I found some old VHS video cassettes in my loft at the weekend. Every time something PSB related was on the TV, I would stick my cassette in and wait, my fingers hovering over the record button. You may well have done the same. The result is four x three-hour cassettes, some more full than others, featuring back-to-back PSB TV. I called this series Pet Shop Boys: Clips
Fast forward 25 years and I don’t now own a VHS player, so can’t check the recordings, but at the time I made good notes as to what’s on each - please see my pics below. I’m keen to know - is there anything here that’s not since found its way to YouTube? If there’s any gold dust I’ll see what I can do to potentially get the footage converted.
May I just say, that's some Chris Lowe-level lovely handwriting! I also applaud that nerdist level of detail, which I myself have often subscribed to (but in other fandoms)!
I'm fascinated by the Books By My Bedside entry. I presume that's Neil. A cursory search of Youtube and the interwebs at large hasn't pulled that one up so far.
All my old tapes were thrown away years ago. Along with cassette recordings.
What I'd really love to see again is the 1988 Going Live appearance. I'm guessing the one on your list at the bottom of the first page is the Christmas 1990 appearance judging by the timeline.
For the '88 appearance I think they took the dog (Booblys?) and it went for Gordon the Gopher.
But what I really want to see is the competition where they gave away the proof copy of the aborted Left to my own devices Remix. It features the 'harlequin' sleeve image that can be seen on the Discography inner sleeve.
I was sooo gutted at the time that they didn't release it. My favorite single, it had a fantastic cover.. I watched that clip and paused it on the sleeve many times. It's become mythical for me now.
Think I’ve got most of these and possibly other clips on video somewhere and I haven’t got a vhs video either to go through them. I think I put some on dvd as I used to have a dvd recorder and will have a look sometime to see where they are.
I remember the books by my bedside interview and it was on and it was Neil talking to someone called Brough Scott about his favourite books at the time and towards the end Neil spoke about literally as the interview was around the time the first book was released. From memory it was on very late at night.
eastendboy wrote:Think I’ve got most of these and possibly other clips on video somewhere and I haven’t got a vhs video either to go through them. I think I put some on dvd as I used to have a dvd recorder and will have a look sometime to see where they are.
I remember the books by my bedside interview and it was on and it was Neil talking to someone called Brough Scott about his favourite books at the time and towards the end Neil spoke about literally as the interview was around the time the first book was released. From memory it was on very late at night.
Thanks everyone! Yes, that is my recollection of Books By My Bedside too.
neilgregory72 wrote:All my old tapes were thrown away years ago. Along with cassette recordings.
What I'd really love to see again is the 1988 Going Live appearance. I'm guessing the one on your list at the bottom of the first page is the Christmas 1990 appearance judging by the timeline.
For the '88 appearance I think they took the dog (Booblys?) and it went for Gordon the Gopher.
But what I really want to see is the competition where they gave away the proof copy of the aborted Left to my own devices Remix. It features the 'harlequin' sleeve image that can be seen on the Discography inner sleeve.
I was sooo gutted at the time that they didn't release it. My favorite single, it had a fantastic cover.. I watched that clip and paused it on the sleeve many times. It's become mythical for me now.
You are right - my Going Live recordings will be from 1990 and 1991. I too have a strong memory of the 1988 appearance and was trying to find it myself the other day for podcast purposes. Yes, that sleeve was fantastic. The Frankie Knuckles mix of course. I wonder if they’d intended to include the Shep Pettibone remix as well?
I wonder what the extended version of the Single-bilingual video is. I have a dim memory of something where Neil and Chris read a list of European things - could this be that?
I've been looking for the TFI performances of Se A Vida E and Single in decent quality since the broadcast. The version on YouTube is poor. I'm assuming your cassettes will be in excellent quality. I hope you get them all converted to digital as there's some gems on these VHS tapes. You can either have them done professionally by a company or there's software available to connect recorders to computers these days and you can convert at home. Oh, and as others have noted. Lovely handwriting !
There is beauty in ugliness and ugliness in beauty.
Must dig mine out. I have / had where they were filmed in Barcelona for the Performance tour, where Chris said that if people wanted to see them live then this was their only chance as they were never going to tour again. Which explains why I’ve gone to loads since, thinking this could be the last time lol.
I also have a few of those, but not just Psb releated. I used to put on a tape sometimes and pretend it's 1997 again, before my VHS player broke. Did you know VH-1 Uk was kind enough to air "Somewhere" a few times? Now there's MTV 90's for that. I highly recomend a subscription. They remastered the videos for hd broadcast quality and widescreen format. I've seen Go west at least three times.
PSB but I never went to these lengths. Hats off to you!