Pet Shop Boys Community

I don't have a pre-fan period. It was love @ first hearing.

I almost envy some of you happy people... I wish I would have had more pop-awareness when I was younger. On the other hand, it's never too late to find good music.

Where I live, if you don't look for them, you wouldn't have heard of them, and that's what it was like for me. I caught a Live 8 snippet of West End Girls, and I was somewhat intruiged, and had a very vague remembrance of the song and the name Pet Shop Boys, but no real memory. In fact, I thought Sylvia and the backup singers were in the band and wondered why they called them all 'boys'. I saw Discography in a used CD shop, got it, and from there...

I borrowed Discography from a friend during my college years back in the mid/late 90's (before I became a proper fan that is). I've always liked 'Heart' but never listened to many proper PSB tracks other than It's a sin, Go West and SAVE (and a handful of others). then, one day, I really liked thier music from Discography and decided to buy 2nd CD's from the local Record shop and been in love ever since. Just havn't been purchasing as much in the last 2 years

When West End girls was being played all of the time on the Radio in L.A. 86 or so, I just thought of them as "another one hit wonder" , It was'nt until I heard "Suburbia" on the radio that I went out the next day and bought "Please" & "Disco".

one hit wonder with a really daft single called 'West End Girls'...

Around age 9, in 1987, I thought they were pretentious, slightly weird prats. For those of you who've seen the (actually very good) Raw Sex spoof of the boys from the French and Saunders show, that's pretty much what a lot of popular opinion was of the Pets at the time (in the UK, anyway). They seemed to take themselves oh-so-seriously, yet they had the most bizarre name in pop music, and the quiet one seemed rather sketchy.

It didn't take long, though, before I'd decided they were actually, and my favorite band, in fact. "Rent" and "Always on my mind" did it. The goofy name helped make them memorable, and the melancholic sound and sober, "adult" presentation of the group made them stand apart from tripe like, say, Bros.

I can remember hearing West End Girls at the end of 1985 and thinking, "Oh, it's that bloke from Smash Hits". I liked the song and loved the video and I can cleary remember being pleased when West End girls went to number one, dethroning naff old Shaky. (The charts used to be announced at 8am on a Tuesday morning, bizarrely, so I used to listen to them on Radio One before I went to school.)

Once I heard Love Comes Quickly that sealed the deal for me and I became rabidly obsessed.

The very very first time I was aware of PSB was an ad in a 1985 copy of The Face (UK).
It was promoting "Opportunities" iirc, and it was classic floppy-haired Neil in suit and tie, with a lapel pin of a dollar sign- $. My teenage self was appalled at the crassness.

Although I loved West End girls at 16, I found myself activally disliking them with Actually. Being a poor art student in NYC, I couldn't afford the expensive CD imports in 1987.

why does Neil always sing about money?, I thought at the time. Not having any, I was slightly bitter and resentful when i read in Smash Hits how their favorite thing to do in New York was shopping, expensively. I was living on Ramen noodles at the time. Oh, and I felt cheated that I had bought Actually before "Always on My Mind"was put on it much much later.

I guess my turning point was "Introspective", just a seminally brilliant CD imho. Neil's POV and amazing lyricism utterly won me over. And the ascending artistry of subsequent Cd's just blew me away. (Until Disco 2. Just kidding.)

And when I look back on my petty resentment at the time, I see Neil was just ahead of his time. It was uncool in the rockist /punk school to ever talk about money, and now it's a massive fixation in the global culture. Rappers sing of it, we all know what that actress makes a picture and what it grossed, we all know the price of everything, we enjoy reading about how much money other (famous) people make..

Neil doesn't write directly about money anymore (now that he has some). I guess when he was young he wrote lyrics about what he desired, like Andy Warhol painted dollars. And being grown up, he was just being honest- money changes everything, relationships too.

Just remembering the period where I disliked PSB for being posh and all about the money. The 80's! Lol as if today's different. Sorry for rambling..

My first thoughts were how incredibly different West End girls was compared to the rest of the stuff in the charts. It seemed to have an atmosphere all of its own.I was already heavily into Soft Cell who seemed to becoming more arty and less "poppy" as time went on, not to say they didnt produce some amazing records and in some ways the PSB's seemed to be on the same track where the popularist Soft Cell left off with Torch. From the day I bought Please it was never out of the tape deck. I'd put it on first thing in the morning and play it throughout most days. It was probably the most consistent album I owned with nothing close to a filler.
The first time I really remember seeing them was on Swap Shop or whichever Saturday morning program was on the BBC at the time. They were making jokes about having named the album "Please" and imagining a scenario of people politely asking for their record.

I grew up surrounded by music. My mom was a fan of The Beatles, The Doors, Mamas & the Papas, Bee Gees. Being a baby, Abba & The Bee Gees were my lullabies, and I remember dancing to the show Sat Night Fever. By 2nd. grade, I was listening to Styx, Devo, later InSoc, and mainstream stuff like Madonna, Duran Duran (I was in love w/Simon & John). Also loved what my bro calls now sissy rock: Bon Jovi, Toto, Warrant, Foreigner, Van Halen (very eclectic little girl). Anyways, being 10+/- yrs old, watching Night Tracks on TBS, they kept repeating Suburbia, I thought Neil was so cute, & it went from there. Very few people agreed w/my choice, but I was smart, got hooked on the one that still rocks!!!

And that's my music bio.

Riikka wrote:

nickname wrote:In my case, I remember HATING Domino Dancing (it was the first time I realized about the existence of PSB). But with Left To My Own Devices, everything changed.

Ha ha. I can also remember I was rather irritated by that "watch them all fall down" repeated over and over again. But that was at a time when I didn't know any English and my musical taste hadn't "formed". And I didn't even know there were two members in Pet Shop Boys...

I can remember similar feelings about ABBA before I became a fan of theirs. I had a very superficial image as the only song I had listened to was "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!".

But thank God for the internet, how easy it has been to find information about PSB. I can't remember having seen any of their videos/performances before at all, so watching those also changed my mind. They have that personality, and there's also a certain.. hmmm... Britishness?

I became a fan immediately after hearing What Have I Done To Deserve This, which was the first PSB song I heard knowing it was them. I was 12 back then and had only just started to pay interest to music. PSB was the first band I became a fan of.

Abba is my second favourite band. Before 1992 I used to think that they were a quite good pop band, but that was about it. When I heard "Gold" in 1992 I thought it was really really good. Then I heard their album "The Visitors" at my granddads place and I realized that they were absolutely brilliant. That's easily one of the best albums of all time.

I've heard PSB for the first time when they released Home And Dry and I thought :"What a boring band". Some months later on the radio I've heard NYC Boy and I thought "Who is this great bad?" and I discovered that they were the same of Home And Dry (that now it's a song that I love ). After to have heard NYC Boy, it's started my passion for the duo

I don't remember such thoughts. PSB first caught my eye (or better said: ears) around 1986, when I first started to listen and love music. The song that really impressed me and turned me into a fan was Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money).

PopArt wrote:I first became aware of PSB when i was 8 and 'It's a sin' was Number 1. I didnt think too much of them, but even at that age was very aware that they were different in a good way. Then i really properly became a fan that Christmas as I *loved* 'Always on my mind'. I bought 'Actually' soon afterwards in early 1988 and have never looked back since!!

My sister was a big A-ha fan at the time and even then I could never understand how on earth she though A-ha were better than PSB. We would argue for hours about it. Funny thing is, around the time of 'Behaviour' (and when A-ha went a bit crap) she started to get into PSB and has been a casual fan ever since. In fact she is going to the Hammersmith gig with me in May...

I can remember being a kid bouncing on the bed like a loon when I found out PSB had got a Xmas No. 1. My nan bought me "Actually" for my b'day around the same time so was made up. It was my auntie who got me into them when I was about 5 years old, however she never went to see them in concert until last year when I took her to see them perform Battleship Potemkin and then the Summer Pops in Liverpool, she was well made up!