The first of many…

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Friday night, we went to see the Pet Shop Boys at the O2.  And what great fun is was too!

I’ve seen them a fair number of times before, and the shows have ranged from the high-concept to the rather minimal.  This tour falls into the former category.

White boxes feature prominently in the show, as do hats of various levels of weirdness.  Maybe I should say headpieces rather than hats, as some of them are not hats in the traditional sense. 

I’m an unashamed PSB fan, so I think it was obvious that I was going to enjoy the gig. But I enjoyed it even more than I expected to.  Most of the hits were there (except Rent) even if only in one of the many medley-esque arrangements of the new songs which started drifted to a chorus of a previous single and then back again during the course of a few minutes.

But it was nice to hear “Do I have to?”, “Kings Cross”, “Why don’t we live together” and “Two divided by zero” dredged from the vaults and given a new lease of life on the stage.

The whole thing was – as I remarked at the time – rather like a high-camp version of The Wall set to a disco beat.  And I mean that in a good way…

The PSB gig marks is the first in a series of gigs over the coming couple of weeks. 

We are seeing AC/DC and Spinal Tap within a few days of each other – will we be able to tell the difference. 

We’re off to see Blur in Hyde Park – will they be playing songs we know and love, or will they be hit by a need to be arty and play B-sides which nobody knows?

We’re off to see Robin Ince’s “A Night of 400 Billion Stars” at the Bloomsbury Theatre and to see Eddie Izzard being interviewed by Frank Skinner for Radio 4.

I shall hopefully find some time amongst all that for a bit of blogging!

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