Behaviour: 20 Years On

[glennjridge]

I have the terrible feeling that rap is going to be around alot longer than I feared.

[Drico One]

The biggest change in the charts to my ears has been the steady erosion of melody in favour of groove. I'd call it rhythm but it's not even that aesthetically pleasing. Most records these days seem quite harsh to me, lack subtlety, and clunk aggressively without any discernible melodic nuance. I'd be embarrassed to be a teenager these days. Mind you, I was embarrassed to be a teenager when I was a teenager - but the PSBs were my antidote, the band it was intellectually acceptable to love. Let's face it, the hairy-chested faux c**k rock of INXS was never going to cut it with the self-aware spotty snobs that Neil and Chris tacitly appealed to.

Drico.

[Lucy]

I am embarrassed by what is in the charts.
It's all the same, electro-tinged r'n'b...

[Patrick Bateman]

I think what's most noticeable is the cultural change the charts reflect. I remember Damon Albarn moaning about the influence of America on British culture back when Blur were releasing Modern Life is Rubbish but then look at what happened (for better or worse): Britpop. I find it incomprehensible that a group like PSB would ever break through now, but what I find most surprising is that I doubt even Blur would. Pulp certainly wouldn't, nor The Smiths. Now it's not just America influencing our culture, it is our culture.

[Deschanel]

I liked reading your story, TallthinMan. Well done.

And just to take another whack at a myth, it's not true that the video for Domino Dancing somehow put the US off PSB. MTV scarcely showed it. It was music industry sorts that restricted it and decided it was "too gay" or whatever. I seem to recall a very beautiful girl though! MTV in the US would maybe play it once, after midnight. You had to be a real fan to try and catch it. The idea that the Domino dancing video somehow turned off people- in the US most people never saw the video. MTV's the one who censored it in advance. Because it's so shocking, right?

[York Minster]

Going back to Behaviour, does anyone have that edition in the white velvety case? What's the difference to the normal release?

It has a 3 inch CD with it that has tracks you already own.

I think the Devices video is a huge letdown, and that much is admitted in Literally by Watson or whomever did it. Just a horrible video.

I always felt like the UK was a step above the US musically, but it does look like you guys have caught up with the shittiness of america. Congrats!

Oh, and INXS had some decent songs at least. Need You Tonight was excellent. Too bad most of their songs sound the same though.

[fluffmoln]

Going back to Behaviour, does anyone have that edition in the white velvety case? What's the difference to the normal release?

It has a 3 inch CD with it that has tracks you already own.

Well, two tracks you already own (Bet She's Not Your Girlfriend and Miserablism) plus a nine minute excellent extended mix of This Must Be The Place, unique to this release (and nonexistent if you asked Neil).

[York Minster]

plus a nine minute excellent extended mix of This Must Be The Place, unique to this release (and nonexistent if you asked Neil).

It's on one of the two CD singles for Jealousy is it not?

[fluffmoln]

plus a nine minute excellent extended mix of This Must Be The Place, unique to this release (and nonexistent if you asked Neil).

It's on one of the two CD singles for Jealousy is it not?

That one is a shorter edit of the original extended version (as it was released some seven months later), almost completely removing the spoken sample, Russian state prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky saying "Trebuet nash narod odnogo - razdavite proklyatuyu gadinu!" is repeated in the breakdown section of the mix as well as over the the outro.

I just now did some research into what the actual context of the sample is, and it's from the 1936 Moscow Trials:

The Moscow Trials were a series of trials of political opponents of Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge. Many of the defendants were executed. After Nikita Khrushchev's revelations in the 1950s, the Moscow Trials are today universally acknowledged as show trials in which the verdicts were predetermined, and then publicly justified through the use of coerced confessions, obtained by torture and threats against the defendants' families.

The first show Trial - the Trial of the Sixteen - sought to destroy the mythical Trotsky-Zinoviev Centre. Vyshinsky did not provide a shred of evidence against the accused - not one document, not a scrap of paper - only the confessions of the accused. The weakness of the prosecutor's case was demonstrated by the inconsistencies and falsehoods in the testimonies given at the trial. Goltsmam, for instance, testified he met Trotsky and Sedov in Copenhagen at the Hotel Bristol. Unbeknown to the prosecutors, the Hotel Bristol had been demolished in 1917! The Stalinist investigators had not done their homework.

At the conclusion of the Trial, Vyshinsky for the prosecution declared: 'I demand that we shoot the mad dogs - every single one of them!' Despite the pleas for mercy submitted by the Sixteen - which they were led to believe would be honoured - within a matter of hours they were taken out and shot.

A very Neil sample.

[tottenhammattspurs]

Going back to Behaviour, does anyone have that edition in the white velvety case? What's the difference to the normal release?

It has a 3 inch CD with it that has tracks you already own.

It has the 9 min mix of This Must Be The Place on it!!!! Even Neil doesn't own it!

[Pertan]

I Still remember a friend who got behaviour 1 or 2 days before me.
I asked him if he liked the new album. Yes it is very good, but I only listened to Side A (vinyl)
and I will continue tonight when I get home from School.

I mean.. even if time is late.... hellooo....

[Drico One]

The album came out and I was disappointed at first. I thought it too downbeat and such a departure from their Intro era and previous stuff.

I felt that too, initially, but I was inexorably drawn in by the lyrics. I was hoping for more stompers in the vein of So Hard, but all of this conspiratorial whispered talk of "the 1920s", "confusion", and "delusion" sucked me in within 24 hours. The elegant depth of the record made a huge impression - but then I was at an impressionable age and I think that matters when experiencing this record for the first time.

The maturity of Behaviour is one of it's key strengths and the flawless (and relatively low key) Harold Faltermeyer production and JJ Belle guitar gave the album a real sense of credibility that no PSB album has come close to since. In my opinion and in hindsight, I feel a little sorry that they felt they had swing to lightweight pop on us with Very, like they felt had to completely change the mould.

Well, they panicked. The singles - beautiful as they were - flopped in relative terms. The U2 cover in 1991 was the precursor to Very. To be fair to them, Very was fantastically realised. If you are going to do hyperpop, you have to be able to pull it off. They nailed it perfectly.

I still remember when it came out and I rushed out to buy Q to read the review (IIRC). I think the reviewer was nonplussed and again I could be wrong but I think finished the review with the line 'strange behaviour indeed'. I think it got 3 stars...

No, it was a four-star review like almost all of their Q reviews, Joe. The critics raved about Behaviour - but there were some rare dissenting voices who reflected the slight dissonance of the fanbase in hearing a PSB record that wasn't choc-a-bloc with storming thunderers.

However it fell short I feel because the track, like most of the album lacked warmth. It oozed a sense of superiority, of being aloof at a time when the alternative scene including Charlatans / Inspiral Carpets etc were rough, ready and alive. This I sense ticked off the record buying public into turning their backs on the snobs

I can understand why people think Behaviour cold. However, that's an illusion. Once you scratch the refined glacial surface, you are ushered into a world of autumnal cosiness and personable charm. It's an elegant and stately record - something that you could never accuse the Madchester bands of releasing.

Drico.. as for the chart performance of BB... at 19 it sits on a peculiar throne with one of the all time great pop songs

REM - Losing my Religion

Amazing that two songs both readily recognised in different ways by so many were such apparent commercial flops

One for the pub quiz me thinks...

You're not getting an invite to my table, Joe. Being Boring peaked at 20.

Drico.

[Drico One]

At the conclusion of the Trial, Vyshinsky for the prosecution declared: 'I demand that we shoot the mad dogs - every single one of them!'

A very Neil sample.

You just don't get that with Bono, do you?

Great post, fluff.

Drico.

[Drico One]

Went to London for my first time there, and the melancholy songs that are the album's strengths took over, as it was a chilly rainy November. You know the expression, "the time of your life"? That was the time of my life. Being young and free and abroad, I felt so cosmopolitan, so international. Young fool.

You sound like the nervous boy of track 8. "We'll talk about it all some night..."

Looking closely at the actual songs, though, you can see why some of us were so taken by the album, how it tapped into its audience's deep-seated sense of self. Yet, I find Being Boring far more haunting now than I did then. Back then, I could relate to the escapist youth "bolting through a closing door". Now, 20 years later, I find myself in the role of the nostalgic narrator recounting times, places, and people long past. This role reversal adds to the poignancy. When you consider that many of us now are around the age Neil was when this was released, it's like things have come full circle. We've become our future, the "creature that I always meant to be".

Of course, one of the main themes of Behaviour, confusion in a changing world, directly addresses adolescent concerns. It's everywhere: "When we fall in love there's confusion", "So much confusion when Autumn comes around"... Neil taps into this by becoming a spokesman for a generation: "To our voices, nobody's listening," he declares on our behalf in This Must Be The Place, a song that uses totalitarianism as a metaphor for life in a Catholic classroom. His empathy is very attractive. Here was somebody who knew what it felt like to be an outsider, how crushing it was to have to conform to society's mindless mores... "how to smile behind a frown", "a nervous laugh and a concentrated frown." Frowning is a given.

The bookish romance of The End Of The World (all "pens and reading glasses") continued the theme of nerdish delusion. The "prophets all predicted extinction," and "the Virgin spoke in apparitions" chime with the "words I thought I'd never hear again, the litany of saints and other ordinary men". However, typically, the rejection of this imposed way of life is accompanied by guilt, because "if it all came to pass now, you'd feel we all deserved it somehow".

All of which appeals to a youthful desire to overthrow the established regime. "And how". But there is still a yearning impatience: "How long?"

It's the seminal moment of their longevity.

Drico.

[StevePSB]

I don't know if I am slightly shallow, or whether some people have more of a 'gift' when it comes to deciphering lyrics, but I have always been pulled in by the music first and then (sometimes literally) years later I find out what they actually mean.

Good point about Very, Drico. I never thought of it that way - Behaviour era (in comparative terms) = 'flop', so maybe they did think they needed to do something lightweight with 'hit' written on it. Don't get me wrong though, I liked Very a lot when it first came out and still like it, but to me a lot of it sounds very dated and a little cheesy now. You could never argue that with Behaviour - it is timeless, which is another of it's great strengths.


StevePSB