Previewing Obskur Pet Shop Boys — PSB’s imminent Berlin two-nighter, what follows is a five-by eyewitness account detailing what happened back amid the temperate backdrop of April in Camden.
Helpfully, the title of the pre-recorded entry music the Boys entered the Electric Ballroom stage to each night follows the relevant London showdate.
The writers bringing you this six-part feature, which concludes on July 10, Neil Tennant’s 72nd birthday, are as follows: Catherine Walters (CW), Daniel Higgins (DH), our trusty new scribes Alycia Heath (AH) and Jane White (JW), aided and abetted by yours truly (SP).
Wednesday 8 April: Time On My Hands
CW: By day three I was queue-joining live at 5, which got me not much further back from Monday, though not along the wall. After no-view gig two this felt much better, especially as a chap said he was happy he was stood behind me because I’m short. Feeling like a little kid, I preened in the compliment, backhanded as it may have been. So, hey, I’m still standing and here come the survivors. Enter warmth and light.
Eschewing the more obvious Party In The Blitz (think about it, princess), things got underhand with a truncated troll thru the inimical 2024 B-side, Through You. How’s that for a subdued opener? I wouldn’t go as far as to call the subject a bore but perhaps this one should’ve have been subtitled “Song for that guy…” as ever since its release — both songs were pointedly packaged with Loneliness — I believe there’s been some speculation regarding who this was written about. It’d be a sin if there hadn’t.
Two Divided By Zero, It Couldn’t Happen Here, The Way It Used To Be, and One In A Million all elicited further rapturous receptions tonight, with the latter going into overdrive when it segued into Mr Vain, Culture Beat’s Eurodance anthem that, irony of ironies, prevented Go West from topping the charts in Britain. Neil informed us that “we were going to give this to Take That. We never told them that, but instead we put it on our album Very. Of course, the Take That version wouldn’t have included Mr Vain.”
AH: Neil was in a particularly playful mood tonight, as he introduced the sweetly sincere Later Tonight by recalling his finger-shaking (literally) nervousness of the PSB’s totally live TV spot on the Old Grey Whistle Test 40 years to the very month: “We were not very good in 1986” he smirked.
Then, poker faced, he slyly switched a lyric which created a memorable moment for those with secret ears. I was mid hydration break when he went below the belt — “For your erection” — which nearly caused me to spray those in front of me while dribbling down my top. What was that Pop Kids lyric that mentions “a wet Wednesday night” again?
Was I hearing things or had our Nelly been at the Kamagra jelly? Once Mr T returned to his Westlife seat I noticed he was subtly chuckling away to himself, and only then did you know for sure.
What inveterate naughtiness! Though considering his scripted welcome to Dreamworld makes no bones about “Che Guevara and Debussy are easily led behind a bicycle shed and make it so hard” we should be used to such devilish double entendres by now.
CW: Always a heartbreaker at the best of times, Neil decided to restart Your Funny Uncle after glancing at Chris’s setlist, propped on his keyboard, and mistaking it for the lyrics.
Earlier, the Hotspot was hit with that 2020 album’s dynamic scenesetter as Will-O-The-Wisp’s natty title refrain leant itself to the menge reciting loudly as The Other One ballsed up some chords and grinned nonchalantly to himself.
Due to the shifting setlists, diehards will have their preferred day, too, but for me the most extraordinary evening was wig-out Wednesday. As it doubled as War Child charity event expectations were at fever point for a really special guest. And we weren’t disappointed when for a trio of newly added songs out popped Johnny fucking Marr! Who was introduced as being part of the band “Electronic!”
Was the mention of that fleeting synth supergroup a hint that The Patience Of A Saint (the only Electronic non-single PSB were involved with) might be canonised tonight? (Failing that, what about Morrissey’s Come Back To Camden? Ho ho — Ed.) Sadly not, but Johnny was on form as always. Occasionally venturing centrestage or playing directly to a six-string strapped Neil, he conferred some blistering guitar onto the indie hybrid rocker The Truck Driver And His Mate.
That he stuck around for the live debuts of the Monkees-esque blinder I Didn’t Get Where I Am Today and the jauntily poetic Up Against It was the icing on the pick. Even after his departure, Marr’s Smithsonian spirit lingered as the nouveau noir of 1996’s Before B, Hit And Miss, made it a veritable quadrumvirate of axeman-adjacent gems. Everyone rose to the occasion tonight.
Come back tomorrow for more, bright and early then. It’s soon gonna be the weekend.
Written by Catherine Walters and Alycia Heath
Edited by Steve Pafford
