Track-by-Track: From Please to Nonetheless

[leesmapman]

Funny, I think the Release tour version is the best live version. It's absolutely a great song to play live.

[Drico One]

I think at his point it is worth acknowledging the profound importance of Disco in their career. I, like many, bought Disco before I bought Please. Stuart Price pretty much owes his career to it...(Disco, not my purchase...).

The Shep Pettibone and Arthur Baker mixes are incredible - and Suburbia (the full horror) invented them as purveyors of pure pop drama. Please had the songs and the seedy, cyberpunk hits - but Disco had the glitz.

Drico.

[Neilatrone]

I think at his point it is worth acknowledging the profound importance of Disco in their career.

Disco set them apart from other acts - Introspective added fuel to that trajectory.

[psbfannyc]

Funny, I think the Release tour version is the best live version. It's absolutely a great song to play live.

Yes! With the guitars! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wChO_cr9n_g

[TallThinMan]

Disco set them apart from other acts

Did it though? ‘Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing’ and ‘Love and Dancing’ set the precedent. Granted, Soft Cell were defunct and the Human League weren’t what they were by 1986.

[telys]

I think at his point it is worth acknowledging the profound importance of Disco in their career. I, like many, bought Disco before I bought Please. Stuart Price pretty much owes his career to it...(Disco, not my purchase...).

The Shep Pettibone and Arthur Baker mixes are incredible - and Suburbia (the full horror) invented them as purveyors of pure pop drama. Please had the songs and the seedy, cyberpunk hits - but Disco had the glitz.

Drico.

I've always seen it as a proper album on its own. 2 completely new songs, the new version of Suburbia could also be considered a new song, plus a version of West End girls with new verses. Fleshed out with A Man Could Get (12'') (which was going to be on Disco originally) and Why Don't We (NYC mix) I might as well have rendered Please obsolete.

[Disco.]

I think at his point it is worth acknowledging the profound importance of Disco in their career.

Disco set them apart from other acts - Introspective added fuel to that trajectory.

Yes, and Parlophone didn’t really want to release it, and then it sold three million copies, for mixes that they already paid for !

[telys]

I think at his point it is worth acknowledging the profound importance of Disco in their career.

Disco set them apart from other acts - Introspective added fuel to that trajectory.

Yes, and Parlophone didn’t really want to release it, and then it sold three million copies, for mixes that they already paid for !

We have to remember that all the mixes on Disco were raritites at the time of release, really hard to get. So it wasnt merely a collection of 12"s and b-sides.

[Drico One]

Track 5: Suburbia

Chronology: Please, Track 5

Suburbia was the song that first introduced the world to Pet Shop Boys' now patented over-the-top kitchen sink "stomper". With each successive release, they seemed to unveil a key characteristic of their act and each single seemed more compelling than the one that went before. The romantic sincerity of Love comes quickly gave way to the irony of Opportunities and now we have the bombast and social commentary of Suburbia. The The Full Horror is, of course, the definitive version, bringing the rather primitive - possibly rushed - album version to seedy, effervescent life.

This is another escape into the night, this time out of the city, away from the neon lights, and further into the "suburban dreams" that spawned them and many of us. However, it appears that we've ventured into what has now become a sink estate and things are getting a little rough. I've always felt that suburbia is really what we were escaping from in Two divided by zero. The sheer tedium of suburban middle-class life is what generates the desire to elope. A "run with the dogs" and other "roaming suburban boys" breaks the monotony and boredom of it all... Dysfunctional middle-class life as social dystopia.

This was the single that definitively proved that they would not be a one-hit-wonder and created the template that would help produce the even more OTT It's a sin nine months later.

[Drico One]

Opportunities could be made in to a very long song, it has so many parts, like a mini-synth-symphony.

Yes, it's got so many layers. They were never happy with the JJ Jeczalik version. The interlude during that was then siphoned off to Side B as Opportunities (Reprise) which, I can only surmise, was introduced as a palate cleanser after the industrial riot of Suburbia ended Side A in apocalyptic fashion.

Drico.

[TallThinMan]

I liked the album version of 'Suburbia' until I first heard the single version, after which it was never the same again and sounded rather pedestrian, although all the street battle samples from the Emulator's 'Armageddon' disk were already in place. Chris's bassline on the album version was inspired by Madonna's 'Get into the Groove'.

I have the impression that Parlophone were spooked when both 'Love Comes Quickly' and 'Opportunities' failed to replicate the giddy success of 'West End girls', with neither single bothering the top ten in the United Kingdom. What do record companies do when it looks like an artist's hits are drying up? They either drop the act or spend money bringing in a crack production team. Accordingly, 'Suburbia' marks the first time our heroes worked with Julian Mendelsohn and Fairlight programmer Andy Richards from Trevor Horn's own "Wrecking Crew". Both had worked so well together on the monster Frankie Goes to Hollywood hits two years previously and brought the same over-the-top sound to bear for the single remix of 'Suburbia'.

In a sense then we could say that 'Suburbia' saved the 'Please' campaign in commercial terms, charting at number eight in the U.K. Interestingly, it only cracked number 70 in the States.

[telys]

Track 5: Suburbia

Chronology: Please, Track 5

Suburbia was the song that first introduced the world to Pet Shop Boys' now patented over-the-top kitchen sink "stomper". With each successive release, they seemed to unveil a key characteristic of their act and each single seemed more compelling than the one that went before. The romantic sincerity of Love comes quickly gave way to the irony of Opportunities and now we have the bombast and social commentary of Suburbia. The The Full Horror is, of course, the definitive version, bringing the rather primitive - possibly rushed - album version to seedy, effervescent life.

This is another escape into the night, this time out of the city, away from the neon lights, and further into the "suburban dreams" that spawned them and many of us. However, it appears that we've ventured into what has now become a sink estate and things are getting a little rough. I've always felt that suburbia is really what we were escaping from in Two divided by zero. The sheer tedium of suburban middle-class life is what generates the desire to elope. A "run with the dogs" and other "roaming suburban boys" breaks the monotony and boredom of it all... Dysfunctional middle-class life as social dystopia.

This was the single that definitively proved that they would not be a one-hit-wonder and created the template that would help produce the even more OTT It's a sin nine months later.

Escape, the album that never were.

2/0
West End girls
Suburbia
A Man Could Get
Why Don't We
In The Night
In The Club
Opportunities
Tonight is Forever

[telys]

I liked the album version of 'Suburbia' until I first heard the single version, after which it was never the same again and sounded rather pedestrian, although all the street battle samples from the Emulator's 'Armageddon' disk were already in place. Chris's bassline on the album version was inspired by Madonna's 'Get into the Groove'.

I have the impression that Parlophone were spooked when both 'Love Comes Quickly' and 'Opportunities' failed to replicate the giddy success of 'West End girls', with neither single bothering the top ten in the United Kingdom. What do record companies do when it looks like an artist's hits are drying up? They either drop the act or spend money bringing in a crack production team. Accordingly, 'Suburbia' marks the first time our heroes worked with Julian Mendelsohn and Fairlight programmer Andy Richards from Trevor Horn's own "Wrecking Crew". Both had worked so well together on the monster Frankie Goes to Hollywood hits two years previously and brought the same over-the-top sound to bear for the single remix of 'Suburbia'.

In a sense then we could say that 'Suburbia' saved the 'Please' campaign in commercial terms, charting at number eight in the U.K. Interestingly, it only cracked number 70 in the States.

Suburbia should've been left off Please, using a b-side instead or letting it be a 10-track album and using a longer version of West End girls.
Suburbia is a single off Disco as far as I'm concerned.

[new_love]

Suburbia.
It’s ‘the one’ for me. Has my attention from beginning to end. Love my 12” and 7” double pack. (The full horror is just amazing imo)

My ultimate getting ready track for a night out on the tiles! I was running late for my very first PSB live concert (Dreamworld) - yes I know, I’m very late to the party! Anyway Suburbia could be heard all over Manchester City. Oh boy I couldn’t wait to get to my seat! What a start.

[leesmapman]

Disco set them apart from other acts - Introspective added fuel to that trajectory.

Yes, and Parlophone didn’t really want to release it, and then it sold three million copies, for mixes that they already paid for !

We have to remember that all the mixes on Disco were raritites at the time of release, really hard to get. So it wasnt merely a collection of 12"s and b-sides.

Also on CD for the first time.