It isn't easy to pinpoint just exactly when I first became aware of the Pet Shop Boys. I loved the pop music of the 80's, all the anthems that decade spawned is unbelievable. My parents say I was unusually music conscious very early on. I knew all the songs by heart, even if they were in english and I didn't have a clue what I was singing...
One Pet Shop Boys song I think I know better than any other is 'Left To My Own Devices'. Why? Well, me and my best friend at the time choreographed a dance routine to it...It took days of rewinding that song over and over and over again...and I never got tired of it. I had no idea what it was, just that it was a brilliant dance track, with quite good lyrics, that I taped off the radio.

Around that time, dance music was really taking off with acts like C+C music factory, Crystal Waters, Dee-lite, Technotronic, 808 State and such on the radio, and I loved it. Then I heard a song which completely blew me away. Erasure's 'Chorus'. I loved the song and every other song on that album. But just the songs. Like so many others before them, and like so many more will in the future.

At this stage in my life, I was completely wrapped up in the whole dance music scene. I taped everything off the radio, made my own mix tapes and bought all the compilation albums, which all had that in common that there was always one song which stood out miles from the rest, and usually wound up on a tape, being played over and over again. (One of those songs was called 'Charly' and it was literally embedded in my walkman on my trip to France with my class that year. Since nobody could pronounce my name anyway, they just called me 'the girl who's always listening to Charly'. Ever since then, whenever I’m abroad, Charly is my name….) It was a shock when I found out all those stand-out song were by the same band, and decided I had to find out as much about them as I could. And I really liked what I did find. I loved their story, their attitude, their personalities and their music and so they became one of my favourites. Usually when someone asked me what my favourite band was, I really didn´t know what to say. Now I finally had an answer. They were The Prodigy, but they were about to face some heavy competition....

Then I finally got MTV, and in the usual barrage of videos which all looked and sounded the same, there was this one video which caught everyone's eye, with it's CGI effects and pointy hats. I loved the song. I thought they were absolutely brilliant. Those excellent and unique vocals over those fantastic rhythms and beats just gave me the chills...Then 'Go West' came along, which was a gigantic hit (it topped the 'DIAL MTV' chart, and even topped the Icelandic charts for three weeks.) I went to the record store to buy Very, but there was this bonus edition called Very Relentless, which I decided to buy instead because it had more songs on it.... I was thrilled! Then there was the MTV Pet Shop Boys Weekend, and I've never quite been the same since....They played all the videos and I realised that I knew every one of them by heart...'Oh my god, they did *that* song? I remeber this! I *loved* that song when it first came out' etc. etc. That was my total vocalbulary for that weekend. When I realised they did “Left To My Own Devices”, the song which me and my friend had danced to years ago, I was in total shock. I've never been so pleasantly surprised. The MTV popumentary was brilliant and I must have watched it several times a day....I was now officially a fan(atic)! I loved their story, their attitude, their personalities and their music. I subsequently bought Disco 2 (which I absolutely love and played to death!), Discography, Videography and Introspective. But now if someone asked me what my favourite band was, I really didn´t know what to say. Only this time it wasn't because I just didn´t know, now I just couldn't decide.....

The Prodigy had been replaced. After all, they were a dying breed as one of the many rave/dance acts of their time, which were quickly becoming extinct. Or so I thought, until I saw their new video on MTV, the computer animated 'One Love'. And that was it. From that moment on, and up until early 1998, I lived, breathed, ate, slept and drank The Prodigy. I have all their singles on vinyl and CD, all their albums, videos, books, most TV appearances and scrapbooks full. And just after having crashed so violently into my life, they were actually coming to play live. Here. Of all the bands I could have picked as my favourite, they were coming to play a gig. The only bands to play here in my time were Whitesnake, Rage against the Machine, and Underworld (who were supporting Björk.) (Since then, of course we've had loads of bands over here in the past six years, just this year we had Elton John, Bloodhound Gang, Suede and Robbie Williams, to name a few.) But The Prodigy have played five gigs here in the past six years, all sold-out, and I've been to every single one. I even got a AAA pass which enabled me to meet the boys and talk with Liam, who's the musical genius behind the whole thing and therefore my favourite. I went to the Essential Music Festival in Brighton in 1996, -at the front of the main stage of course- and at the end of the show, during 'No Good' where they invite people up on stage with them, Maxim came down, pointed at me, and immediately the bouncer pulled me out of the pit and Maxim took me up to the stage. It was amazing. I was the first one up on stage, realising I was dancing ALONE on stage with my favourite band, in front of thousands of people, all screaming their heads off...what a rush! By the end of the song I'd been joined by several others, but it didn't matter. This was my moment. “Firestarter” and the whole Fat Of The Land thing happened when I lived in Bournemouth in the summers of 1996 and 97, but it was all starting to dwindle. The initial excitement of hearing new tracks and reading interwievs on the boys just wasn't the same as before. Now they were huge, everybody loved them and everybody knew them. It just wasn't fun for me anymore. By now I was heavily into the whole Hardcore-Gabba scene (and still am) and compared to that, The Prodigy were about as underground as the Rolling Stones. I even went to a launch party in London, where I got a chance to meet another one of my 'idols' (for lack of a better word) Michael Wells. No, the Pet Shop Boys were not exactly my highest musical priority at that moment, but not quite forgotten either...(and if you are a Pet Shop Boys fan, you're probably bored to death by now, wondering just what this has to do with the Boys at all. Believe me, it will all make sense in the end.)

Of course, I was still subconciously keeping track of the Pet Shop Boys during all this. Not much though. I got the 'Discovery: Live in Rio' and 'Various' videos from my dad at Christmas, him not realizing that I was just remotely interested in watching them. I only watched 'Discovery' once, not really paying too much attention to it. I heard the news and rumours about Chris' illness, but didn’t really pay much interest. In Bournemouth in 1996 I bought the 'Before' singles on CD, because they weren't too expensive. I didn't like it and still don't. I saw the videos for 'Single' and 'Red letter day' once on MTV and didn´t even bother to tape them. I did, however, buy the 'Se A Vida E' remixes, mainly because I thought the fluorescent vinyl looked cool, and it had some good remixes. (That song will forever remind me when I spent a whole day at the hair salon having my dreadlock extentions being put in, and it was played on the radio three times during that very long day...) I also wandered into an second hand record shop and spotted “Alternative” in a rack, at a second hand price, and bought it, thinking at the time that it was probably a mistake. I didn't like the first CD at all, the second one was much better, and one night while listening to it on my discman while trying to sleep, it suddenly came to me that these songs would make a really great musical....so I spent most of the night listening to them over and over, writing down the lyrics. “Bilingual” completely passed me by. Back in Bournemouth in 1997, I somehow decided it would be a good idea to catch them live at the Savoy, since I was in England anyway, and it wasn't too much of an inconvenience. I loved it. I bought the program, a sweater and a poster and I actually scrap-booked interwievs I found with them, which I hadn't done in ages. But they didn't really do much after that, and so, for me, just fell into musical obscurity again. The 'Somewhere' poster still found it's way up on my door somehow, and when I redecorated about two years ago, I framed it and hung it above my bed. It's still there. I heard about Neil at Dusty Springfields funeral, and wasn't really sure whether that was him singing on 'No regrets'. That’s all the attention they got from me at the time.

In mid 1999, a new TV channel -devoted entirely to music videos- opened in Iceland. I usually had it turned on while doing something else, and remembered seeing a really weird video, set in a lab, once. The next time I saw it, I realised it was the Pet Shop Boys’ 'I don't know what you wan't but I can't give it anymore' video, and the only thing that popped into my head was: 'Oh. they're still around then, are they? Still going for the unusual appearances I see...' and thought nothing more of it. I had even completely forgotten their names and it didn't bother me. Later 'New York City Boy' came on, and something in my head figured 'they must have put a new album out.' But it wasn’t until earlier this year that I went and bought it, and I quite liked it, especially the first three tracks. I still wasn't hooked though. I did check on the internet, just to see what they were doing, and found InFocus to be the best match. Still wasn't enthusiastic enough to look any further. The only thing I heard of them for a while was the whole Roskilde thing, and then I remembered something about them playing lots of festivals...which I thought was ridiculous.

Now here is where things take a radical turn...
I'd seen the BBC PRIME TOTP2 specials, -where they devote the whole show to one artist- (and felt a slight disappointment that The Prodigy never appeared on TOTP), and then thought nothing more of it. Then one day when I got home from work, my mum told me she'd taped the show when she saw it was the Pet Shop Boys, thinking I might like to have a look at it. I didn't watch it 'til a few days later, not expecting to be overly enthusiastic about the whole thing. I was wrong. I loved it. Hearing those songs again brought back memories, and I decided it was time I got reaquainted with them. I once again surfed the web, until I came upon a site called Absolutely Pet Shop Boys, which had the transcripts of Literally on it. I read them. Every single one. I laughed so hard I sometimes thought I'd forget to breathe. It all came back to me, what it was about them that I was so fond of. Since then I've literally (no pun intended) scoured the net for everything I can find. Pictures, interwievs, songs, (Thank You Napster!!) you name it! I looked through old magazines to see if I could find something, and realised to my surprise that 'Somewhere' was actually released on video...something which I was completely unaware of. And it had a documentary. I had to have this video. I of course set out to find it, but wherever I went, I always got the same answer: only on DVD. I did buy the NYCB single, because it had the solar eclipse thing on it (I was hoping it was the video for NYCB, since I was too stupid to tape it when I had the chance...Grrr) but it wasn't compatible with my computer. Lo and behold...within a week, I'd gone and bought myself a new PC, complete with a DVD drive and modem. When I finally watched the video and documentary, I had officially become a fan(atic)...again! And I loved it!

Since then I've gotten hold of Please, Bilingual, Behaviour and all the singles off Nightlife and dug out all the old newspaper articles and magazine interwievs which I thought I'd chucked out ages ago. I just ordered the PSB books 'Literally' and 'Pet Shop Boys vs America' from Amazon.com and hope to have them soon, and I subscribed to Literally (got my first issue last month!) Watching the Discovery video again, I couldn’t believe my indifference back when I “watched” it the first time. (I also finally understood why it had a PG 15 rating….) I'm also an active poster on the Dotmusic discussion forum devoted to the Pet Shop Boys, which is an endless source of information about the boys one wouldn't find elsewhere, and also the place to find and communicate with other PSB fans. That there are other people out there, sharing my passion of the whole Pet shop Boys Phenomena, is still a bit overwhelming.

The Pet Shop Boys have been going strong for more than a decade and a half, never failing to raise an eyebrow or two, whether among the general populace or their fellow musicians. Constantly reinventing themselves, while managing to stay true to their own beliefs and passions. Not afraid to, or perhaps purposely, shock a few people in the process, whether it be musically or personally. Neil Tennant writes lyrics with such depth and inspiration that they can almost be interpreted differently everytime you hear them. Then brings those same words to life, sung or spoken, in a truly spectacular and unique voice. Whether it be over a hard dance beat or a brass orchestra, It always sounds stunning. Then there is the music itself, those haunting beats, addictive rhythms and melodies courtesy of Mr. Chris Lowe, who perfectly match the aforementioned words and vocals of Mr.Tennant. Their outlook on life is most likely unique among their peers. These are just some of the reasons that when asked today what my favourite band is, my answer is without a second thought: 'The Pet Shop Boys.'

Today, I think back and see all the great things I missed while just not paying attention. All those things I experienced while hooked on The Prodigy a few years back? Yes, those moments still mean a lot to me. But today, looking back, I really truly wish I could have associated those things and experiences with the Pet Shop Boys.

Know something? It might still happen.....;)

brimrun@islandia.is