Pet Shop Boys Community

daveid wrote: Sun 17 Mar 2024, 2:38 pm The train announcement is at Victoria station and is the 14:27 Epsom Downs service calling at Battersea Park, Clapham Junction, Wandsworth Common, Balham (almost inaudible), Streatham Common and presumably all other stations to Epsom Downs, via West Croydon.

Accentuating my earlier point that while New York was the planned destination, our intrepid heroes probably got not much further than Clapham.

Drico.

Two Divided By Zero is a great opening track for the album, it is a perfect choice for me.

Ghost within this house wrote: Sun 17 Mar 2024, 1:56 pm The title now feels like a comment on their own inseparability.

The urgent, dramatic plot and theme of escape is a keynote.

I love the instrumental middle 8 - the synth line with those descending chords interacting with the strings. Another taster of the classic PSB sound.

Stephen Hague brings a real tension to this. As a result, they appear to arrive almost fully formed.

Other observations:

• For a duo often defined by their opposition to things, the very first words of their catalogue, if we take Two divided by zero as ground zero, are "Let's not"...

• In mathematical terms, two divided by zero is..."undefined", as is the "letter" that the postman will deliver, the "rumour" that someone spread, and the "deed" to be done, all of which add to the intriguing sense of mystery at play. In 1986, so was their sexual orientation...

• "Let's not go home" sets the tone for a continuing rejection of domestic ennui which reaches its belated apotheosis in the Pop kids, when our companion tells us "I am never going home". Yet, the door is always open as we learn in Here. Home, in the world of Pet Shop Boys, seems to be a boring, possibly repressive, place. After all, "home is a bootcamp you gotta escape"...

• "Let's run away" is a call to arms. Just a few tracks later, we are on the run again "with the dogs tonight in Suburbia". They were fugitives long before Fundamentalism.

Drico.

2/0 is special, it's sad and epic at the same time. A perfect intro to psb world.

The thing I always think of when listening to this is how different it is to West End Girls.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when Please was released they were still mostly famous for West End girls, since Opportunities and Love comes quickly weren't quite as huge.

So many people would have spun up Please with West End girls in mind, but before they got to that street-wise track they were greeted with something a bit more starkly electronic and almost other-worldly.

Mind you, the cover art for Please was also quite different to the tone of West End girls, so we might of suspected something was up

The cover art for please was like nothing else out there.

I found the cover quite New Romantic, but a bit modernised for the time.

Tom Angel wrote: Sun 17 Mar 2024, 5:04 pm
I've never heard a train announcement in this! Is there one? I always heard the call of New York in this song, not West Croydon! Haha

Probably popping round to see Mark and Jez.

Drico One wrote: Sun 17 Mar 2024, 9:06 pm

• In mathematical terms, two divided by zero is..."undefined", as is the "letter" that the postman will deliver, the "rumour" that someone spread, and the "deed" to be done, all of which add to the intriguing sense of mystery at play. In 1986, so was their sexual orientation...

In mathematical terms, two divided by zero can be also infinite. It happens if it is the result of a limit in Mathematical Analysis. And it happens also in Non Standard Analysis.

And I like also this interpretation: when two are divided by zero, that is there is nothing keeping their hearts far apart, together they become infinite.

Yeah, I've always felt the song hints at a "united, we can go anywhere, achieve anything"... so "divided by zero" can mean "nothing divides us". Along with lots of other possible meanings as well of course... such great opaque lyrics... paired with such driven exciting music... still love it.

Please was released on the 24th of March 1986. I received it for my 16th birthday.

38 years on (almost to the day), I can remember listening to 2/0 for the first time and afterwards telling my mates how fantastic it was.

Amazing to think that we are still talking about it excitedly after all this time.

What an introduction.

G.

Track 2: West End girls

Chronology: Please, Track 2

There is a lot of furtive, creeping around in the shadows on Side A of Please. If anything, the tension of Two divided by zero is even more insidious in the subversive West End girls as we find ourselves lurking in the darkness of a cityscape that owes as much to Blade Runner as it does Soho.

As we wander down dark alleys and through neon-lit doorways, there is a sense of the cyberpunk about the nocturnal observations of our protagonist. Here, low-life meets hi-tech. Alienation and isolation are assuaged only through transaction. The seedy underbelly of "every city in every nation" where “someone stands in every door…” hints at the transgression to come.

"We've got no future, we've got no past" sums up - sum being the operative word - the transactional dimension of the exchange taking place. Two strangers meeting in the night, no shared past, no shared future. This isn't love. It's not even a one-night stand. Indeed, it might not even be sex. "Have you got it? Do you get it?", "How much do you need?", and "Which do you choose?" all point in one direction. "Too many choices", but it all boils down to the "hard or soft option."

"And no one knows your name...no one knows your name..."

Anonymity never sounded so illicitly alluring.

Somehow the title feels too soft compared to the lyrical content. Naming the song "No one knows your name " would've fitted better. But those lines which perhaps are the best of the song are not on the album version.

telys wrote: Mon 18 Mar 2024, 1:54 pm Somehow the title feels too soft compared to the lyrical content. Naming the song "No one knows your name " would've fitted better. But those lines which perhaps are the best of the song are not on the album version.

Those extra lyrics were a thrill when I first heard them (would've been on Disco for me). Never was the seedy underbelly of London more alluring than with this song.

My favourite remix of "West End Girls"------the Sasha remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGovZkqsZJw