I'm coming to the end of a whirlwind, five day trip back to Pennsylvania for the holidays. I took the above photo in Pittsburgh while driving at night on Friday. It was less about trying to capture a clear image, and more about the glare of the city lights in the rain. Always constant, but less familiar with each passing year.
Last night I got together with four friends from college, several of whom haven't seen each other in over 12 years. It was this week in 1994 that I went to a gay nightclub in Pittsburgh for the first time, with three of the four pals I saw last night. I clearly remember the one guy playing Corona's "The Rhythm Of The Night" single in the car on that trip over and over...and over....and over... (More on that here.)
I reminded everyone of that at dinner last night, and, much to the chagrin of the table behind us, we all began singing the chorus to it. The power of Merlot.
Anyway, just a mention of today's issue at hand: The U.K. chart. Pretty much the same as recent weeks.
I was flipping back through posts here from early 2007, nearly two years ago...a time when Mika and Just Jack were the great new hope.
It's funny how time marches on and, in the end, really waits for no one. Particularly Mika and Just Jack. And me.
Ah, well. At least I'll always have "The Rhythm Of The Night."
It's been over a year since the proper "Throwback" series began here on Chart Rigger—kicking off with Cola Boy's "7 Ways To Love"—and over time it's drifted more toward me getting overly-sentinmental and whiny.
So it's time to get back to some fun! During my first year away at university ('94-'95), practically everyone on my residence hall floor came out of the closet. Well, not everyone, but at least a third of the 30+ students living there. We've all pinpointed it to the gay Kool-Aid in the water fountain at this point.
One of the guys, who lived across the hallway from me, went all out. Practically overnight, after his big, gay awakening, he hoisted up rainbow flags in his room and on his door, started wearing tight(er) T-shirts and, more importantly, bought two dance music compilations.
Actually, he bought a few more than that, but only two of them were good. One had Urban Cookie Collective's "The Key, The Secret" on it, a jam that reached #2 in the U.K. during summer 1993.
What is it about this song that never makes one tired of hearing it? Manchester, England-based Urban Cookie Collective threw all the elements of '90s Eurodance into the mix—uplifting melodies, hopeful lyrics, a wailing diva—but somehow they went above and beyond with "The Key, The Secret."
My college friend went on to make us all mix tapes with the classy title "Queer Beats." There was lots of 2 Unlimited on there. But I only listened to Urban Cookie Collective.
Here are the vids for "The Key, The Secret" and the group's follow-up single, the equally-ecstatic "Feels Like Heaven" (U.K. #5):
The Very Best Of Urban Cookie Collective is available from iTunes.
Yeah, yeah–I know there's probably the most historic Presidential election of our times tomorrow, but we'll get to that tomorrow.
For now, chew on this: Steps' fourth single, "Heartbeat," (double A-sided with their cover of the Bee Gees' "Tragedy," which became the fivesome's signature tune) came out 10 years ago today.
It would go on to climb its way to the top of the U.K. chart in early January 1999, making it the first of Steps' two #1 singles in the U.K. (followed by 2000's "Stomp").
Is it a sacrilege to point out that I grew tired of "Tragedy" early on, and always preferred "Heartbeat"? Yeah, probably. But I hold my head up high and remember fondly getting the band's first album Step One on import that winter, which, incidentally, contained five classic pop singles and "Back To You," an album track that perhaps deserved so much more.
Some things are better best forgotten. After a whole decade, Steps, as it turns out, are not one of them.
Bundle up and check out the video for "Heartbeat" below. Could a cheesy band like Steps ever happen again? Could the forced rhyming of "am" and "palm" be any more annoying? Could Ian "H" Watkins be any gayer?
No on all counts. And that's what makes this a classy jam:
Today marks the first day of autumn. And it was this week in 1993—15 years ago—when the Pet Shop Boys' album Very was released. In so many ways, that fall was a new beginning for me, and Very soundtracked my life then and still resonates with who I am today.
This post isn't going to be an album review or retrospective. Music is so subjective, and who's to say that what I like you'll like. All I can convey is who I was in September 1993, as a 19-year-old college sophomore who wandered into National Record Mart and bought Very on cassette.
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At that time, I was attending Butler County Community College in Pennsylvania, and applying to universities, anxious to get away to one of them the following school year. I was at the mall one week night, reading Entertainment Weekly at B. Dalton Books, and caught a review of Very, unaware that Pet Shop Boys had anything new out. I hurried down to NRM and bought it right away.
The place I most wanted to transfer to was Point Park College, a liberal arts school in downtown Pittsburgh with a journalism program I hoped to get into. I toured the "campus"—two high-rise buildings with a connecting pedestrian bridge that stretched over the city street below–that October, and eventually got accepted. But in the end, the school proved to be more expensive than what my student loans would cover.
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While driving around my suburban hometown in my 1987 Dodge Shadow one night with my friend Becky in fall 1993, she started laughing when "Liberation," the third track (and fourth single) on Very came on, because of the lyrics, "The night, the stars / A light shone through the door."
I'd written an off-color poem months prior, and had given it to her. It contained the line, "The lights, the disco ball / You're hot! Oh, wait...you're a man!" Somewhere, she heard a corrolation between the two.
At that point I was far from openly entertaining any gay notions about myself...except in trashy, shock-value poetry, apparently. Twelve years later, that brand of humor would come into play in a new medium.
That October, Becky and I went on a field trip with our Geography professor to see famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater house. I listened to Very on my headphones during the bus ride.
We also stopped off in Johnstown, which is where this photo was taken:
A week later, both of us went to see A Nightmare Before Christmas.
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Two great clips: Pet Shop Boys (in Beatles wigs) opening in Rio with "Tonight Is Forever/I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing" in December 1994 on the "DiscoVERY" tour, and also seguing into Culture Beat's "Mr. Vain" during "One In A Million," from the same gig.
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In 1994, at Indiana University Of Pennsylvania—where I finally transferred to and got my Bachelor's degree from in 1997—everyone on my dorm room floor had Very. It was one of those essential CDs, like ABBAGold, the first Weezer album and R.E.M.Monster, that most students owned.
It wasn't long before I met a guy and finally acted on the previously-mentioned impulses that lay buried during my time in my hometown. Suddenly I kind of understood Very from a completely different angle.
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It's a funny thing that happens when you finish college; you enter the real world and find that what you'd been working so hard to get to is...lonely. And tough. When I moved to Los Angeles in 1999, I listened to Very a lot. It reminded me of good times. Innocent ones that had long gone by.
Every fall I dig that CD out. In fact, I probably play it more than any album still. It's my "if you were stranded on a desert island" disc.
Very is of its time, but has aged surprisingly well. "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind Of Thing" is just spectacular pop, though I much prefer the album version over the single mix that was done. "One And One Make Five" and "The Theatre" are amazing album tracks that could have been singles.
"Young Offender" makes my heart break to this day, and is probably my favorite Pet Shop Boys song of all time. I like to think that I was a young offender when Very came out.
How graceful your movement How bitter your scorn I've been a teenager since before you were born And I'm younger than some I've only begun
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A few facts about Very:
1. It's the Pet Shop Boys' fifth studio album.
2. In the U.K., it's the duo's only one to hit #1.
3. It reached #20 in the U.S., and has been certified gold (over 500,000 sold).
4. Neil Tennant commenting on "Go West" in the liner notes of the 2001 remastered CD: "[Chris Lowe] played [the original Village People version] to me and I said, 'This is ghastly.' I thought it was ghastly beyond belief. Awful. Anyway, Chris just carried on regardless."
5. Chris Lowe on he and Neil's image for the album promotion: "Everyone was being grungy. Everyone was just dressing in baggy jeans and T-shirt and sweatshirt, that Nirvana thing, looking ordinary. We wanted to be unique, outside of it."
6. Neil on "A Different Point Of View": "This song would have been great done by Take That... Chris never liked this song. Chris played the tune on orchestra hits, just to annoy me. And even more annoyingly, I really liked it."
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I stopped at the newsstand today to grab a copy of British mag Pop—the "'80s excess issue," with a nice six-page interview with the Pet Shop Boys. I read it at Starbucks, which is when I took the top photo.
NME.com reports that a new interview with Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie reveals he was to write for Kylie Minogue back in 1992, but, well, “we were too fucked up to even write a song for ourselves at that time.”Primal Scream are probably best known for their 1990 rave anthem “Loaded,” which was most recently included on Rhino’s Brit Box 4-disc collection.Gillespie went on in the Q magazine interview to say how Kylie came backstage to meet the band, at which point she herself was offered drugs: “She did ask us to write a song for her once, we met her and she was fucking lovely. This was when she was a proper pop star, in 1992 or around about then. People were offering her stuff and she said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’. She was lovely.”That’s great, but all this has me nostalgic for probably my favorite song from summer 1990—Soup…
I'm coming to the end of a whirlwind, five day trip back to Pennsylvania for the holidays. I took the above photo in Pittsburgh while driving at night on Friday. It was less about trying to capture a clear image, and more about the glare of the city lights in the rain. Always constant, but less familiar with each passing year.
