What’s truly “missing” from the Further Listening discs?

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

And, on subject, have you seen the cringey reel of Bono singing Happy birthday to Michael Douglas?
Man that guy keeps fitting How can you expect to be taken seriously?? even 35 years later.

Has anyone ever asked the boys whether it's more than just coincidence that a song seemingly about Bono is a double A-side with their cover of a U2 song? If it's an in-joke that they never let on about, it's a pretty hilarious one.

But yes, the Brothers In Rhythm 12" is one of my all time favourite Pet Shop Boys tracks and a sure-starter on any "best of" PSB CDR I'd pull together. (I don't do playlists, and I doubt it would even be on Spotify, would it?)

Retro.

[domino]

1. The tracks would have to be what they considered to be recordings of “master quality”
2. They would include their own twelve-inch mixes
3. They would not include remixes by other people
4. They would sequence the tracks in the chronological order in which they were recorded
5. If the CD time was over 78 minutes they’d jettison those tracks which they thought seemed redundant, less interesting or which they particularly disliked

I instantly thought about two tracks that could fit the rules: Bounce (Introspective) and Only Love (Release). They kind of missed it to release them.

As for Bounce, it is mentioned in the booklet of the Introspective FL. When they thought about about expanding the batch with the 2017 releases, they may have considered to include it (maybe some Liza/Dusty Demoes as well?).

Only Love is a track that was considered "quite good" by Neil. But Release already has 2 CDs of FL and maybe they keep it to work on it in the future. The last thought is only a possibility of course.

[leesmapman]

Little Red Dress was obviously scrapped for the FL releases due to copyright clearing.

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[Aevion93]

After seeing the tracklisting for Release, I really felt like the sets for Nightlife and Yes were a bit lacking. Would've loved to see some of the Montage mixes on Nightlife and perhaps the Yes etc. mixes on Yes.

Now that I know their singles will be reissued digitally at some point (fingers crossed for the video version of Seriously!), I think I'd be more interested in unreleased material for the Further Listening sets. Really looking forward to the sets for the x2 albums, if they eventuate.

[Dog]

1. The tracks would have to be what they considered to be recordings of “master quality”
2. They would include their own twelve-inch mixes
3. They would not include remixes by other people
4. They would sequence the tracks in the chronological order in which they were recorded
5. If the CD time was over 78 minutes they’d jettison those tracks which they thought seemed redundant, less interesting or which they particularly disliked

I instantly thought about two tracks that could fit the rules: Bounce (Introspective) and Only Love (Release). They kind of missed it to release them.

As for Bounce, it is mentioned in the booklet of the Introspective FL. When they thought about about expanding the batch with the 2017 releases, they may have considered to include it (maybe some Liza/Dusty Demoes as well?).

Only Love is a track that was considered "quite good" by Neil. But Release already has 2 CDs of FL and maybe they keep it to work on it in the future. The last thought is only a possibility of course.

Only Love is unfinished, so maybe it will appear fully formed someday. In the FL booklet they say they’ve never recorded Bounce properly, so again maybe they will come back to it.

[Dog]

Little Red Dress was obviously scrapped for the FL releases due to copyright clearing.

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Yes you’re right. I think they said as much at the time; I’d forgotten.

[domino]

[…] In the FL booklet they say they’ve never recorded Bounce properly, so again maybe they will come back to it.

On the other hand, Neil refers to YouTube when it come to unreleased material. (As much as I'd love for Bounce to see the light of day. )

If they wanted to release it on the FL disc, they would've recorded it, like they did with the demo of So Sorry, I Said.

[DopeFiend]

Nothing is missing from them, but they could have a further expanded version of the albums.
Look at any other artist. Demos, rehearsals, live versions, other unreleased songs (Bounce, You've Got to Start Somewhere), alt versions, unreleased remixes, instrumentals, and so on. There is a plethora of yet to be released material from each and every album and era.

I think they should scrap the FL series and just bring out a left of field ultra expanded deluxe version of the 80s albums.
90s albums to be considered also. (I won't complain in the 2000s albums are given the same treatment)

Look at SAW they released versions of albums with only the backing vocals present with the instrumentals.
They could easily re-do their FL albums with different tracks. Even if the material is a bit rough.
I mean imagine New Boy, Everybody Will Dance, It's Not A Crime in their original glory. And the whole 'Please Return Tape' ep released including In The Club Or In The Queue and the high-RNG version of Rent.
Oh, and I want to hear the motown version of It's a Sin!

[Dog]

I respect their commitment to quality control.

[negative_0ne]

I respect their commitment to quality control.

i would hardly call it quality control.

they've made tons of mistakes on recent releases,
the best of, the video releases, and many more things.

the singles seem to be ok, and most of the albums.

but i would hardly call it quality control.

later
|| | || | |
ne gative 1

[Dog]

I respect their commitment to quality control.

i would hardly call it quality control.

they've made tons of mistakes on recent releases,
the best of, the video releases, and many more things.

the singles seem to be ok, and most of the albums.

but i would hardly call it quality control.

later
|| | || | |
ne gative 1

I meant their commitment to the quality of their songwriting and recording over 40 years, and to not cluttering up their catalogue with substandard material.

[Ramzy]

Two pages and barely a track mentioned which suggests they've got it largely right, demos aside?

In their quest to avoid too many mixes of the same song they ended up with some strange omissions - the single mixes of 'Always on my mind' and 'Was it worth it?' among them. I'm surprised no one has mentioned what was once an obsession of this forum, the 7" mix of 'Seriously' (yes, it was done by Brothers in Rhythm, but they found loophole reasons to include just about every other 7" remix, including 'I wouldn't normally...', 'Yesterday, when I was mad' and even 'A red letter day'). At least one of the extended mixes of 'This must be the place'. The swing version of 'Can you forgive her?'. The live tracks they actually mixed and mastered for CD release as part of single packages in 1999 and 2002. The single mix or piano mix of 'London'. The (superior) PopArt version of 'Flamboyant'. Any of the Most Incredible Thing demos. There's plenty of others!

I've recently been listening to the Bilingual era remixes and come across two other odd omissions - there were PSB-made extended versions of both Paninaro '95 (more of an extended remix than a straight 12", but still a corker) and Discoteca (an extension of the faster "new version") that led their respective remix discs, but seem to have been erased from history. Following the template of the earlier FL CDs, you'd expect them to have included these - or at least the latter - in place of the shorter 7" edits.

Taking these into account, along with Somewhere and the Motiv8 12" of A Red Letter Day, I'm realising that they didn't fully abandon the more traditional 12" mix until New York City Boy, with I Don't Know... the last single to feature one of these until, I guess, Integral or possibly Yes.

A final semi-related thought is that Bilingual Remixed is a bit of a strange product - with Somewhere and a random (very good but) unremixed B-side, it feels in a way more like the spiritual successor to Disco than Disco 2. I wonder if there was ever a plan to release it on its own that got canned in favour of the Bilingual Special Edition?

[jules]

There's nothing missing. It's rather too much and a mess putting random demos and remixes. An indigestibled mess, the remasters are ugly and it would have been much simple to have the studio album and the booklet about it only.

[retrofuturist]

Greetings Ramzy,

Interesting thoughts. It really does highlight that being a Pet Shop Boys fan is like an endless quest and discovery for musical treasures. Their canon unfolds like a flower. The casual fan knows their biggest chart hits. The lightweight fan knows their Dreamworld set. The modest fan knows their albums. The dedicated fan knows their CD singles and digital tracks. The hardcore fan knows the promo mixes, the minor variations in different releases, the collaborations, the productions, the unreleased demos, the mixes only available on vinyl, the jungle of meaningless ZYX re-dos of West-End Girls etc... but there's still no guarantee that any fan has ever heard it all.

It's certainly more mysterious and dare I say enjoyable, than seeing Spotify flooded with 26-track digital single re-releases of every mix of every track.

Retro.

[Ramzy]

Totally agree! I'd consider myself a pretty big fan but many of those 1995-6 mixes were new to me - I've quite enjoyed picking up remix CDs that I missed at the time and discovering these gems.