A video is posted on YouTube in which a speech, a response to some specific examples of contemporary Irish homophobia, that was recently given by an Irish drag queen, Panti Bliss (real name Rory O’Neill), is set to music by the Pet Shop Boys on a new track, “Oppressive (the best gay possible”.
On April 12 and 19 the Pet Shop Boys make their first, and second, appearance at the Coachella festival in California – the first evening performing despite a sandstorm.
On April 18, a limited edition twelve-inch single containing two new versions of “Fluorescent”, re-recorded with additional lyrics, is released for Record Store Day. The original version was the final song written for Electric: “about a model like Kate Moss, a very glamorous person”.
On July 23 the world premiere of the Pet Shop Boys’ A man from the future, their piece about Alan Turing, written for orchestra, choir, electronics and a narrator, takes place at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. The narration is by the actress Juliet Stevenson, the orchestration is by Sven Helbig, and performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and the 18-piece choir the BBC Singers, conducted by Dominic Wheeler. Neil joins the choir onstage and Chris plays “electronics”. The Pet Shop Boys’ interest in Turing was first triggered when Chris saw a Channel 4 docu-drama about him. A man from the future tells the story of Turing’s life and work and is based on the Andrew Hodges 1981 book, Alan Turing: The Enigma. (Hodges has collaborated with the Pet Shop Boys on the work, and, as chance would have it, is a Pet Shop Boys fan whose 2008 book One To Nine: The Inner Life Of Numbers includes multiples references to Pet Shop Boys songs and lyrics). Originally it ended with Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s apology to Turing, who was hounded because of his homosexuality and killed himself, but after they finished the piece, the Queen formally pardoned Turing so they incorporated that too. Before A man from the future the evening begins with the first ever live performance of “Overture to Performance”, the orchestral interpolation and interweaving of various Pet Shop Boys songs by Richard Niles, the recorded version of which began the show on the Pet Shop Boys’ 1991 Performance tour. It is followed by Four songs in A minor, four Pet Shop Boys songs – “Love is a catastrophe”, “Later tonight”, “Vocal” and “Rent” — arranged by the film composer Angelo Badalamenti and sung by Chrissie Hynde. The last of these, the only pre-existing arrangement (it was done for Liza Minnelli’s Results) is performed as a duet with Neil. The entire concert is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.
On August 25 the Pet Shop Boys appear as themselves on the long-running BBC Radio series The Archers (it has been broadcast for over sixty years and has over 17,000 episodes); they save the day by stepping in to headline the inaugural Ambridge music festival, Loxfest. On the show, one of the characters, Linda Snell, describes what to expect: “The taller one’s Neil Tennant. He’s the singer. He’s very charming and talkative. Chris Lowe is the one with the dark glasses. He’s a bit quiet – a man of mystery”. Inevitably, her expectations are confounded.
Behaviour is released.
The Pet Shop Boys receive the World Arts Award in Hamburg, Germany. The award is presented to them by Mikail Gorbachev, whose daughter later tells them that she used to play their records as a teenager living in the Kremlin.
Dallas, Texas, is tonight’s stop on the Fundamental Tour.
The Boys continue work at the Xenomania studios on their next album. Today they record background vocals with a small chorus of at least a dozen singers, among them Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne.
Having spent five days in Peru, Chris and Neil board a flight at the Lima Airport, ending their 2009 tour of South America. This was to have been the date of the Pet Shop Boys’ Pandemonium Tour concert in Caracas, Venezuela. Unfortunately, it had been canceled a little more than two weeks beforehand, with the promoter formally citing ‘razones de logística que afectan la realización del espectáculo’ (‘reasons of logistics that affect the actualization of the show’).
The Pet Shop Boys are guests on Ken Bruce’s BBC2 radio show this morning for the ‘world radio premiere’ of their new single, ‘Together.’
They perform this evening in Salt Lake City.
To mark the forthcoming publication of his book One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem, Neil takes part in a live onstage conversation, simulcast over the internet, with writer Michael Bracewell at Evolutionary Arts Hackney (EartH, formerly the Hackney Arts Centre).