Yesterday's duo (Pet Shop Boys) meet another duo (Electronic) and record a stand out track from the first Electronic album, Patience Of A Saint. Neil Tennant had already worked with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr on the debut Electronic single, 1989's gorgeous Getting Away With It, and on this song Chris Lowe joined in on keys as well. Seeing as Marr had more or less refused to play the guitar on the album there must have been a lot of people standing around prodding drum machines, synths and samplers during the recording of this song. It's a fantastic track nonetheless, with Neil Tennant in withering sarcasm mode (the line that gave this post it's title for example and 'If I drove a faster car, I'd drive it bloody well').
The picture shows the foursome backstage at the Cities In The Park festival held in Heaton Park in the summer of 1991. Held in honour of Martin Hannett who'd died the previous April the Sunday was mainly Factory acts plus some other Manchester bands, and was a good line-up- New FADS, 808 State (very good), Durutti Column, A Certain Ratio, Revenge (they were pretty awful), De La Soul (lots of shouting. Live hip hop and festivals during daylight not mixing very well), Electronic and headlined by Happy Mondays. Security was fairly lax- fences going down left, right and centre followed by hordes pouring in, people working on the gates offering wristbands for a fiver- normal Factory/Hacienda sort of thing really. Electronic went on before the Mondays and at one point you stood looking at the stage with members of New Order, The Smiths and The Pet Shop Boys playing together and thought 'this is some kind of future we're looking at here'.
The picture shows the foursome backstage at the Cities In The Park festival held in Heaton Park in the summer of 1991. Held in honour of Martin Hannett who'd died the previous April the Sunday was mainly Factory acts plus some other Manchester bands, and was a good line-up- New FADS, 808 State (very good), Durutti Column, A Certain Ratio, Revenge (they were pretty awful), De La Soul (lots of shouting. Live hip hop and festivals during daylight not mixing very well), Electronic and headlined by Happy Mondays. Security was fairly lax- fences going down left, right and centre followed by hordes pouring in, people working on the gates offering wristbands for a fiver- normal Factory/Hacienda sort of thing really. Electronic went on before the Mondays and at one point you stood looking at the stage with members of New Order, The Smiths and The Pet Shop Boys playing together and thought 'this is some kind of future we're looking at here'.
A great post and a great description.
ReplyDelete(It was a crap song, but as I said great post)
Ha- good comment Webbie. Sorry you didn't like the song.
ReplyDelete