No Coincidences

The latest album by Coyote came out recently, a six track album titled The Higher The Sky, The Deeper The Ocean. It follows three other six track albums they've released in the last few years (as well as numerous singles, 12"s and edits). Five of the six tracks feature very well chosen and apposite vocal samples, taken from a variety of sources, that are built into the Notts duo's music- Balearica, dub and ambient tunes that are always like a ray of warm sunshine. 

I reviewed The Higher The Sky, The Deeper The Ocean for Ban Ban Ton Ton where I got into the idea that what Coyote are doing with the voices that appear on their albums is making meaning or trying to find answers or make sense of the world/ life. The voices that they drop into their songs become lyrics in the same way I guess that actually writing the words for a song does for songwriters. The review is here and the album is available at Bandcamp, digital and vinyl. 

The album ends with No Coincidences, six minutes of music that have become one of my favourite songs of 2026. The lazy drumbeat, double bass (reminiscent of Danny Thompson's bass playing on Nick Drake, John Martyn and Pentangle records) and wash of sounds are intoxicating and the voice on top elevates it further. 'Life is a colour... there's no such things as coincidence... hurry up please it's time...'. 

In the review I linked the vocal sample, a repeated line  of 'hurry up please it's time, hurry please it's time', to T.S. Eliott's The Waste Land (the line appears in the poem, the barman trying to get drinkers out of his pub at last orders). Which felt a bit pretentious (I asked Rob at Ban Ban Ton Ton to feel free to tell me if it was a bit much) but I think we run the risk of pretentiousness form time to time in blogging and we just have to accept it. 

Anyway, it led me to think about what other songs have been inspired by The Waste Land and these three turned up. Pet Shop Boys' breakthrough single West End Girls is one of them, Neil Tennant finding inspiration in the streets on London as portrayed in the poem, the noise and strife of the city and the class struggle of those East End Boys and West End Girls. 

PJ Harvey's On Battleship Hill is also apparently partly inspired by The Waste Land, both commenting on the aftermath of the First World War and the slaughter of a generation of young men in the name of Western values. Polly pulls no punches. 

I found out too that Lana Del Rey's Do You Know There's A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd is possibly inspired by the poem, the search for meaning and themes of memory, loss and decay. And it's a rather dramatic and affecting song too. When I set out writing this post I didn't plan to end up with pet Shop Boys, PJ Harvey and Lana Del Rey and that just confirms what the voice in the Coyote song is saying. There's no such thing as coincidence. 

October

October already- 2025 continues to hurtle by. Some October songs for the first of the month, a blogging October fest. 

First, wonderful electronic pop by Chris And Cosey, originally released in 1983 but here in its 1986 version, two former members of Throbbing Gristle making something light and lilting but profound too. 

'You took my hands on the stairs/ No one was around/ You said we could be lovers/ I just had to say the word...'

October (Love Song) '86 Version

Fast forward to 1991 and Neil and Chris, the Pet Shop Boys, released their October symphony, a song inspired by Neil Tennant reading a book about the Russian revolution and a composer writing a symphony celebrating the October revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power. Written in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and break up of the USSR Neil has his composer wondering if the symphony if the work is still valid. Johnny Marr contributes some lovely little bursts of guitar. 

'So much confusion when autumn comes around/ What to do about October?'

My October Symphony

In October 2000 The Gentle Waves released October's Sky as part of an EP, Falling From Grace. Brass, organ, an off kilter rhythm and sound and Isobel Campbell's softly sung vocals on top, a slightly off centre love song. 

'When will we stop feeling haunted?/ For our ancient love must die/ Never have the stars shone brighter/ Underneath October's sky'

October's Sky

Lastly, from April this year, Maria Somerville's October Moon- drifting in with ambient drones and noise, recorded in Conamara and Dublin in 2021, gradually becoming a song, acoustic guitar and a vocal so soft and blurred its only half there, a song blown apart by the wind... 

The lyrics are difficult to make out, maybe 'I look away/ Somewhere I can...' 

October Moon

Back In The Water Again

Today I offer you three new songs from artists who all found fame/ infamy in the 80s and have kept ploughing their particular own furrows ever since- The The, Pet Shop Boys and Nick Cave. All three have devoted fanbases, all three are artists who have something to say, and all three are associated with a distinct sound and style. The need to keep writing and recording seems to be as strong as ever with them all and the idea propagated by Pete Townshend in The Who about dying before he gets old is long gone. In the 1980s there was a certain amount of derision for The Rolling Stones et al still playing rock 'n' roll in their forties. There is nothing ridiculous about this anymore- artists keep going and we are still interested in their music. None of the three here today are solely nostalgia acts either u their old songs will often get the biggest cheers when played live but the new songs are all trying to get something across- about themselves, about aging, about life and death and the state of the world. 

First is Matt Johnson, back as The The, with a single called Cognitive Dissident and a video by Tim Pope. The song has a gnarly blues guitar riff from Little Barrie's Barry Cadogan, plenty of atmosphere and Matt's low register voice, the song swelling with backing vocals into the chorus, 'left is right/ black is white/ Inside out/ Hope is doubt'. Matt has always written the state of the world and the lyrics on Cognitive Dissident circle around our post truth world, emotion and democracy, alienation and AI. The song is the first from an upcoming album Ensoulment (the first for twenty five years) and some gigs. Cognitive Dissident sounds like The The- no surprise there maybe- but the 90s, Dusk era incarnation with Johnny Marr on board rather than the 80s one of Infected and Soul Mining. Matt says the album is hopeful, even though this single is laced with fear, gloom and bad things.

Pet Shop Boys have a new album, Nonetheless, and a single, A new bohemia, and a video starring Neil and Chris, Russell Tovey and Tracey Emin. The Pet Shop Boys are a long way from their Imperial Period of the late 80s to mid 90s, are currently playing an arena tour of greatest hits and on A new bohemia are in reflective, melancholic mood, men in the 60s looking back to their youths and noticing that the passing of time has seen them moved aside by the new generation. 'Like silent movie stars in 60s Hollywood/ No one knows who you are in a hipster neighbourhood', Neil sings noting the invisibility that comes with being old. Later on, as the strings swirl, he confronts mortality and death, 'Every day is a warning evening might forget/ Then the following morning has the sweet smell of regret'. If Matt Johnson has found something to be hopeful about, Neil Tennant does too by the end of the song. 'Where are they now? Where have they gone? Who dances now to their song?', he sings, surrounded in the video by young revellers, Neil and Chris static on the dancefloor. And there is regret too, 'I wish I lived my life free and easier', he says before concluding, 'I'm on my way to a new bohemia'. I don't know if Neil and Chris are raging at the dying of the light, as Dylan Thomas had it, but they're going with disco strings, a day at the beach and acceptance of the turning of the wheel, the struggle of the past forty years replaced by something else- contentment maybe, peace of mind. It's moving stuff. 

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds are back too with a second single from their upcoming album Wild Gods and an arena tour in the autumn. The online fanbase seem a bit split about the new songs- they're also split about Nick's music pre- and post the death of Arthur Cave in 2015. Some want Nick to return to the hammering, chaotic Old Testament and murder ballads songs of yore. There's a feeling that Warren Ellis and the move to a synth dominated sound over the last decade is weaker in comparison to the bone crunching sound of the Bad Seeds of the 90s. Maybe what the long standing fans are really missing is their own youth, their own past in the 90s where a certain amount of chaos and noise was part of life and they were young enough to deal with it. I get why some of the albums Nick's written since the death of Arthur can be uncomfortable to listen to, difficult to find a way into- I've written before about how much I personally get out of Skeleton Tree, Ghosteen and Carnage. Wild Gods so far feels like the first album where the songs aren't directly about grief and loss (although that will all be in there somewhere I expect), but this one is feeling like Nick's found a way to get in touch with something else. The song Wild Gods was sung from the point of view of a carouser now living in a retirement home- Nick and Neil Tennant at similar stages in life. The new single Frogs rolls in on rippling piano, cymbals and strings and a fantastic bassline, references Cain and Abel early on, and keeps coming back to walking in the Sunday rain, frogs jumping in gutters, the song building and building, endlessly rising towards something that is ever just out of reach. A choir of backing vocals appear, ahh ahhing away, and Nick sings of being 'back in the water again'. Kris Kristofferson walks past kicking a can. It's epic, emotive and uplifting and feels like Nick is choosing life and hope and joy. 

Life Is Much More Simple When You're Young

Pet Shop Boys played Manchester Arena on Friday night- there aren't a huge number of groups who can tempt me into arenas but Neil and Chris are one. The tour is billed as Dreamworld, a greatest hits show, and they do not disappoint, hit after hit, song after song, a perfect demonstration of the art and sheer majesty of pop music. Noel Coward's quote about the potency of cheap music runs through my head a couple of times (not that the Pet Shop Boy's music comes across as cheap in any way) but it is extraordinarily potent. I'm in tears a couple of times- this keeps happening at gigs at the moment, lines and songs triggering me instantly. So much of a Pet Shop Boys gig/ show is about the stage, the set and the spectacle and there's plenty of spectacle here tonight but it doesn't overshadow the songs and ultimately it's the songs that shine. 

The duo come on to a full, pretty much sold out arena, in big coats and headdresses. They occupy the front third of the stage, a big screen blocking off the rest of the stage. Under a pair of stylised street lamps on wheels, Chris begins prodding his keyboard and Neil takes us straight into Suburbia. The projections behind them are in a constant state of right to left movement giving the set a real sense of motion, the graphics whizzing by as Neil and Chris largely stand still. Suburbia segues into the thumping dance pop of Can You Forgive Her? and without a pause we're into Opportunities. From thereon in it is clearly going to be nothing but hits, one after the other, usually without any breaks between the songs, a constant seamless flow of words and music. Their cover of U2's Where The Streets Have No Name lights the place up even further, that sequencer line pumping through the giant barn we're in sending waves of energy into the crowd and back again. For some songs, Rent (played early on) and West End Girls (much later), the projections become distorted, chopped up versions of the original videos- the young Chris Lowe with naval hat and duffel bag steeping off the train from the Rent video and the pair of them in the streets of London for West End Girls, a moving ode to the passing of time and youth becoming middle age. The quality and range of their back catalogue is so high- one of their 90s peaks, So Hard, is dispensed early on, Chris' massive rave riff filling the arena and Left To My Own Devices, even bigger than the recorded version with Trevor Horn, that superb line about Che Guevara and Debussy delivered with deadpan aplomb. 

The stage gets opened up for the middle section, the screen raised and three extra musicians waiting for them on risers- drums, percussion and keys- and they're straight into the latin rhythms crossed with melancholy of Bilingual and Se a vida é (That's the Way Life Is), the first lump in the throat for me, the line about 'Se a vida é/ I love you/ Life is much more simple when you're young' hitting home. The beautiful Balearic pop of Domino Dancing is followed by some 21st century PSBs- New York City Boy, Monkey Business- and Neil straps on an acoustic guitar for the relationship dissection of You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk. Then we're slung back to the 80s- Love Comes Quickly and Jealousy. From this point it's smash hit overload- You Are Always On My Mind, a superb Heart, their wonderful cover of house legend Sterling Void's It's Alright, Go West and a climatic It's A Sin. For the encore the stage is reduced again, the screen leaving the duo at the front. West End Girls, poignantly backlit by their 80s video and then Being Boring, their masterpiece, the projections whooshing from front to back now, lights receding into the distance and Neil's time shifting lyrics about loss, the passing of time and friendship setting me off again- 'all the people I was kissing/ Some are here and some are missing... But I thought in spite of dreams you'd be sitting somewhere here with me'. 

Heart

Being Boring (Extended Mix)

From Lake Geneva To The Finland Station

West End Girls by Pet Shop Boys recently topped The Guardian's countdown of The 100 Greatest UK Number 1 Singles. The article is here. Cue obviously much gnashing of teeth and wailing in certain quarters, not least in the comments below the article, often from rejected and upset Beatles fans, people crying about the 1960s and 'real' music, someone saying that West End Girls is 'plastic music for plastic times' (as if music that is real and emotive can only be made by men with bits of wood with six strings attached to them). The list and placings are neither here nor there really but well done to the writers who put this song at number 1 and Ghost Town at number 2 (and for that matter choosing She Loves You as the sole Beatles song, thus upsetting the really serious Beatles fans). It's all good fun.

West End Girls as some people said may not even be the best Pet Shop Boys number 1 single. That honour could go to It's A Sin or Heart or even Always On My Mind (and how it irritates some people that that song kept The Pogues off the Christmas number 1 slot in 1987). But West End Girls is a superb song and I have no problem with it being rated so highly. The opening seconds are an announcement, cinematic and prowling, and the release of tension when the three note bass riff comes is exciting enough even before Neil enters with his deadpan singing and rap. West End Girls made London in 1986 sound impossibly electrifying and dangerous, especially for those of us up north, and the culture clash he describes using  a variety of voices- West End Boys and East End Girls, nightclubs, dive bars and casual sex, the 'just you wait til I get you home' line, the gangland stuff about guns, police and madmen- is all brilliantly realised, inspired Neil said later by T.S. Elliot's The Wasteland and the sound and rhythms of the words of that poem. Once I also twigged in later years that the line about 'from Lake Geneva to the Finland Station' referred to Lenin's secret journey on a sealed train across Europe back to Russia, sanctioned by the Germans, to take charge of the Bolsheviks in 1917, it flipped my mind a little- a synthpop song about clubs and (to quote Neil) 'rough boys getting a bit of posh' that is also about the Russian Revolution! Neil took it up a level later on with the 'Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat' line, one of my favourite lyrics by anyone.

It's a great dance record as well as a great pop single. The 12" carried the Dance Mix as the A-side to make the point. There's a seven minute mix from the 10" release which comes in more slowly with a lovely, twinkling piano part before lift off at one minute thirty and a great rap with extra lyrics in the breakdown. When I saw them play Blackpool Empress Ballroom a couple of years ago they played a sleek modernised, upgraded version of West End Girls. Maybe the sign of a great song is one which can be re-figured and remixed, pulled apart and reassembled, and sound equally good in multiple forms and formats. Chris Lowe's music is superb, keyboards, synths and drum machines, the full shebang. Producer Stephen Hague must take a share of the credit too. The earlier Bobby Orlando version just doesn't have the same menace or sex appeal. Not that it's bad by any means, it just isn't quite there. Hague finds the drama, depth and sheen that it needed, pushing it all out front but with layers of intricacy. The video is a big part of the song's success too, Neil and Chris stalking the streets of London, Neil in front in long black coat and Chris hatless (for the only time) and sulky (like every time thereafter). It established the deadpan, standing still delivery as they fade in and out in front of shuttered shops.



In 1986 the release of Disco, a six song remix album with some blinding songs and versions not least In The Night and Paninaro, included the nine minute Shep Pettibone version of West End Girls. More cowbell.

West End Girls (Shep Pettibone Master Mix) 

In The Night, let's not forget, was used as the theme tune to the BBC's Clothes Show and lyrically dealt with French proto- Beatniks in Nazi occupied Paris and the nature of resistance and collaboration, ultimately criticising them for their existential angst preventing them from engaging with the real life struggle. Paninaro was about an Italian 80s youth subculture with a preference for expensive casual wear, boating shoes and Italo disco. 'Armani, Armani, ah- ah Armani'. This collision of interests and lyrical concerns with modern music is one of the things that marked them out as being different from the pack and one of the biggest things I've got from them.

With fortuitous timing Neil and Chris have recorded a new version, a 2020 lockdown take on West End Girls. Seek and with an air of sadness, West End Girls and East End Boys shut away and in isolation.

August 1987

I've become a little obsessed with the repeats of Top Of The Pops running on BBC 4, especially the episodes recently stuck in the summer of 1987. Specifically I've become obsessed with the new depths to which the show sinks every week, presenters and audience desperately trying to pretend this is the greatest time to be alive despite almost every studio performance and video proving otherwise. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about New Order's appearance in the studio playing True Faith as being the only bright spot in a dismal run of bands, artists and songs. But then in mid- August something else happened, two good songs, two weeks running, both shown by video. As I watched the two videos they also seemed to suggest something fundamental about the two artists and maybe also about differences between the smart end of British and American pop culture in summer 1987. 

Pet Shop Boys hit their stride the year before with West End Girls and Suburbia and then marched into their imperial phase with It's A Sin. In August What Have I Done To Deserve This? reached number two. The single features Dusty Springfield on vocals, then a long vanished presence in the music world, and is archetypal Pet Shop Boys. Neil has two vocal parts, a sung part starting with 'You always wanted a lover/ I only wanted a job...' before Dusty joins in on the second verse. Neil's spoken word section before the chorus- 'I bought you drinks, I bought you flowers, I read your books, we talked for hours...'- perfectly enunciated and high in the mix is peak Tennant, as important to the song as Dusty's great contribution. Chris Lowe's music is peerless electro-pop, from the synth drum opening beats to his Roland synth and keyboard parts. This song stood out amidst the dross of summer 1987 but it would have shone in almost any company.

What Have I Done To Deserve This?

The video is very British, filmed in a theatre with a chorus line and a pit orchestra, a nod to a pre-pop music world, curtains, drapes and feathers. 

In the chart at the same time and on Top Of The Pops in the same two weeks was U Got The Look by Prince (a single from the Sign Of the Times album). U Got The Look is hyper 12 bar rock, strutting about with a massive Linn drum and, like the Pet Shop Boys, a shared vocal- Prince and Sheena Easton. It is super funky, highly stylised, a song about sex and sexiness- in the video, also shot in a theatre, everyone is shot drenched in colours (from neon lights, from overhead lights, in shadows). Almost everyone is barely half dressed in tight, minimal bodycon clothing. Sheila E manages to steal the show from Prince in her outfit, not an easy task. In response Prince throws in a guitar solo so over the top and so processed it's almost a parody. It is wonderful stuff, seductive and funky and fun and so un- Britain in 1987, especially when compared to the knowing, raised eyebrow of the Pet Shop Boys and the world depicted in their video. 

U Got The Look

U Got The Look reached number two in the US but only number eleven in the UK. Both records glisten like diamonds among the supporting cast in the chart- Whitesnake, Sinitta, Kenny G, The Firm, Wet Wet Wet, Rick Astley, Samantha Fox, Def Leppard. Motley Crue, Marillion, Shakey, Bruce Willis, Spagna, Heart, Los Lobos... 

So Much Confusion

'...When October comes around' said the Pet Shop Boys in My October Symphony. Later on Neil Tennant asks about whether we should 'remember December instead or worry about February?' I guess February just rhymed. I haven't got any songs on the computer named after February and can't think of many with lyrics referring to the second month other than this one.

My October Symphony is from Behaviour, 1990's PSB tour de force. Produced by Harold Faltermeyer using analogue synths it mixes full on pop, rave influenced pop, ballads and what got called adult pop- musical, reflective, lyrically grown up, classy instead of teenage (which could sound a bit dull but Behaviour is an album that could never be called dull. Inventive, subtle, wry, expansive but not dull). My October Symphony chucks many things into the pot besides Neil's lyrics- a blast of a male voice choir, house inspired backing vox, sweeping strings and a funky guitar part played by Johnny Marr. I always felt it's a song about autumn really (and wanting to move on and change) but according to a PSB fan site- 'Neil adopts the role of a Russian composer who has dedicated his life and work to the ideals of the revolution but now feels confused and betrayed in the wake of the collapse of Communism'. So there you go. On the same site Janet Street Porter claims it is about a lingerie model. Which one Janet?

My October Symphony

In 1991 they released a stand alone single, DJ Culture, partly to promote their singles compilation Discography, partly as a comment on the Gulf War and how George Bush borrowed from Churchill's wartime speeches just as artists sample each other (with a reference to Oscar Wilde's trial thrown in too), and partly because they'd recorded what was a very good pop song. As a single it kind of went missing, despite reaching number 13 in the chart.

Life Is Much More Simple When You're Young

I spent Wednesday evening watching the Pet Shop Boys playing in the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool. The Empress Ballroom, known to fans of The Stone Roses as being the gig that sealed their ascent in the summer of 1989, is a beautiful late 19th century venue holding 3000 people, pretty intimate for an act who often play arenas. The show had everything you'd want and expect from a Pet Shop Boys performance- lights, projections, images, lasers, daft headgear, costume changes and more great tunes than you can shake a stick at. It opened with Neil and Chris appearing by rotating into view on two giant white circles. They stepped down, daft headgear intact, and got right on it in front of a crowd who were very much up for it. As a pair they've made songs that are informed by forty years of club culture and fifty years of pop culture and for a while were very near the centre of UK music. The projections for second song Opportunities have smiley faces swapping with dollar signs, a nice visual ironic nod to Thatcher's enterprise culture. From there on in it's recent songs like The Pop Kids and Love Is A Bourgeois Construct spliced with highlights from their back catalogue. A few songs in the giant white discs are dismantled, the screen falls down and a trio of musicians join Neil and Chris, two percussionist and a keyboardist/violinist, the extra drums beefing up the rack of synths and laptops local lad Chris Lowe is playing. Somewhere around halfway in, the temperature in the room rising and some of the crowd now shirtless, they drop in a beautifully chilled Love Comes Quickly, a pop song as good as any written in the 1980s.

Neil Tennant is a superb lyricist, a writer who frequently finds the sweet spot between the uniquely personal and brilliantly universal, and his distinctive voice has survived the years. In the second half of the set they show their strengths to full effect with a run of West End Girls, Home And Dry and It's A Sin, lasers beaming, hats and jackets changed, building up to the finale, now with giant coloured balls suspended above the stage- a reworked, upgraded version of Left To My Own Devices and then a singalong Go West, a song of community and brotherhood. The encore has a perfectly pitched and played Domino Dancing, the moment house music explicitly influenced their sound, followed by Always On My Mind. It's the hits. Pile 'em high, give 'em what they want. I could gripe that there's no Being Boring, no So Hard, no Rent but it'd be churlish. It's quite a show they put on, songs that last with choruses that stick (for decades), performed with knowing theatrics, with a nod and a wink but with feeling too. A class act. 

Domino Dancing (Extended Version)

When You're Young You Find Inspiration In Anyone Who's Ever Gone

Pet Shop Boys' 1990 single Being Boring is one of the songs that summarises life, one of those songs that hits hard and resonates emotionally, that seems to be somehow 'about' you (even though the autobiographical details are all specific to Neil Tennant and not me). The tune is lovely beyond words with swelling keyboards and a memorable melody line but it's Neil's words about growing up that really strike home- along with the reference to Zelda Fitzgerald's quote about not being boring because she was never bored- and the details of the verses that show how people change as they get older.

It's stuck with me also I guess because as I've got older I've moved through the verses (as they chronicle Neil Tennant getting older). It's a proper bittersweet and happy/sad song too, the pain and joy caused by sifting through the 'cache of old photos and invitations to teenage parties'. Neil Tennant would have been in his mid-to-late thirties when he wrote it and that seems to be telling- this isn't a song that a twenty something would write. Maybe that's why it keeps giving- when I first heard it in 1990 I was twenty so roughly the age the narrator is singing about in the second verse. Then as you get older you become the narrator of the third verse. A friend said recently this is 'the finest pop' which it is but it has a depth that much pop music doesn't- that's not to criticise pop music but it's often at its most effective when it is ephemeral and surface rather than depth. Being Boring is pop and much more than pop.

Being Boring

The extended mix is over ten minutes long but doesn't feel forced or anything like ten minutes long.

Being Boring (Extended Mix)

The video, shot by fashion photographer Bruce Weber, is like a Vogue shoot come to life and has the young and the beautiful enjoying themselves immensely.

Cities In The Park

Just over twenty five years ago Factory Records put on a two day festival in Heaton Park, Manchester, in memory of Martin Hannett who had died earlier that year. Day One, Saturday August 3rd, included Buzzcocks, Paris Angels, Ruthless Rap Assassins, The Railway Children, OMD and The Wonderstuff. Day Two, Sunday, was almost entirely Factory acts- Happy Mondays, Electronic, ACR, Revenge, Durutti Column, The Wendys and Cath Carroll plus De La Soul, 808 State and New Fast Automatic Daffodils. There were two day camping tickets. But who would want to camp in Heaton Park?

We went on the Sunday. It was hot. I met my brother there, who came in when some of the crowd outside pushed the fence down. He had a ticket but just fancied coming in through the fence. From memory Durutti were good but a bit lost in a giant field, Revenge were a bit iffy (Hooky playing bass, singing and whacking the syndrums repeatedly, probably trying to overcompensate for the bad blood between him and Bernard Sumner, New Order's split and their relative positions on the bill), ACR were good, 808 State really moved the crowd, De La Soul were shouty. Electronic were imperious, especially when the Pet Shop Boys turned up on stage and you scanned left to right and saw key members of New Order, The Smiths and PSBs all together for one song. It's shame they played live so rarely.

The whole event was filmed and a video released which I bought but no longer have. Here's a scene setter...



And here an enthusiastic Tony Wilson interviews Johnny Marr, Rowetta, Shaun Ryder and Bez...



This Youtube uploader has labelled this as Electronic live in London  but it's definitely Heaton Park.



Happy Mondays were by 1991 a stunningly effective if very unlikely stadium band. Kinky Afro rocks. No, it doesn't, it grooves.

The Sound Of The Atom Splitting

The Sound Of The Atom Spitting was the B-side to the 1988 single Left To My Own Devices, a stone cold Pet Shop Boys killer single. For the B-side, a song much loved by both Julian Cope's head Heritage website and Jon Savage to name but two, Neil and Chris plus producer Trevor Horn wanted to take acid house, as inspired by the sounds they were hearing and their own line about 'Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat', and make actually psychedelic acid house. This involved the drum beat from Left To My Own Devices, some 303 bassline madness, Neil playing Debussy inspired chords on the keyboard, stereo panning and the full range of studio tricks. Neil's lyric imagines a conversation between a fascist and a liberal and the end of the world. Just another day in the studio for the Pet Shop Boys.

The Sound Of The Atom Splitting

My Life's An Open Book

I had this Eighth Wonder song in my head all day the other day- no idea why, I just woke up with it there. Back in '87-'88 I rather liked Miss Kensit and this Top Of The Pops performance is a reminder to my seventeen year old self of why. The song, written by the Pet Shop Boys as surely everyone knows, is a belter- full of those Neil Tennant lines that only he can write- and while Patsy's voice isn't exactly deep and rich it works nicely with the song.

I Follow Rivers

Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys reckons this is 'that fantastic combination of beautiful chords with really great moving lyrics'. He's not wrong. Summer bottled, compressed and stuck up on the internet (from back in 2011).



And in only a few hours time (12.05 precisely) I break up for the summer holidays. Fan-fucking-tastic.

So Much Confusion When October Comes Around

I always think of this song at the start of October- Pet Shop Boys and their 1990 song My October Symphony. Lovely, lush, grown up pop music. The album, and maybe this song, featured understated guitar work from Mr. Johnny Marr.

My October Symphony

Of the pair of gentlemen in the picture, posted at Whitsun 1939, I'd say Neil Tennant's the one on the right and Chris Lowe on the left.

Words Mean So Little And Money Less

More music from the land down under with 80s indie heroes The Triffids, covering Pet Shop Boys' Rent. Neil Tennant hit a real high point here with the lyrics, a masterclass of economic storytelling.

Rent

I'd Rather Watch Drying Paint

Yesterday's duo (Pet Shop Boys) meet another duo (Electronic) and record a stand out track from the first Electronic album, Patience Of A Saint. Neil Tennant had already worked with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr on the debut Electronic single, 1989's gorgeous Getting Away With It, and on this song Chris Lowe joined in on keys as well. Seeing as Marr had more or less refused to play the guitar on the album there must have been a lot of people standing around prodding drum machines, synths and samplers during the recording of this song. It's a fantastic track nonetheless, with Neil Tennant in withering sarcasm mode (the line that gave this post it's title for example and 'If I drove a faster car, I'd drive it bloody well').

The picture shows the foursome backstage at the Cities In The Park festival held in Heaton Park in the summer of 1991. Held in honour of Martin Hannett who'd died the previous April the Sunday was mainly Factory acts plus some other Manchester bands, and was a good line-up- New FADS, 808 State (very good), Durutti Column, A Certain Ratio, Revenge (they were pretty awful), De La Soul (lots of shouting. Live hip hop and festivals during daylight not mixing very well), Electronic and headlined by Happy Mondays. Security was fairly lax- fences going down left, right and centre followed by hordes pouring in, people working on the gates offering wristbands for a fiver- normal Factory/Hacienda sort of thing really. Electronic went on before the Mondays and at one point you stood looking at the stage with members of New Order, The Smiths and The Pet Shop Boys playing together and thought 'this is some kind of future we're looking at here'.

Factory was declared bankrupt just over a year later.

04 The Patience of a Saint.wma

I'm Indebted To A Contact Magazine

The last two posts have featured a duo and duo's always make me think of the Pet Shop Boys, who strode the mid-to-late 80s and 90s like a 4 legged literate,dance-pop, hit machine, unafraid to tackle the big issues and the little details. Also, Pet Shop Boys seem part of Christmas to me, all that poppiness, inspired and silly videos, Top Of The Pops Christmas Special, Christmas Number One and so on.

I could post any number of their songs- Left To My Own Devices is superb, and so are Rent, West End Girls, Being Boring, Domino Dancing, Can You Forgive Her?, Opportunites, It's A Sin.... In the end I've gone for So Hard with it's well observed lyrics about infidelity and very 1990 drums, synths and production. This is the extended dance mix, six and a half minutes of dry vocals and stabbing synths and crashing drums. And I love the photo on the sleeve.

Pet Shop Boys - So Hard (Extended Da.mp3 - 4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download