Track-by-Track: From Please to Nonetheless

[NOBODY75]

It’s a good B-side. I don't think it's top-tier, but it has personality.

[Sandy Shaw]

By chance has anyone compiled a Spotify Playlist that contains ONLY the Further Listening tracks from all the albums that have them, and willing to share it?

I was going to do it, but thought I'd check here first.

Wayne's books have inspired me to put more focus on those for a while.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5K74B ... 8366YSwKN1

Here you go, I had a few idle moments on my day off, so put it together!

Do you have a spare 15 hours and 39 minutes to take a listen!?

Awesome! Thanks. My Spotify (well probably my internet connection) was playing up too, because I was going to have a stab at it yesterday and it just wasn't happening, so thank you for saving me the headache!

What with some long drives and some spare time to myself, I should think I can get through it fairly soon!

You're welcome!

[Lleonard Pler]

An amazing, catchy and album-worthy track. The backing track is insane while the lyrics manage to be hilarious but sound solemn. It deserved to at least be in Disco 3 in its original form, not that horrid remix. I'm happy they gave it a second life in the Obscure shows.

[davidctecno]

One of their best B-sides. Performed on the Release Tour and recently on the Obscure tour. The remix included on *Disco 3* is horrible. They should have done an extended mix, like they did for "Here."

[Xakrij]

Re: Sexy Northerner Superchumbo Mix

Anybody know if Tom Stephan did this at the beginning or the end of his short relationship with Neil?
And I agree an extended mix would have been preferred.

[davidctecno]

Track 155: The Nigt Is a Time To Explore Who You Are- Demo
Chronology: Release FL CD1:8

It serves as a tender nocturnal poem about escapism and potential, though its austere, demo-like structure hinders the listening experience.

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

The sections with the vocal effects spoil it and render it mostly unlistenable.

What a waste, since the other sections without the vocal effects are actually quite nice.

Retro.

[Morse]

Track 155: The Nigt Is a Time To Explore Who You Are- Demo
Chronology: Release FL CD1:8

It serves as a tender nocturnal poem about escapism and potential, though its austere, demo-like structure hinders the listening experience.

I think the apparent austerity is part of the point. The song was written for Billie Trix in Closer to Heaven, so it works less as a confession than as a nocturnal manifesto: identity as something improvised, performed and continually revised.

The idea is that the night offers a kind of temporary freedom. By day, everyone is fixed by age, work, class and reputation; at night, particularly in a club, those things become negotiable. You can try out another version of yourself. That gives it a strong queer resonance, but also a wider one: the night becomes a place for anyone who feels trapped by ordinary life.

The processed vocal does make Neil sound less like a singer than a detached voice addressing the room, which suits Billie Trix perfectly. She isn’t revealing herself; she’s dispensing philosophy. Half cabaret, half life lesson.

It's clearly a demo, and the vocal effects aren't for everyone, but I don’t find it empty. Beneath the severity is a very Pet Shop Boys idea: nobody is ever entirely finished, and nightlife offers the possibility (however temporary) of becoming someone else.

Not a lost masterpiece, perhaps, but a rather beautiful statement of the Closer to Heaven world: glamour, reinvention, ambition and loneliness. In neon.

[Morse]

Worth remembering that there are two versions of this song. The RSD seven-inch had the spoken word bit from Neil.

Does the RSD seven-inch coincide with the demo version (briefly for download from the Pet Shop Boys' official website)?

Both of them have the spoken word bit at 2:40.

"I like walks in the country, going to films and plays, romantic dinners with a couple of glasses of Chardonnay"

Quite. Well said, Neil.

[petshopgrrl]

Track 155: The Nigt Is a Time To Explore Who You Are- Demo
Chronology: Release FL CD1:8

It serves as a tender nocturnal poem about escapism and potential, though its austere, demo-like structure hinders the listening experience.

This has become an unexpected favorite at Schloss PSG. The vocal effects give it a trippy, languorous quality. Good use of key changes too - minor key mystery at night and major key clarity by day.

[regularjoe]

I have always loved this song and although we didn’t dance to it at our wedding, we included it (and a few other PSB songs) on the cd that we made for all our guests!

I hate to be the necroposter but I guess change my handle to the resurrectionist for this post.
Let's go back in time to the beginning of the 2000's. April Fool's Day to be precise. Our phone rings, we still had a land line. It's 9pm and the place that we booked for our wedding reception is calling to tell us that the building has been sold, the new owner is closing it to gut and renovate it and where can we send the refund of your deposit to?
I am stunned. The wedding is 6 months away and as a footnote, I managed a hotel in this city and I know from work that in January we (and most other hotels in the city) are booked solid for every weekend through mid-December. And that's lodging. The associated meeting places, conference centers, reception venues, etc., they are in the same situation. Finding a new place is going to be a challenge. We try and fail to find anything.
Fast forward a month and we're at our favorite restaurant, now closed, Cafe Luna. This place had a lunar theme and all the decor was retro movie posters that had moon themes. I quip, "this is our place, too bad we can't have the reception here." We call over our waitress and she brings over the manager, if we match their average Saturday night earnings the place is ours. The whole place. DEAL.
It was always understood that the music was going to be a mix made by me, we wanted it to be about good company, good food and a nice pleasant relaxed evening. I learned that the restaurant had a cd player that took 5 discs so that was my limit. I crafted a mix that started lyrically on Saturday night and ended lyrically on Sunday morning. Disc 5 used "Being Boring." Now I know people are going to read this and think, wait, there's death in that song, what is he thinking?" Her mother died young and unexpectedly two years before I met her daughter, my father died a year later and never got to meet his daughter in law, who he would have adored. That part of the song felt like a way of honoring their absence.
So the reception starts and I load the cd changer and press play.
Disc 1 does not play. EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE. We tested these in our cars, our boomboxes, our home cd players! Press play: Disc 2 does not play. Disc 3 does not play. Disc 4 does not play. It reads disc 5 so that played on repeat, it was the midnight to Sunday morning arc of the mix and most of the music pertained to hope and sunrises and that sort of thing. A new day. And it worked! I almost got away with it, while walking around kissing hands and shaking babies I only heard one person comment, "I think we heard this song already."

I believe a postscript is in order here.
I'd like to flash forward again, this time to the night my wife went into labor with our son. She asked me to rip the cds as she never got to listen to them at the reception & she wanted to hear them when she became a mother. 15 hours of labor later, I totally forgot that at her request she asked for "Here Comes the Sun" to be played as part of the Sunday morning arc and that song played about 5-10 minutes before our son was welcomed into the world.

And that's my wedding music and Pet Shop Boys story.

[Richard-Eastham]

Greetings,

Track 154: Sexy Northerner
Chronology: Release FL CD1:7

Retro.

Late to this one, apologies, but the lyric ...

“Came down from the North
You know the way they do”

... is one of Neil’s best and resonates for me.

I grew up in Lancashire (north west England) and moved to the south coast of England in 1997 to pursue my career. I completely understand what’s going on here with those seven words in the second line. It is not just a simple recognition that people move around the country for economic reasons but carries sneering undertones. The subtext is of not another one, and even a sense that if it’s that good up north, why didn’t you stay there? I experienced all of this.

I also love the way the official written lyrics capitalises the North

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

Track 156: Run, Girl, Run (Demo)
Chronology: Release FL CD1:10

Sounding very much of the Release-era, this demo for Billie Trix takes a characteristically opportunistic Billie Trix eye at achieving personal fame and status, from the barrel of adversity. Tragic, yet intentionally myopic in its perspective... this is a Neil Tennant masterclass in irony.

Yet for all that, the song structure is too simple to make it a great song in it's own right - it serves more a background to a story being told. We'd have to wait until Flamboyant until we would see both boxes ticked simultaneously once more.

Retro.

[Towa]

Simple but great!

[Lleonard Pler]

It's alright, yet inoffensive. Friendly Fire was THE song, this lives in its shadow.

At this point it's exhausting that two FL releases are dominated by CTH demos. Maybe they should have released a CTH FL, and leave Nightlife and Release FL with a more logical and ordered material.