Thank you so much, Drico, what a fantastic read, and this makes me even more excited for the shows in NYC in September!Drico One wrote: ↑Sun 12 Jun 2022, 2:55 pm If the crowd at Berlin's Warschauer Straße Arena is anything to go by, then the music plays forever. Here, a stone's throw from the Wall, Pet Shop Boys triumphantly and imperiously returned “home”. The fragrant Further away, in brand new Dreamworld merchandise, and the flagrant me enjoyed an evening of Zimmer frame-rattling rambunctiousness as part of an attendance that would have graced the Christian Democratic Union's annual convention. I exaggerate - but only slightly.
"Generations will come and go", intones the über-slick Neil Tennant, but it's clear that our heroes have taken the generation they became unofficial spokesmen for in the 1980s and held on to it tightly. This is a well-to-do, affluent, middle-aged, middle-class crowd dotted with a few of Berlin's more exotic creations. One suspects it would be equally at home at next year's Elton John performance at this very venue. Yet, there are children here too. This is what timelessness really looks like. This is what longevity means. This is what becoming part of the foundations of western popular music entails. Permanence.
I was last in this cavernous monument to the automobile industry - hey, it's Germany - in December 2010 for the Pandemonium tour. The crowd this time around is much larger. It’s as if time has given the well-heeled mainstream the chance to absorb one of the greatest pop catalogues in history and preserve it for themselves and all who follow. The test of time has been passed. This is success.
There is an effortless confidence to the whole performance. If pop music has a Champions League, this is what it looks like. These songs draw this crowd. This crowd funds this show. This show propels this act, this movement, this brand. To tour. To record. To exist. Forever. A self-perpetuating pop dreamworld, so to speak.
Of course, some of us knew greatness when we saw it over 30 years ago at Performance. Even then it was clear to those of us paying attention that a ticket to the greatest pop show on Earth was gold dust – even if a global pandemic was going to make us look at it as a kind of financial investment in the future where its value could rise or fall. Ours was a one-way bet.
A warm, muggy Berlin day gave way to a cooler, dry-ice filled arena when we finally emerged into this temple of high-end, high-spend entertainment. Simply Red will be here soon, apparently. And Harry Styles. Some sort of live Harry Potter show will also grace this home of Berlin basketball and ice hockey. One Harry or another, you suspect you could swap Styles for Potter and few would genuinely notice. The massive corporate logo that dominates the rafters of this vast, soulless cathedral to industrialised entertainment catches the eye – as it was unquestionably designed to do. Spectators stream in, willing captives about to be consumed.
In this environment, Dreamworld makes complete sense, engineered, tooled, and primed as it is to launch one battalion of inter-continental ballistic singles after another into the firmament of well-heeled, lucrative pop permanence. So we start with Suburbia, Can You Forgive Her?, Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money), and Where the Streets Have No Name (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You) – a poptastic shock and awe that points to the vast arsenal of hit artillery that patrols the intergalactic borders of “Dreamworld.” This pop planet is utterly mined. One hit after another is primed to blow you away.
And now another barrage. Rent. I Don’t Know What You Want (But I Do Really). So Hard. Left to My Own Devices. Would these devices be nuclear-tipped pop munitions, perhaps? The whole effect is mesmerizing. The giant electronic screens that provide the backdrop to this extravaganza seethe and crackle with belligerent intent. You. Will. Be. Entertained.
This is not nostalgia. This is industrial-scale catalogue exploitation designed to extract every available currency. The iconography of the past (“BOY” hats, trench-coats, posing as a duo) dovetails with futuristic clobber, Tennant as celestial electro-mage in silver glitter garb, and Chris Lowe at the central controls, on-high, of the imperial pop battlecruiser ready to detonate the next battery of a-grade atomic a-sides. You. Will. Be. Impressed.
In the programme, Neil talks of living in a dreamworld where Dreamland is an international hit. Right here, right now, it certainly feels like one. Monkey Business, too, showcases a simple fact: generations may come and go, but the music is as good as ever. Friedhelm, 54, is just not likely to buy the single any more when a ticket to Dreamworld can transport him to whatever place and time he longs to live in. The charts, as we knew them, exist only in the way the Berlin Wall, yards away, does. As a kind of sepia-toned monument in aspic where people point and wonder: “was it really like this?”
The bombardment continues. Always On My Mind. Heart. What Have I Done to Deserve This? One Nagasaki followed by a couple of Hiroshimas. There is no let up. “Hear a song. That’s the bomb!” It’s A Sin detonates like an intergalactic declaration of war, the backdrop conveying a blood-red Martian invasion in ways that would have made Stephen Spielberg blush. West End Girls takes us on the transporter to Soho, 1985. Is this a Holodeck? Lowe looks timeless. Beam Me Up! And then to Being Boring, the backdrop of endless motorways poignantly confirming for us that our journey continues even if it has ended for others. But the music shall last. I can hear it on a timeless wavelength. Never dissipating. Or is that a burst eardrum?
We leave with the throng of Berliners. Back into the night. We have been assimilated.
Drico.
Dreamworld: Spoilers
Re: Berlin, 11/06/22
Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
Were you there?.... Wow...it was great. Much more spectacular than what you see in the videos.
Two hours that pass too quickly and without a doubt having the need to listen to more.
By the way, I saw the presence of two professional TV video cameras on the central set audio e
illumination that showed their image on the two side panels. I have not seen this in other concerts.
Does that mean they have recorded the concert?
Will we have DVD of Dreamworld?
Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
No, this equipment is just for the videoscreens left and right from the stage. Same was in London.euroboy wrote: ↑Mon 13 Jun 2022, 10:36 am
By the way, I saw the presence of two professional TV video cameras on the central set audio e
illumination that showed their image on the two side panels. I have not seen this in other concerts.
Does that mean they have recorded the concert?
Will we have DVD of Dreamworld?
Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
I was! Unterrang 207. It was a fabulous show. The first time I saw them live.
Those are still able to record, aren't they?zukunft wrote: ↑Mon 13 Jun 2022, 11:45 amNo, this equipment is just for the videoscreens left and right from the stage. Same was in London.euroboy wrote: ↑Mon 13 Jun 2022, 10:36 am
By the way, I saw the presence of two professional TV video cameras on the central set audio e
illumination that showed their image on the two side panels. I have not seen this in other concerts.
Does that mean they have recorded the concert?
Will we have DVD of Dreamworld?
A blues would be in B flat, pain defining wisdom,
but the soul is in the high hat, programmed in the system.
but the soul is in the high hat, programmed in the system.
Re: Berlin, 11/06/22
brilliant writing as everDrico One wrote: ↑Sun 12 Jun 2022, 2:55 pm
I was last in this cavernous monument to the automobile industry - hey, it's Germany - in December 2010 for the Pandemonium tour. The crowd this time around is much larger. It’s as if time has given the well-heeled mainstream the chance to absorb one of the greatest pop catalogues in history and preserve it for themselves and all who follow. The test of time has been passed. This is success.
There is an effortless confidence to the whole performance. If pop music has a Champions League, this is what it looks like. These songs draw this crowd. This crowd funds this show. This show propels this act, this movement, this brand. To tour. To record. To exist. Forever. A self-perpetuating pop dreamworld, so to speak.
The bombardment continues. Always On My Mind. Heart. What Have I Done to Deserve This? One Nagasaki followed by a couple of Hiroshimas. There is no let up. “Hear a song. That’s the bomb!” It’s A Sin detonates like an intergalactic declaration of war, the backdrop conveying a blood-red Martian invasion in ways that would have made Stephen Spielberg blush. West End Girls takes us on the transporter to Soho, 1985. Is this a Holodeck? Lowe looks timeless. Beam Me Up! And then to Being Boring, the backdrop of endless motorways poignantly confirming for us that our journey continues even if it has ended for others. But the music shall last. I can hear it on a timeless wavelength. Never dissipating. Or is that a burst eardrum?
We leave with the throng of Berliners. Back into the night. We have been assimilated.
Drico.
Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
Yes, but these few cameras don’t make a professional concert film. You need 12-16 cameras and at least 2-3 directly in front of the stage.
Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
This video makes to the show a new look, I haven't watched in other videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG8J3pW ... rt_radio=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG8J3pW ... rt_radio=1
Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
In Berlin, I seem to remember that the play of light was the same and in Milan too.Nickname wrote: ↑Tue 14 Jun 2022, 12:23 am This video makes to the show a new look, I haven't watched in other videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG8J3pW ... rt_radio=1
https://youtu.be/CY_QkfqHFMw?t=5149
Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
I was lucky to be able to be down in the first rows. I certainly enjoyed it very much. I hope to see you again on future tours (I trust you will do new tours) and without a doubt I would repeat this Dreamworld Tour in other countries.domino wrote: ↑Mon 13 Jun 2022, 4:58 pmI was! Unterrang 207. It was a fabulous show. The first time I saw them live.
Those are still able to record, aren't they?zukunft wrote: ↑Mon 13 Jun 2022, 11:45 amNo, this equipment is just for the videoscreens left and right from the stage. Same was in London.euroboy wrote: ↑Mon 13 Jun 2022, 10:36 am
By the way, I saw the presence of two professional TV video cameras on the central set audio e
illumination that showed their image on the two side panels. I have not seen this in other concerts.
Does that mean they have recorded the concert?
Will we have DVD of Dreamworld?
And I want to add something else. They certainly do NOT need dancers to put on a truly spectacular show.
I hope you will enjoy it.
Re: Berlin, 11/06/22
So, was it any good then?Drico One wrote: ↑Sun 12 Jun 2022, 2:55 pm If the crowd at Berlin's Warschauer Straße Arena is anything to go by, then the music plays forever. Here, a stone's throw from the Wall, Pet Shop Boys triumphantly and imperiously returned “home”. The fragrant Further away, in brand new Dreamworld merchandise, and the flagrant me enjoyed an evening of Zimmer frame-rattling rambunctiousness as part of an attendance that would have graced the Christian Democratic Union's annual convention. I exaggerate - but only slightly.
"Generations will come and go", intones the über-slick Neil Tennant, but it's clear that our heroes have taken the generation they became unofficial spokesmen for in the 1980s and held on to it tightly. This is a well-to-do, affluent, middle-aged, middle-class crowd dotted with a few of Berlin's more exotic creations. One suspects it would be equally at home at next year's Elton John performance at this very venue. Yet, there are children here too. This is what timelessness really looks like. This is what longevity means. This is what becoming part of the foundations of western popular music entails. Permanence.
I was last in this cavernous monument to the automobile industry - hey, it's Germany - in December 2010 for the Pandemonium tour. The crowd this time around is much larger. It’s as if time has given the well-heeled mainstream the chance to absorb one of the greatest pop catalogues in history and preserve it for themselves and all who follow. The test of time has been passed. This is success.
There is an effortless confidence to the whole performance. If pop music has a Champions League, this is what it looks like. These songs draw this crowd. This crowd funds this show. This show propels this act, this movement, this brand. To tour. To record. To exist. Forever. A self-perpetuating pop dreamworld, so to speak.
Of course, some of us knew greatness when we saw it over 30 years ago at Performance. Even then it was clear to those of us paying attention that a ticket to the greatest pop show on Earth was gold dust – even if a global pandemic was going to make us look at it as a kind of financial investment in the future where its value could rise or fall. Ours was a one-way bet.
A warm, muggy Berlin day gave way to a cooler, dry-ice filled arena when we finally emerged into this temple of high-end, high-spend entertainment. Simply Red will be here soon, apparently. And Harry Styles. Some sort of live Harry Potter show will also grace this home of Berlin basketball and ice hockey. One Harry or another, you suspect you could swap Styles for Potter and few would genuinely notice. The massive corporate logo that dominates the rafters of this vast, soulless cathedral to industrialised entertainment catches the eye – as it was unquestionably designed to do. Spectators stream in, willing captives about to be consumed.
In this environment, Dreamworld makes complete sense, engineered, tooled, and primed as it is to launch one battalion of inter-continental ballistic singles after another into the firmament of well-heeled, lucrative pop permanence. So we start with Suburbia, Can You Forgive Her?, Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money), and Where the Streets Have No Name (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You) – a poptastic shock and awe that points to the vast arsenal of hit artillery that patrols the intergalactic borders of “Dreamworld.” This pop planet is utterly mined. One hit after another is primed to blow you away.
And now another barrage. Rent. I Don’t Know What You Want (But I Do Really). So Hard. Left to My Own Devices. Would these devices be nuclear-tipped pop munitions, perhaps? The whole effect is mesmerizing. The giant electronic screens that provide the backdrop to this extravaganza seethe and crackle with belligerent intent. You. Will. Be. Entertained.
This is not nostalgia. This is industrial-scale catalogue exploitation designed to extract every available currency. The iconography of the past (“BOY” hats, trench-coats, posing as a duo) dovetails with futuristic clobber, Tennant as celestial electro-mage in silver glitter garb, and Chris Lowe at the central controls, on-high, of the imperial pop battlecruiser ready to detonate the next battery of a-grade atomic a-sides. You. Will. Be. Impressed.
In the programme, Neil talks of living in a dreamworld where Dreamland is an international hit. Right here, right now, it certainly feels like one. Monkey Business, too, showcases a simple fact: generations may come and go, but the music is as good as ever. Friedhelm, 54, is just not likely to buy the single any more when a ticket to Dreamworld can transport him to whatever place and time he longs to live in. The charts, as we knew them, exist only in the way the Berlin Wall, yards away, does. As a kind of sepia-toned monument in aspic where people point and wonder: “was it really like this?”
The bombardment continues. Always On My Mind. Heart. What Have I Done to Deserve This? One Nagasaki followed by a couple of Hiroshimas. There is no let up. “Hear a song. That’s the bomb!” It’s A Sin detonates like an intergalactic declaration of war, the backdrop conveying a blood-red Martian invasion in ways that would have made Stephen Spielberg blush. West End Girls takes us on the transporter to Soho, 1985. Is this a Holodeck? Lowe looks timeless. Beam Me Up! And then to Being Boring, the backdrop of endless motorways poignantly confirming for us that our journey continues even if it has ended for others. But the music shall last. I can hear it on a timeless wavelength. Never dissipating. Or is that a burst eardrum?
We leave with the throng of Berliners. Back into the night. We have been assimilated.
Drico.
Passion, love, sex, money, violence, religion, injustice and death. More on that story later.
Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
I think they need. The stage is good for dancers.euroboy wrote: ↑Tue 14 Jun 2022, 8:58 amI was lucky to be able to be down in the first rows. I certainly enjoyed it very much. I hope to see you again on future tours (I trust you will do new tours) and without a doubt I would repeat this Dreamworld Tour in other countries.
And I want to add something else. They certainly do NOT need dancers to put on a truly spectacular show.
I hope you will enjoy it.
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Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
I’ve seen the show a few times now. In Berlin I tried to make a note of all the little spoken bits and quotes from other songs which help make Dreamworld so special, and realised that a few things have changed. Here’s my list (some obvious, some maybe not so), with the changes I’ve spotted highlighted.
Recording of Chris speaking the Love comes quickly intro plays before Suburbia
Recording of Chris speaking lines from Decide plays before I don’t know what you want but I can’t give it any more
Neil quotes the Spanish words from Discoteca before Single-bilingual
Neil adds an extra line of Spanish into the end of Domino dancing, as heard in the Base Mix (“Te vas a quemar”)
Recording of Chris speaking lines from Postscript plays before New York City boy
(Change) In Jealousy, Neil seems to have stopped delivering the Othello lines from the Extended Version
(Change) Love comes quickly now ends with a recording of Chris reciting the entire Paninaro list - previously I think it had been cut in two, with “Passion, love, sex, money” playing over the intro, and “Violence, religion, injustice and death” playing over the ending
Recording of Chris speaking lines from Go West plays before Dreamland
(Change) Am I right in remembering reading that in the Milan show there was a spoken recording of Neil taken from a TV show which has since been dropped? What was this?
Have I missed any other “spoken bits”, song references or changes? The moving of What have I done to deserve this? further up the setlist is obviously one quite major change.
Recording of Chris speaking the Love comes quickly intro plays before Suburbia
Recording of Chris speaking lines from Decide plays before I don’t know what you want but I can’t give it any more
Neil quotes the Spanish words from Discoteca before Single-bilingual
Neil adds an extra line of Spanish into the end of Domino dancing, as heard in the Base Mix (“Te vas a quemar”)
Recording of Chris speaking lines from Postscript plays before New York City boy
(Change) In Jealousy, Neil seems to have stopped delivering the Othello lines from the Extended Version
(Change) Love comes quickly now ends with a recording of Chris reciting the entire Paninaro list - previously I think it had been cut in two, with “Passion, love, sex, money” playing over the intro, and “Violence, religion, injustice and death” playing over the ending
Recording of Chris speaking lines from Go West plays before Dreamland
(Change) Am I right in remembering reading that in the Milan show there was a spoken recording of Neil taken from a TV show which has since been dropped? What was this?
Have I missed any other “spoken bits”, song references or changes? The moving of What have I done to deserve this? further up the setlist is obviously one quite major change.
Woof.
Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
I don’t even noticed that. The other changes and bits are right.
The first few dates had a recording of Neil talking about what the Pet Shop Boys are meant to be (taken from an Interview) over the intro of West End Girls. I thought the idea was cool but they dropped on the UK leg. As seen here: https://youtu.be/FYsvCqyAypI
A blues would be in B flat, pain defining wisdom,
but the soul is in the high hat, programmed in the system.
but the soul is in the high hat, programmed in the system.
Re: Dreamworld: Spoilers
That’s great, thanks for sharing. I think it might be from the South Bank Show. It think it works well too. Maybe if they’d played it slightly earlier so it didn’t crash the intro of the song.domino wrote:I don’t even noticed that. The other changes and bits are right.
The first few dates had a recording of Neil talking about what the Pet Shop Boys are meant to be (taken from an Interview) over the intro of West End Girls. I thought the idea was cool but they dropped on the UK leg. As seen here: https://youtu.be/FYsvCqyAypI
Woof.
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