The “multimedia spectacular of lavish sets and exotic costumes” promised by the Pet Shop Boys turned out to be that and more. Some might argue that the almost two hours’ worth of elaborate production numbers was more theater than rock concert, and a case in point for the creeping decadence implicit in the band’s languid, computer-based music. But that would only be half-right. The show did have little to do with your average rock concert, but that’s because the Pet Shop Boys designed it that way–to be a frontal attack on the degeneracy and excess they see in most rock concerts in particular and most rock ‘n’ roll and popular music generally. The result was a rock show with an almost complete absence of “musicians,” one devoid of vacuous stage patter, grimaces, false emotion, thrusting hips, and wailing screams; but one whose underlying conceits, daring staging, and cataclysmic presentation made it penetrating, exciting, exhilarating.
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The band is Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe; when they met Tennant was a fairly well-known British rock writer–he became an editor of Smash Hits–and Lowe was studying architecture. Their metier is state-of-the-art, all-digital pop-song production, based musically on synthesizers, sequencers, and computers and thematically on an assertively plainspoken commentary on modernity and its attendant pathologies. Their first single, “West End Girls,” though now a bit dated with its rather contrived white rap, was driven by a sultry beat and edgy recitations from a class-edged hipster social whirl, and it became an authentic worldwide hit. Spacious and intriguing, and skillful in its appropriation of some of the genre-bending pastiches of Malcolm McLaren, “West End Girls” remains one of the signal pop singles of the 80s. The pair’s first album, Please, contained that song and the amusing “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money),” a blunt satire nicely underlined by an uncharacteristically histrionic vocal from Tennant. Their second record, Actually (1987), cemented the pair’s reputation, boasting both the stunning “What Have I Done to Deserve This?,” with a revivified Dusty Springfield on vocals, and the unaccountably beautiful “Rent,” with its now infamous refrain, “I love you / You pay my rent.” Since then they’ve recorded an oversized EP, Introspective, and a brilliant and riveting new album, Behavior; the pair’s oeuvre has included nearly a score of singles, each with at least one non-LP cut, major collaborations with Liza Minnelli and Springfield, and other minor production work.
The show began with an absurdly bombastic medley of Pet Shop Boys songs blasted over the PA system. What followed was 17 production numbers, all fractured and bizarre and disturbing. In the first a troupe of schoolboys raced across the stage; wandering after them came a mincing transvestite. Then a hooded figure with giant moth wings portentously carrying an oversized book of runes marched out, as another schoolboy bouncing a giant globe scampered around him. Meanwhile, a black hepcat dressed to the nines was pursued by a woman in a red dress; finally, a figure mummified in red cloth was slowly uncovered to reveal a deadpan Tennant, also in schoolboy costume. Though his pictures don’t really reflect it, Tennant has an almost portly, vaguely Germanic mien in person (he must be close to 40); with his closely cropped hair and humorless grin, he sometimes looks like a malignant factory owner. Lowe seems a lot younger; a Teller-like presence onstage and off, he hardly opened his mouth and only infrequently played an instrument. When he did, it tended to be one of those keyboards you sling over your shoulder like a guitar; with textbook PSB irony, he played not flashy solos but mundane bass lines.
Vague themes united certain parts of the show: “This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave” segued into “It’s a Sin”; later there were a pair of meditations on the music business. “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)” featured Tennant as a frazzled promoter spread out behind a surreal, almost cubist table, wailing at a lackadaisical Lowe, who lazed about the stage in a lame suit. “I’ve got the brains / You’ve got the looks / Let’s make lots of money,” sang Tennant, as a bunch of dancers scampered around in pig masks. Soon the song slipped into the new “Taken Seriously,” with the pigs turning into a pack of porcine paparazzi.
