want a Dog
It's Alright (extended album version)
So Hard
Being Boring (edit)
Bet She's Not Your Girlfriend
DJ Culture
I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing
Liberation
The Theatre
One and One Make Five
Decadence
Somewhere
Absolutely Fabulous (single version)
Home and Dry

(81:25 also chronological, the second order essentials)

So predicatably, I would take "Always On My Mind", "Left To My Own Devices" and "Domino Dancing" off and put on "Don Juan", "You Know Where You Went Wrong" and "We All Feel Better In The Dark". Also, I'd be VERY tempted to bump "Heart" for "Jack The Lad".

Wait, I didn't notice this: you have "Liberation" and not "Yesterday When I Was Mad"?

However: Download/Search:
"Very"
"Behaviour"
"Nightlife"
"Alternative"
Most non-album singles (maybe save for "Always On My Mind"
And to some extent "Please", which was their best 80s album

Hey Headmaster (best b-sider ever)
Violence (Please version)
Kings Cross
I'm Not Scared
Nothing Has Been Proved
Nervously
To Face The Truth
Love Comes Quickly
To Speak is a Sin
Miserablism
One of the Crowd
So Hard (KLF remix)
Decadence
Love isa Catastrophe
That's My Impression
Music for Boys
If Love Were All
Getting Away With It
Electricity
To Step Aside
Closer to Heaven

don't forget "Disappointed"!

But if PopArt means as much to some kid as Discography means to me, then its existence (and mine) will be justified.

Search:
- The original version of "One More Chance"
- Most of "Please"
- "Shopping", "Heart", "Suburbia", "Hit Music", "King's Cross" and "I Want To Wake Up" off "Actually"
- "Left To My Own Devices" and "Domino Dancing" off "Introspective"
- The entire "Behaviour" and "Very", particularly "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing" and "Yesterday When I Was Mad"
- The three non-album singles they released in 91-92
- The entire "Nightlife", particularly "Boy Strange"
- A couple of the slower, less dance oriented, tracks off "Bilingual"
- The entire "Alternative" compilation
- Most of their videos
- Saint Etienne and Gangway

Destroy:
- "Always On My Mind", "What Have I Done To Deserve This" and the awful new recording of "One More Chance"
- The dreadful album version of "It's Alright"
- The entire "Release" and most of "Bilingual"

The ironic thing for me is I was very well acquainted with 'Discography', in the mid 1990s, but hadn't listened to it for years and years. So buying PopArt is allowing me to explore them anew.
Yeah, possibly "Go West" strikes me as not a perfect opener; "Very" being the PSB album I am most familiar with and the only one I actually own. The only thing I can say is that maybe a few tracks could have been added; "Your Funny Uncle", "Hey Headmaster"... that sort of thing. Possibly instead of stuff like "Paninaro '95" which isn't the most engaging (though I like in general the idea of this compilation being of all/most of their hits...).

The Pet Shop Boys, are probably the best *pop* group, in my life span. Certainly one of my earliest musical memories, at 4 or 5 was "It's a Sin", which bore a melodramatic, melancholic mark on me, I'm sure. That sample, the synth-orchestral minor key grandeur of it, it was *there* for me in 1987... and my memories from that time are very fragmentary. "Always on Your Mind" to a slightly less intense extent, I remember from the time as well. They are inextricably tied up in memory with their being my younger brother's favourite band bar none from 1993-97 roughly; I got to hear all their albums through him.

Seriously, can any group have been said to have achieved so much from 1985-2003, in terms of pop singles? With an eye also to some very good albums. Saint Etienne are very much personal favourites of mine, yet my appreciation of them has been in the last few years, and largely via the albums. It is a marker that I can't remember having heard their songs at the time of their early 1990s ascendancy; they never quite broke into the Top 10, which is where you have to be to get heard by a wide audience. Being a child I was only really exposed to very popular music, in terms of singles. I didn't start listening to the chart show until 1995.
Pulp could have been contenders... but they seem to have become more album focused, at least in the eyes of the public - no Top 10 singles for 6 years. A shame as "The Trees" was a wonderful single, and I liked most of the "This is Hardcore" singles.

I agree with many of your likes, Geir, but 'destroy' "Always on My Mind" and "What Have I Done to Deserve This?"?? Stellar singles, both, my good man.

AAAAARGH I AM OLD

I feel your pain, sir. We must beat these youngsters so that they know their place.

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

<3 the pumpkin head ladies at 2:40

Post-Very:

Yay: Bilingual, Fundamental, Yes, Electric.
Nay: Nightlife, Release (apart from the excellent 'Home and Dry'), Elysium.

boo

'In Denial' and 'Leaving' would be my keepers from Nightlife/Elysium.

Not sure I'll ever understand the antipathy towards to Nightlife, here and elsewhere.

that's what I was booing at

So yesterday's interview with Neil re the forthcoming lyric book was really good

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/oct/21/neil-tennant-pet-shop-boys-collection-lyrics?CMP=share_btn_fb

And he'll be chatting live with Michael Bracewell in forty minutes, there will be a stream

http://thequietus.com/articles/25521-neil-tennant-book-launch-live-at-8pm-tonight

I wonder how they're getting on with the new LP...

Per the interview, recording is under way.

“Really quite often, a publisher says, ‘Let’s get Neil Tennant to write his autobiography’ and it’s quite nice that they do […] I’m not convinced my life’s been interesting enough."

Gah. I really can't think of a biography that I'd be more interested in reading.

Live chat now running here:

https://www.facebook.com/TheQuietus/videos/179423676270055/

I loved the occasional PSB anecdotes that punctuated Jarman's "Modern Nature".

Does anybody know the back story as to why they split from Bobby O.? Apparently they recorded a whole album’s worth of stuff.