What were you listening to BEFORE Pet Shop Boys

[raggatwin]

He drinks in my local pub. I love the hip hop track he did with mos def, tinisletown to the boogie down.

Not the Pembury Tavern in Hackney?

Nope the George, back of Graham road. My mate is pally with him...

[BlueSwan]

Not a whole lot. I started finding music interesting in mid-1987 and very soon discovered PSB. 3 of the first 4 albums I bought were PSB albums (the fourth being U2's The Joshua Tree because I liked "With Or Without You").

[Palpatine]

PSB were my gateway drug to pop music. When I was 11 - early 1988 - I was watching Entertainment Tonight and, as they often did then, they would play a snippet of a video over the end credits. This time they played Always on my mind and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Funnily enough, I never bought the record. It was on radio and MuchMusic so much back then that I got my fill. Back then, I just wasn't that interested in pop music.

Four years later - February 1992 - my Mom bought our first CD player and she let me get a couple of CD's. Discography had been released a few months before, and I'd liked the few PSB records that I'd heard up until then - West End girls, It's a sin, Always on my mind, Domino dancing, Being Boring - that I bought it and their latest studio album, Behaviour. I immediately became a huge fan and started buying their other releases. However, the high cost of CD's prevented me from sampling a lot of music. I just had a hard time spending $15-$20 CDN on one CD when I might like only one or two songs. Singles were usually imports, so I'd be spending $10 CDN to get one song, and I just didn't think it was worth it. PSB were the only band where I would buy a new single without having heard it because I knew that chances were, even if I didn't like the a-side, I'd love one of the b-sides.

I didn't really become a pop afficianado until I started downloading in late 1998. Downloading meant that I could explore music without going broke. For example, the only Kylie record that I'd heard up until then was The Locomotion because that was her one big hit in Canada until then. I didn't hear Better the devil you know until early 1999! A few months after I started downloading, I joined the PSB forum on Dotmusic and started learning about all these great pop songs that I'd never of before, e.g. songs/acts that were huge in Europe but less so in North America. The great thing about the internet was that, say, BlueSwan could tell me about a classic S/A/W record on the forum and I could download it right away. Or Neil and/or Chris could refer to a record they like and I could download it to see if I liked it, too. Even now, if it weren't for the internet, I'd have never heard of an act like Girls Aloud because they're completely unknown in North America. If I did, I would often buy the record.

Sorry for the long-winded tale, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that PSB were the the first pop act I became a fan of and they got me interested in the wider world of pop music. However, it wasn't until the advent of the Internet, with fora full of people with similar tastes and the ability to download pretty much everything, that I was fully able to explore that world. I live in a city of 350,000 people and I could probably count the number of Petheads who live here on one hand.

[Drico One]

It could be worse. You could live in a country of 4.5 million people and count them on the hand of a failed five finger fillet player.

Drico.

[Palpatine]

It could be worse. You could live in a country of 4.5 million people and count them on the hand of a failed five finger fillet player.

Drico.

Weren't they huge in Ireland before Streets?

[Deschanel]

Palpatine, good post, and I can completely relate ; I spent a fortune on music back then, it really was expensive, you really had to choose carefully. I'm happy for teens and young people with a world of music at their fingertips now, wish I'd had it then. Because it was exorbitant, especially the imports and remixes I loved best etc. But as a pop fan who wasn't paying rent, didn't smoke or drink or have any expenses, I just had to have the music I wanted, with whatever bit of money I had. Interesting to look back on.

[York Minster]

Yeah, it's kind of messed up thinking about singles and how much they cost now. Did I really spend 10-12 dollars on Erasure singles in the late 90?s Now I still have tons of these (not just Erasure) CD singles taking up space, and I know they aren't worth anything anymore. But I'll probably never listen to their crappy 90s mixes again. And it's not worth my time to sell them on ebay, but it just hurts to much to toss them in the bin or give them to Good Will. I remember when it used to be a big deal just how many CD's did you have? Now it's more like, why do you have CD's causing so much clutter? Spotify and downloads are amazing, but I can't help but feel sad about the loss of music buying the way it used to be.

[Patrick Bateman]

Erm, the Leaving package was probably the most expensive PSB single ever.

[BlueSwan]

Yeah, young people have it great today. Unlimited amounts of great music available instantly.

[Radiophonic]

12" imports were about a fiver or more each in the mid-late 80's, the first CD album I bought was a tenner (c. 1990) and you had to really hunt them down on foot. I appreciated them a lot more because of the effort that went into it all.

[Radiophonic]

I've been playing some Ronny, who was the Next Big Thing for about three minutes in the very early 1980s (when everyone was looking for the Next Big Thing). She was a strange creature: one part Grace Jones, one part Amanda Lear, one part Visage. She worked with the likes of Vangelis, Midge Ure, Rusty Egan and Peter Godwin and was a 'name' on the New Romantic scene for a bit.




I still think To Have And Have Not is a TUNE!

[ingenue]

I was listening to whatever my parents bought on vinyl, mostly compilation cassettes.

[BlueSwan]

Nothing really. Pet Shop Boys was the first act that I loved and the first records I bought. I was 12 at the time. I did love a few songs before discovering PSB, namely:



Which I still regard as one of the greatest records of all time AND the best cover version of all time.



Loved this as well to the point that "The Joshua Tree" was bought during the same 24 hour period that I bought Actually. Please and Disco. However, I loved the PSB records so much that I barely ever got to listen to the U2 record. I quickly figured out that U2 wasn't really my cup of tea anyway, despite the fact that Achtung Baby is a really fine record.


One of my earliest loves. My dad used to play this a lot and I loved it.

One of my big regrets is this: During the early 80's I loved a song to death that was the first track on some tape my Dad had. I played it over and over again, but I was too young to care who the artist was or what the song was called. Incidentally, my brother and I accidentally overdubbed it. My Dad was furious, but more importantly, it has been lost in history what the first record I ever truly loved was. I'm sure I'll never know, which really bugs me. Especially given how anal I am about having ALL songs I've ever loved on my computer. But also because it would be fascinating to hear that song again.

[BlueSwan]

Screw the rules, I just thought of a few other early loves:



Thought this was the greatest thing I'd ever heard back in the day.



A silly entry here. Everybody in Denmark loved this in 1986. The second greatest football record ever made after Three Lions.

[karnsculpture]

I have to comment on here, Japan were my main band, still are I run a fan site and follow the solo careers.

Ronny's tracks are great and need compiling, the singles are pretty hard to find and command high prices when they appear. There's a lot of 80s music I missed at the time it was first out that I now love e.g. New Musik, YMO, Soft Cell

I'm surprised nobody so far has mentioned Depeche Mode, they were having regular hits before PSB.