Okay, I know it's been a full week since the event in question, but I've been really busy in the days that followed, and have barely had time to catch my breath in between.
Seeing Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe perform live at the O2 arena last week was...magical. Pure, simple, unabashed magic, this is the undisputed highlight of 2009 for me so far. I've mentioned just how much I love the Pet Shop Boys - I've been an ardent follower of theirs since I was a teenager, and songs like "It's a Sin", "King's Cross" and their wonderful cover of Village People's "Go West" have become personal anthems for me...so much so that it was actually kind of surreal to be hearing them performed directly from the source last Friday. I still find it hard, in a way, to believe that it actually happened, if not for the photographic evidence and all those giddy, delirious memories that continue to dance merrily around my skull even now. What made it extra special was that this has to be the first concert I've been to where I was actually standing down there with the hustling, justling masses before the stage, as opposed to sitting back comfortably in a reserved seat, looking on from a nevertheless pretty detached distance (my parents' preferred method of concert-going, but one which I'm all too happy to be easing my way out of). Down there, as I discovered last Friday, it's a whole different world. I made sure to get there early, so that I was able to get a good spot, very close to the stage. That's what made it feel almost too real to be true - the fact that I was seeing them there, in person, only a small handful of metres from me, and not as tiny ant-people magnified on a couple of giant screens. In fact, I remember being overcome with this sudden strange feeling of anxiety at the prospect in the final build-up to the concert, it was such an overwhelming notion to me.
I'm afraid that there's evidentally still something of a teenybopper in me, because the instant that the boys enter onto the stage (about fifteen minutes later than scheduled, so the anticipation is high) I completely lose it. But then again, so does everyone else around me, so I'm in good company. They walk in with cubes on their heads (the entire show has a very distinctly cubic theme, see), they open with "Heart", from their 1987 album
Actually, the entire audience, including me, is proclaiming "BEAT!" and punching their fists in the air at all the appropriate moments. Then, the cubes come off, and we move on straight onto their most recent single, the delightfully cheeky "Did You See Me Coming?", which has everybody jumping, a mood continued by the 90%"Pandemonium"/10% "Can You Forgive Her?" hybrid that follows. The majority of tracks from their latest album
Yes put in a glorious appearance in the show that ensues, but there's also a pleasingly thorough representation of material spanning the entirety of their career throughout. One of the biggest surprises of the evening comes during the rendition of "Building a Wall", when the cubes behind them, which have been grouping together into quite an oppressive arrangement, suddenly topple, and from the resulting smoke and rubble we move, with a truly liberated new sensation, into "Go West", that aforementioned favourite of mine. "King's Cross" shows up, and, as always, has me on the verge of tears. "Suburbia", with its accompanying video footage of an endless succession animated dogs and cube-headed men descending downwards on escalators, took on a deliciously nightmarish new feeling. "It's a Sin" is when it rained silver confetti down on us at the end.
Neil Tennant has to be the most awesome person in the world. I mean that. Not only is he witty, intelligent, super-talented and blessed with probably the prettiest set of lashes I've ever seen on a man, he also has remarkable stamina. I'm impressed at just how well he's able to keep going for the full hour and a half - the only real breaks in his routine are very short ones, when he briefly steps off stage to change his coat and headgear (quite a wonderful array of that throughout, I can tell you). I think the longest he was ever gone for was a couple of minutes, which gave Chris a chance to do a short instrumental solo. Naturally, people often make a big deal about how Chris, in contrast with Neil, always manages to remain so stationary and po-faced throughout all their videos and lives shows. Yes, indeed, but that's part of the man's charm, after all (with that in mind, it's actually quite amusing if you watch their
Pop Art DVD with the audio commentary on, and hear just how chatty he is in that).
Best part of the evening would have to be when they played "West End Girls" for their encore, and chucked newspapers into the audience. And I caught one. Naturally, I'm going to be treasuring that newspaper for the rest of my days. It probably still has Pet Shop Boy DNA on it, after all.
The final, true, glittering icing on the cake...I get to do it all again in December. I loved the show so much while it lasted, and had been looking forward to it for so many months in advance that, all throughout Saturday, I was feeling truly elated at everything I'd seen the night before, but also rather sad to think that it was now all over. That's why, on Sunday, I suddenly found myself back online, securing yet another standing ticket for their recently-announced December show. Same venue, same time (I presume). I really hope that I manage to get as close to the boys this time round. There are so many more videos I want to make, and pictures I want to take. I was only able to get a small number this time round, since my camera turned out to be lower on power than I had estimated, and the ones I did get weren't of particularly good quality, but these probably are the best of them, for what they're worth:
And here's a snapshot of the t-shirt and mug that I got at the merchandise stalls (the t-shirt is of the "West End Girls" EP, and the mug contains extracts from three of PSB songs, "Building a Wall", "Left to My Own Devices" and "Dreaming of the Queen"). There was also a poster, but it's neatly rolled up and I don't want to disturb it right now. I suppose I could take a picture of the newspaper I caught too, if I thought that anyone here was really all that desperate to see it:
I'm aware that I've rattled on for long enough, so I'll bring my account of the evening to a dutiful close. Peace and love to you all, especially if you happen to be named Neil or Chris.
(Oh, and I do have a couple of videos of the occasion too. Maybe I'll upload them to Photobucket a little later. I do hope there'll be a proper DVD release though, since, owing to low battery power, I wasn't able to get anything of Neil in this he wore at one point crown. He looked freaking ace in that.)