Manafonistas

on life, music etc beyond mainstream

2021 28 Apr

Beyond The Hits

von: ijb Filed under: Blog | TB | 3 Comments

This song evokes the abject lostness of King’s Cross so perfectly, this site of historic battles where people arrive in London from The North and Scotland and where they return to, to leave. At the time this song was written, and until recently, the area was quite empty but for remaining sections of bombed out streets, warehouses – some of which were clubs – and a nature reserve. It was like an embodiment of the dark side of London’s anonymity with small oases in it. Now King’s Cross is home to the Eurostar, Amazon, Google and St. Martins it’s nowhere-ness seems amplified. No matter how many fancy buildings go up you can still sense Boudica’s ghost and faintly hear the strains of a sad song like this one as you get your overpriced oat latte.

 

… and much more – Lesetipp für Jan (and other fans of British pop music)

This entry was posted on Mittwoch, 28. April 2021 and is filed under "Blog". You can follow any responses to this entry with RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Comments

  1. Olaf Westfeld:

    Auch aus „beyond the hits“:

    It’s fair to say that those of us who count themselves as ‘cat sceptics’ are a fairly outcast bunch, culturally-speaking. Such is the fervent love for the furry, bird-murdering, cynically-manipulative emissaries of Beelzebub that dissing them on social media is likely to lose you followers, and indeed perhaps the preceding sentences will put some of you off from continuing this assessment of the Pet Shop Boys lesser-known oeuvre. Yet ‘I Want A Dog’, is a rare entry in the anti-cat repertoire, as Neil Tennant sings “Don’t want a cat / Scratching its claws all over my habitat / Giving no love and getting fat”. Quite right. Originally released in a more minimal form as the b-side to ‘Rent’, the beefed up, housier take reworked by Frankie Knuckles that featured on Introspective works beautifully after ‘Left To My Own Devices’, a song celebrating solitary pleasures in a rather fabulous existence. This song is the sadder pitfalls of such a life – however wry a dissection of mammalian choice in the pet shop it might be, ‘I Want A Dog’ is essentially an eloquent song about loneliness, and the need for comfort in the small flats and intimate spaces of the unforgiving city.

    Luke Turner

  2. ijb:

    Und zwei kleine Mediatheken- (etwas ungewöhnliche Krimi-)Fernsehtipps, im besonderen vielleicht auch für Jochen:

    Schuld

    Laim und die Tote im Teppich“ (z.T. bisschen pulpfiction-räuberpistolig, aber einige sehen sowas ja gerne)

  3. Jochen:

    Revanchiere mich mit dem sehr schönen, ruhig und intim erzählten Film „Graustufen“ über vier Frauen mit Asperger-Syndrom oder Hochsensibilität. Sprach mich an. Ist auch ein bisschen, Ingo, wie deine Musiker-Porträts, mit sehr konzentriertem Fokus.


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