Pet Shop Boys' Battleship Potemkin.....

[London Irish]

....playing live in Trafalgar Square in 2 hours. If you're in the vicinity, this could be one of the live events of the year. Free too. Bolshevism and the maestros of gay pop combined, I'm sure Looney'll be rushing along.

 

[Cian]

Do they play the old classics at their live shows? I want to go see them if/when they play in Dublin but I dislike most of the recent stuff.

 

[London Irish]

I don't think they'll be playing "It's a sin" as the pram tumbles down the steps This is all-new original material that they've composed in the last year, I haven't been so excited at a live "people's" event since the Fatboy shows in our own fair town........

 

[Cian]

Oh, this is one of their "theatrical" thingys?

Do they do "proper" live shows, as in playing their released material? I know Fatboy doesn't, does DJ'ing instead. Most dance artists don't, Orbital having been an exception.

 

[Gwylan]

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick. This is the showing of the Battleship Potemkin, one of the greatest films ever made. I think the music's by the Pet Shop Boys but I'm not sure they're playing live, but I could be wrong about that.

I was really looking forward to it but Mrs Gwylan's not very well and we can't go.

Hope it does the rounds and I get another chance to see it.

 

[magoo]

Pretentious load of shite!

 

[London Irish]

Gwylan - the Pet Shop Boys did play live and it was absolutely f***ing brilliant.

You couldn't move in Trafalgar Square it was so packed. I didn't see one person move to have a piss or get a beer throughout the entire film, people were so transfixed.

Brilliant stuff from Tennant and Lowe - hilarious to see people's heads bobbing up and down to the industrial, hi-energy beat as the sailors mutinied. The PSBs sang about 3 or 4 original songs, the rest an orchestral score played by a Berlin orchestra along with Lowe's synths. I wondered how Tennant would pull it off but they meshed with Eisenstein superbly. The song he sang over the final Potemkin victory scene was so moving. As it ended, it was like being back in Cardiff surrounded by thousands of exhilerated, happy faces in Trafalgar Square.

Before the film, they showed a wonderfuly done history of protests in Trafalgar Square going back to the Chartists. Lots of footage of that little away fixture I attended in the square on October 1990 that was the beginning of the end for Thatch. The PSBs also did an encore of one of the original songs of the film.

I shot about half-an-hour of footage Gwylan, no idea yet how it's come out but if you're at all interested, PM me and I can send you a copy.

One of the amusing things of the evening was a VIP area roped off from the rest of the proletariat in the square - I was furiously craining my neck to see who was in there but all my celeb spotting could come up with was Matt Lucas, the gayest Bolshevik in the village, and Simon Pegg.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/09/02/bmpet02.xml

 

[Gwylan]

Sounds great LI. I'm really sorry I missed it. I know BP so well but it's always good to have a fresh look at something and I'm sure it was brilliant.

That film about protests in the square sounds even more interesting. What even in October '90 are you referring to? I was there for the Poll Tax demo/riot in March that year but I don't recall anything in October. In fact, Mrs Gwylan's proudest moment is that she was the main organiser of that protest and the first speaker on that day, so she had plenty of reasons to be even more gutted at missing out yesterday.

I'd like to see some of the footage. What form is it in? I don't think I could download half-an-hour (even with broadband) but if it's on CD, or even tape. I'd be interested in seeing it.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Oh my God Li, First Carpenter and now this. The Pet Shop Boys were one of the best groups of the 80's/90's and I have every album.

The show sounds fecking superb.

Wish I was there.

 

[Sorrel]

I'd heard about this months ago, but there was no way I could get there. It sounds like it was really good - did it rain at all (it was tipping down up here)?