Pet Shop Boys: Rave party

Teodoro Jose Joaquin

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Fire and ice set features critically acclaimed ‘Electric’ and greatest hits

PLAY OF LIGHTS. The Boys in action. Photo by Teodoro Jose Joaquin

MANILA, Philippines – When Jim Morrison predicted the future of music in a 1969 interview, he said something about the next generation relying heavily on electronics, “maybe one person and a lot of machines — tapes, electronic setup, singing or speaking, using machines.”

Morrison, as we all know, didn’t live long enough to see his vision realized.

Electronics shop

More than a decade later, or sometime August, 1981, British musicians Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe would meet, of all places, at an electronics shop on Kings Road in Chelsea. They would soon form the most successful electronic pop duo of all time, The Pet Shop Boys.

MTV was all over and so was New Wave. You couldn’t have missed the Boys’ hits: “It’s a Sin,” “Domino Dancing,” “Suburbia,” “West End Girls,” and their versions of  the Village People’s “Go West,” the Christopher-James-Carson country ditty “Always On My Mind,” and “Somewhere,” the Bernstein-Sondheim broadway hit from “West Side Story.”

All this, before the word “chill” morphed into anything related to music.

What’s startling is that for us music-obsessed people — having our daily dose of Air Supply and David Pomeranz — it took more than 3 decades before the synth-pop duo could locate us on their radar.

On August 6, Tuesday, fans — not a few of them already parents, balding and/or corporate people — finally experienced the Pet Shop Boys.

On tour to promote their latest album, the critically acclaimed “Electric,” the duo performed tracks from that recording and their hits from the 1980s onward.

READ: Pet Shop Boys to perform at Smart Araneta

They also gamely played their lesser known songs — lesser known here, at least — like “Rent,” “Leaving,” “Thursday”, “Love,  Etc.,” and their radical tweaking of Bruce Springsteen’s “Last to Die,” along with the long titles like “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)” and “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing.”

The crowd was waiting for “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”  but the Pet Shop Boys didn’t include it on their playlist.

There were lull moments in the show. There were times when many in the audience would sit through a succession of 3 songs, take time off for the comfort room, have a quick snack or check their Facebook and Twitter.

I was too dazed to remember all the songs they played. Jotting them down, old-school reporter-style, on a pocket notebook was like writing on a headlight with a pencil.

Video projections

But, yes, the lights, costumes, and special effects were something else. Electronic for this duo meant kaleidoscopic, psychedelic, a blinding play of lights on the audience.

On stage, there were video projections as backdrop images accompanying each song turned the coliseum into one humongous rave party.

To keep the momentum and entice the crowd to get up and shake off those middle-aged body fats, there were two omnipresent dancers with goat-like headgears. In some numbers, they were dressed as pumpkin-headed twins on stilts.

In another number, Tennant and Lowe wore mirror-ball hats that seemed to be the source of all those lights. Then they’d change costumes, or rather masks, and they would look like the Transformers.

Most surprising was Tennant saying, “Manila, maraming salamat!” without the British accent.

They performed an encore of about 3 songs, yet the show was still — in local parlance — “ bitin.” The crowd was still asking for more but they didn’t return.

The two-hour show was finished by 10:30 p.m., just enough time for middle-aged fans like yours truly to go home and knock it off before midnight, maybe grab a beer in the fridge. Tomorrow is another working day.

In this era of Ipads, Ipods, and apps, the music of the Pet Shop Boys has become very accessible and as enjoyable as the real thing. – Rappler.com

Here’s a video of ‘West End Girls’:


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