One of my favorite pop tunes from the 80's. The whole album "Please" has some outstanding work on it, especially "Suburbia" and "Tonight is Forever"
From Wikipedia: "The first version of the song was produced by Bobby Orlando and was released on Columbia Records' Bobcat Records imprint in April 1984, becoming a club hit in the United States and some European countries. After the duo signed with EMI, the song was re-recorded with producer Stephen Hague, for their first studio album, Please. In October 1985, the song was re-released, reaching number one in the United Kingdom and the United States in 1986. In 1987, the song won for Best Single at the BRIT Awards, and Best International Hit at the Ivor Novello Awards. In 2005, 20 years later after its release, the song was awarded Song of The Decade between the years 1985 and 1994, by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters."
A good song Doug... I always struggled with PSB. The whole presntation was a bit po-faced and the music was not what I considered 'real' - if you know what I mean. But then they'd go and make cracking songs like Suburbia, Being Boring and my personal favourite... this song from the Behaviour album...
ReplyDeleteNeil Tennant was a music journalist and editor of the highly successful teen magazine Smash Hits when he decided to become a pop star himself. I expected him to flop as those who write about things often can't do them very well (critics). But Petshop Boys were entirely successful, producing a unique sound with often intelligent lyrics. And they did do the odd gig or two, rather than just play the fame game like most pop acts do these days.
ReplyDeleteWest End Girls was certainly one of their biggest hits, as was Suburbia (which referred to journalists as "dogs" at a time when few thought as badly of the Paparazzi and the journo rats as they do today).
Tennant's unpoppy voice and the cliche instrument of the time the synthesizer should not really have yielded such success, but they hit a nerve because, essentially they knew music and knew the public mentallity. I suppose that Smash Hits was a kind of research project, an hypothesis before the main theory was published.
And then the world was conquered. They were a great success in the UK, but were also hugely popular in Europe and the Far East, as well as the homeland of music, the USA.
And they also recognised the importance of the music video at a time when the concept was still very much in it's infancy.
ReplyDeleteI remember this Doug a great tune, easy listening perfect for relaxing with a cool drink.
ReplyDeleteI would have posted "Suburbia", Ian, but I think I did last year. Yeah, they have that blase too-hip attitude in some of their videos, tis true, but that was the modus operandi of the 80's it seemed. Still, PSB was, to me, so much better than most of the stuff we were getting back in the mid-80's in pop music, so I was willing to overlook a bit of that.
ReplyDeleteI like this "October Symphony". Thanks!
Thanks for adding so much info on Neil Tennatt and critical to this blog, Oakie. They hit a nerve with me and others that's for sure. A break from the sappy romantic ballads that ruled Top 40 over here at the time.
ReplyDeleteGood point as well. Some of the early videos of that era look rather ragged today compared to theirs. They did more than just get a funky garage for a set, add some dry ice and bored girl models who couldn't dance a bit and call it a show.
ReplyDeleteExactly Mike. No deep messages here and that's fine by me some of the time.
ReplyDeleteYes, the 80s wasn't perhaps the best musical decade all in all, hehe!
ReplyDeleteA lot of vids seemed like they'd had vaseline smeared all over the camera before they were shot. I think the first big video success (at least in the UK) was Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. It was mind-blowing for its time.
ReplyDeleteAnd Duran Duran's "girls on film" probably provided the blue-print for most pacey modern pop videos with it's glam, quick scene changes and zooming cameras. In fact that awful schlock "Glee" has much to thank DD for on that score (though Glee is poorly edited and poorly shot, which seems the fashion these days).
Despite the two aforementioned vids most groups and singers missed the opportunity to make interesting accompanyments for their music. And it was the video "narrative" style, where the band would narrate a story that they might only be visually invloved in on a limited basis that created a whole new video genre. PSB were one of the earliest exponants of a quality narrative.
I've just looked on Wiki and it turns out that there was a rudimentary visual accompianment for music as early as 1894.
ReplyDeleteAs collections of still images on You Tube are still called "videos" it is fair to say that this would have legitimately been the first ever music video. And it was extremely popular, thus was the first ever pop music video.
Quote: "In 1894, sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song "The Little Lost Child".[3] Using a magic lantern, Thomas projected a series of still images on a screen simultaneous to live performances. This would become a popular form of entertainment known as the illustrated song, the first step toward music video"
Personally I was never very keen on this song, it sort of played in the background for me back then during Thatcher's reign of terror which resembles the present Cameron reign of terror but not so bad.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, wasn't Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground film an early form music video type of thing as well, from the1960s?
I think you'd be right there, AA. The Beatles also did some early "music videos"--half the movie "Help!" is a music video broken into bits---but the Lads had a colorful and playful aspect there that morphed into a kind of jaded cool as the 60's progressed. The rawness of the Velvet Undeground videos, from what I've seen of them, is closer to being the template I think.
ReplyDeleteThat is interesting, Oakie. I read a few years ago in a book by Kenneth Brownlow (a noted British film historian) that Thomas Edison was keen on getting the moving picture industry going as a way of selling more record cylinders of music through synching up the music to little stories and dances to whatever film.
ReplyDeleteSo, for some, movies were an just an auxillary way to sell a different product!
Shall return on this one Doug, I just arrived on but shall be back!
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with you about the respective reigns of terror.
ReplyDeleteYes,in the modern day there barely seems a movie released without the album track, the toy replicas, amusement rides etc following on.
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned on another page recently, the ancient Greeks had rails with cars on and they also knew of steam. With a bit more insight they might have invented steam-powered vehicles thousands of years ago. (And we would have killed the planet by the Dark Ages as a consequence, hehe!). But it just goes to show how advanced people could be in the past.
Just one more. Achimedes designed a crane with a giant claw on a rope that swung across the harbour at Syracusa. The Romans were held back by this device for many years as they tried to conquer Sicily. The claw would crash down into the Roman galley and then be hauled up, tipping the contents (Roman soldiers) into the sea. Their weapons, shields and armour did them no use in the water. Some modern day engineers attempted to recreate the device, but failed to produce anything quite so effective as the great Greek mathematic himself. Sometimes the oldies really are the best.
Edison was an amazing guy, wasn't he! America's Leonardo.
Yes, it amazing how so many modern people have a "chronological snobbery", to borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis, about ancient thinkers and doers.
ReplyDeleteThat's an amazing machine . I knew Archimedes was into inventing weaponry--as was Leonardo I gather--but the inability to replicate his "giant claw" is remarkable.
Edison, in his own way, like Leonardo, blazed a trail that no one else can ever quite match.
I liked this a lot when it came out... Thanks for the memory, Doug.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure Christy. Glad to find music that gets such good feedback.
ReplyDeleteYes, what would we do without these Super-Inventors? Where would we be? Not here and now, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteThe modern engineers were very bright people and they did get a version of their claw to work in the end. But they made key compromises to make the device work, not least they replaced the Roman gallery with a much smaller vessel.
And they actually had to TIE the claw onto the vessel to lift it up in the first place, which was cheating. Hehe!
Achimedes made many of these claws and they were THE main weapons against one huge Roman invasion.
Of course, the old fella was amongst the many people summararily slaughtered by Roman soldiers when they finally succesfully broke into Syracusa. How useful he could have become for Rome. But the Romans were just like the Nazis. If you co-operated you might be OK (not always) but if you delayed their progress they'd flatten you completely as they did with Carthage and many other great cities. Indeed, even the Nazis knew a good scientist when they saw one.
Speaking of Carthage, I wonder if the Romans engineers were smart enough to try and replicate something akin to Archimedes "giant claw" machine.
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere they evened the odds against the Carthagian fleet by using a device attached on a Roman vessel that could swing over and smash the enemy deck, neutralizing the greater manuverability the north Africans possessed. Marines could then board the ship and carry the fight as if by land.
A possible carry-over from the Syracuse campign?
And where do those layabouts The Pet Shop Boys now figure into this? :-)
Hehe! Yes, we went a bit off the subject!
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't suprise me in the slightest. The Roman's were, like any highly successful empire, entirely adept at absorbing other people's great ideas (especially Greek). The similarity of the devices does suggest mimicary. I don't think there was a new problem for the Roman army that they didn't learn from and adapt too. Like when they lost a major battle to the Dacians. The Eastern Europeans had sharp-bladed scythes that they used for cutting crops. The scythes sliced clean through bone and Roman helmets. The Romans put a "hot-cross bun" metal braid across their helmets and added leather appelets to their uniform, reducing the effect of the Dacians only real weapon. The next time they met up Rome conquered.
Didn't hear about that one. I'll bet some Roman general said to the surviving Dacians something like: "Now back to your scythes to get us some wheat. Rome needs bread!"
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