Month: March 2023

1992 had been very quiet in the world of the Pet Shop Boys.   1993 started very quietly.  It took until the month of June before they popped their heads up above the parapet again.  The wait was worth it.

1 June 1993.  The first new material since the release of the Discography collection back in November 1991.   It was the longest they had been out of the spotlight since West End Girls had propelled them to superstardom. 

Can You Forgive Her? proved to be a tremendous return to form.  There is absolutely no messing around with this one.  The first note is bombastic, and it never really relents.   It’s the sort of tune that lends itself to a full orchestra, but somehow Chris Lowe manages, thanks to his keyboard wizardry and arrangement skills, to do it all by himself.  At just short of the forty-second mark, Neil Tennant joins in as the narrator of what turns out to be a desperately sad tale.

A man can’t sleep because he’s angry/upset that his girlfriend/wife has made a fool of him in public.  His mind then turns to the other humiliations he’s experienced at her hands, including the taunts about his sexual inadequacy.  Finally, the reasons behind it all are revealed, in that the man is, and has been since his school days, gay but is unwilling to face up to the fact.  His wife/girlfriend clearly knows the truth and piles on the misery by saying she will cheat on him and his mind turns to revenge…..except that he’s clearly too weak/cowardly to actually do anything. 

It might be a really sad and tragic set of circumstances, but it’s set to an absolute barnstormer of a tune.  One that went to #7 in the charts.

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Can You Forgive Her?
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Hey, Headmaster

It’s a hugely enjoyable b-side.  It’s another sad tale, but this time it has the sad sounding tune to match.  I’ve often wondered if it was a close cousin to the A-side in that the headmaster in question was repressing his sexuality in order to maintain his position.  But then again, it might well be the tale of someone who is just fed up with his lot and is past the stage of caring about the school and the pupils who attend it.  All in all, this really is one of those occasions when a listener shouldn’t try to read too much into a song and simply enjoy the music and vocal delivery for what they are.

The next single was released on 6 September 1993. 

It wasn’t until doing a bit of research for this single did I learn the full backstory.

As we’ve seen, 1992 was a quiet year for PSB. However, on 13 May, they had accepted the invitation from filmmaker Derek Jarman to participate in an AIDS charity event at The Haçienda nightclub in Manchester. The duo decided that Go West would be the song of choice.

Neil and Chris later went into the studio with the intention of recording it as a stand-alone single, but having listened to the results, the idea was put on the back-burner.  It was revisited during the sessions for the next album, where it was decided that what was really needed was an all-male Broadway choir to get the message of the song across more fully.

It was an audacious move.  One that rode a very fine line between producing something that was genius or ridiculous.  Me?  I’m very much of the view it was genius – a sentiment shared by many others as the single reached #2 in the charts

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Go West
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Shameless

This b-side is one of their very best.   An upbeat and very danceable number where the duo have their tongues very firmly in their cheeks:-

We’re shameless, we will do anything
to get our fifteen minutes of fame
We have no integrity, we’re ready to crawl
To obtain celebrity we’ll do anything at all

It really is hard to fathom why Shameless was thrown away as a b-side.  Not only would it have been a great track on any album, but there’s a real sense that it could have been lifted as a future single.

I bought Go West on the week of release.  Listening to it, and its b-side, and recalling the quality of both sides of the previous single, had me thinking that the upcoming new studio album, their fifth but first in three years, was going to be an absolute belter.

Very was released on 27 September 1993.  It did something no other PSB album had ever done in that it went to #1.  And the next part of this series will look at its later singles.

I’ll finish off today with a bit of footage that might bring back memories for some UK members of the TVV community and maybe put a smile on the faces of those who are seeing it for the first time.  It’s what I reckon is the definitive performance of Go West at the Brit Awards on 14 February 1994:-

Neil and Chris are in suspiciously clean overalls, while the backing vocals come courtesy of a Welsh male voice choir, all dressed as miners.  And given how many mining communities right across the UK had been decimated over the previous decade, it was a very poignant, powerful and moving sight. 

JC

 

As mentioned last week, Pet Shop Boys spent much of the first half of 1991 on a world tour which saw shows in Japan, the USA, Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Holland, the United Kingdom and Ireland.  

All the while, there continued to be chart hits, so you wouldn’t have blamed Neil and Chris for wanting to take a break, but instead they worked on some new material to be part of a ‘Greatest Hits’ release that was scheduled for release in the run-up to the festive period.

DJ Culture was released on 14 October 1991.  It was well publicised that it was going to feature on the upcoming ‘Best Of’ compilation, so perhaps this was a factor in the relatively poor sales of the single – it entered the charts at #13, but disappeared out of the Top 75 within two more weeks.

It also suffered from a lack of radio exposure, certainly in comparison to earlier PSB singles.  There’s no real ‘killer’ chorus, and the downbeat nature of the lyric was certainly never going to make it easy for radio DJs to work up any sort of on-air enthusiasm – much easier to whoop and holler when you’re pressing the play button on an ironic U2 cover or a tune that would fill a dance floor.

Me?  Well, I was one of those who didn’t buy it at the time.  I don’t recall even hearing it anywhere (although I surely must have), until I got my Xmas copy of Discography, the name applied to the new compilation.   I need to also confess that I didn’t fall for its charms – it just seemed a touch too morose – but it’s one I’ve grown to appreciate in later years.  Not sure, however, if I’d ever include it on any ICA (Volumes 1-3).

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – DJ Culture
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Music For Boys

It would be a very long time before I heard this instrumental b-side.  It’s very much a house number with a few influences to the fore – I always think of The KLF when the crowd noises are in effect – but at the same time it was sort of ahead of its time as there’s bits of it that seem very similar to what the Chemical Brothers would do a few years later. 

Discography was released on 4 November, three weeks after DJ Culture.  It contained 18 songs – as it said on the sleeve, it was the complete singles collection.   Surprisingly, it didn’t come in at #1, being kept off the top spot by a similar type of Greatest Hits package by Queen which had fallen to #2 to be replaced by Enya, whose new album Shepherd Moons went straight in at #1. I had no idea the Irish musician had been so successful back in the day – especially as this wasn’t the album which gave rise to the 1988 mega-hit single Orinoco Flow

The above is the sleeve for Was It Worth It?, the 18th and final track on Discography that was released as a single on 8 December.   It wouldn’t have been too much of a surprise to all concerned that its presence on Discography would affect sales, and it got no higher than #24, which made it the first PSB 45 not to crack the Top 20 since their commercial breakthrough.

Spoiler alert.  There would be another twenty-two singles released in the UK before there was a similar failure.  But that’s all for the future editions of this series.

Was It Worth It? gives more than a nod to the days when disco music ruled.  It is a HI-NRG tune which wears its heart on its sleeve, a paean to love that must be roared from the rooftops.  I’ve always found it to be a fun number, utterly joyous and camp, that is impossible not to try and dance to.  In some ways, it’s a waste that it was thrown away, more or less, as an extra track on Discography.

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Was It Worth It?
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Miserablism

Miserablism will have its fans, but my own view is that it pales into insignificance when compared to some of the earlier b-sides. 

It’s probably worth recalling that December 1991 was a time when the Pet Shop Boys were in real danger of going out of fashion.  Guitar music was to the fore, while a number of critics weren’t slow to suggest that Neil Tennant’s best work in recent months had come courtesy of his involvement with Electronic alongside Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr.

As it turned out, the next twelve months (and slightly beyond) was a very fallow period for PSB.  There were no high-profile activities other than Neil’s contribution to Disappointed, a new single released by Electronic in June 1992, before a new long-play video, Performance, was released in September, capturing the highlights of the world tour that had taken place back in the first half of 1991.

But what would 1993 hold in store?

JC

 

And so we reach the 1990s.  Pet Shop Boys had, in just five years, become one of the UK’s most popular groups, notching up twelve Top 20 hits (including four #1s) and three albums that had all gone Top 3. 

This post covers the period September 1990 – October 1991 and will be one of the longest in this series.  There were four singles lifted from the album Behaviour, itself released in October 1990

So Hard was released on 24th September 1990.   It is about “two people living together; they are totally unfaithful to each other but they both pretend they are faithful and then catch each other out”, which seems akin to David Gedge territory.  Musically, it is very much of that late 80s/early 90s era – I certainly see it as a fairly close cousin to songs found on Technique, the 1989 masterpiece from New Order.

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – So Hard
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – It Must Be Obvious

The b-side is a love song.  Less full on musically than most of the material from the 80s and tempo wise, more akin to what was going to unfold over the next decade and beyond.  It’s not too cruel to say that it found its place as a b-side as the tune doesn’t really go anywhere.

I don’t normally want to get into the whole remix thing with singles, but given that the KLF did some work on So Hard……….

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – So Hard (The KLF versus Pet Shop Boys)

There’s a real nod to It’s Grim Up North as well as the choral aspect to Left To My Own Devices in the opening section of the track.

Being Boring was released on 12th November 1990. 

The duo’s fourth album, Behaviour had hit the shops a month previously.  It had entered the charts at #2 in its first week, but unlike the previous three albums, it failed to sustain sales over any extended period.  One of the reasons for this were some negative reviews that focussed on the downbeat nature of many of the tunes and lyrics. 

This lack of sales extended to Being Boring which only reached #20, the first time since the re-release of Opportunities that a PSB single hadn’t gone Top 10.  The version released as a single was a couple of minutes shorter than the album version, but was still ignored by daytime radio.  Nor could anyone see the very stylish black & white promo video, which had been made by fashion photographer Bruce Weber, as it was subjected to a ban thanks to it containing some shots of full-frontal male nudity.

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Being Boring
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – We All Feel Better In The Dark

Does anyone else immediately think of Need You Tonight by INXS when hearing the opening notes of this b-side?   And then it sounds like an early Human League number…..before going all creepy and soundtrack like.   It’s one that Chris sings on and, as you’d expect, it’s more experimental and edgy than most other PSB songs.  

Being Boring, despite its poor sales, has become a real anthem over the years and is never far from the top of any lists when PSB fans mention their favourites. It also has tended to close the live shows over the years.

Fun fact.  I didn’t know this until doing a bit of research for this posting, but the music for Being Boring, along with a couple of other tunes, was written in Glasgow.  The duo had so enjoyed the city when they played there on tour in 1989 that they later decamped to a small studio in the west end of the city to come up with some new material.

The next single was released on 11th March 1991.

The plan was that How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously? would be the third single to be lifted from Behaviour.  It was going to be a very different mix from the album version. 

Whether it was the fact that Being Boring hadn’t done so well, or that the album had, by the beginning of February 1991, dropped out of the Top 75 after less than four months, but there was a change of mind.  The duo had recently recorded a HI-NRG, and very camp, cover of one of the biggest selling rock songs of the 80s for possible release later in the year, but this was brought forward to March 1991 with the decision that it be a double-A side with the remixed ‘Seriously’.

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Where The Streets Have No Name (I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?

I still think this is one of the best jokes ever played on the music industry.  The title of the original PSB song on one side of vinyl while the other seems to poke a bit of fun at how serious U2, (and others like them) and their fans, were beginning to take themselves.  The deadpan delivery of the vocal on ‘Streets’ is such a contrast to the way Bono had thrown his everything into his performance of the song back in 1987 when The Joshua Tree had sold across the world in tens of millions.  And adding in the refrain of an easy-listening number from the 60s was just genius……

It was a timely reminder that music can and should often be about having fun.

The 12″ release had a new PSB composition included – I’m assuming it was meant to be the original b-side until the change of plan.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Bet She’s Not Your Girlfriend

Another New Order-esque tune, but with a frantic and all-knowing manic lyric from Neil, makes this one of my favourite PSB b-sides.    It wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the Electronic album which was just a few weeks away from being released…..

On 28th May 1991, the fourth and final single from Behaviour was released.  I’ve used the CD cover of Jealousy – the picture of Neil was used on the 7″, while the picture of Chris adorned the 12″ – with them coming together for the CD version.

This was the closing song on the album.  As was becoming the norm, it wasn’t a straight lift for the 45. The remix this time is about thirty seconds shorter but utilises a real orchestra at the end instead of relying on a sampler.

7″

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Jealousy
mp3: Pet Shop Boys – Losing My Mind

The b-side is the duo’s take on a song, written by Stephen Sondheim, for the 1971 musical Follies.   It wasn’t their first involvement with the song, as back in 1989 they had played on and produced a version that had taken Liza Minelli back into the charts since the 70s.  It’s still a staple of the PSB live shows.

I’ll finish things off with a little extra as a thanks for making it this far.

There was also a limited edition CD single issued in the UK. 

As well as the extended mix of Jealousy which had been released on the 12″ vinyl, there were two bonus tracks.  One was a new mix of So Hard, the first single to be lifted from Behaviour, while the other was an extended version and fresh mix of one of the best tracks on Behaviour and which must at some point have been under consideration as a single.

mp3: Pet Shop Boys – This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave (extended mix)

Pet Shop Boys spent the first half of 1991 on tour, It began in Japan on 11th March, and took in the USA, Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Holland, the United Kingdom and ending in Ireland on 17th June.  

The year ended with the release of a Greatest Hits compilation, including two new songs, both released as singles.  That’s exactly where this series will be heading next week.

JC