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”.
Getting together again with Liza Minnelli roughly a decade after working on Results, Chris and Neil watch the BRITS Awards on TV with her at Sarm West Studios, followed by dinner.
They attend the NME Awards to present the ‘Godlike Genius’ award to New Order.
Neil and Chris attend the Berlin International Film Festival, where they watch the documentary If One Thing Matters, which concerns the photographer/artist Wolfgang Tillmans, who had created their video for ‘Home and Dry.’ In fact, a good deal of the film, in which the Boys appear, concerns the making of that video.
Chris and Neil attend an orchestral concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, during which a piece titled Stakes ‘n’ Chips is performed for the first time. This work is a ‘random composition’ made up of one-minute segments contributed by twelve different composers, of whom the Pet Shop Boys were one. The Tennant-Lowe section is titled ‘Particle.’
Two PSB TV appearances this evening: on BBC1’s The One Show and on CNN International’s Connect the World.
Indie guitarist Adam Tressler is in an L.A. studio with the Pet Shop Boys, recording tracks for their next album (soon to be dubbed Elysium).