On August 19th, Neil and Chris meet by chance in an electronics shop on the Kings Road. Realizing they have a common interest in dance music, they begin to write together. Initially they call themselves West End; later they come up with the name Pet Shop Boys, a name derived from some friends who work in a pet shop in Ealing. “We thought it sounded like an English rap group”.
Sinead O’Connor gets married, capping a bizarre sequence of events in which she had been slated to take part in the Boys’ ill-fated Wotapalava Festival and then dropped out.
2008: Neil attends the Leeds Festival performances of the Cribs (with guitarist Johnny Marr, who has often played with the band of late) and the Last Shadow Puppets. Afterwards he meets the members of the latter group.
The Pet Shop Boys perform at the V Festival at Hyland Park, Chelmsford, Essex, U.K.
The Electric Tour comes to Beijing, China.
Neil attends this evening’s BBC Proms concert at Royal Albert Hall by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle. The program consists of several works by Stravinsky.
A century after the film’s debut and two decades after the release of the Tennant-Lowe score for Battleship Potemkin, the film complete with their score begins playing for the first time in select cinemas in the U.K. and Ireland.