Found this of interest, so thought I might share for anybody interested in retro synths.
The team at Analogue Solutions have recreated a live Pet Shop Boys performance from 1986, using all the original equipment.
Gear:
Yamaha DX1
Yamaha DX7
Emu Emulator II
Technics PX1
Friendchip SRC
Fairlight CMI II
Fairlight CMI I (upgraded)
3x Zoom R8
16 9″ CRT monitors
I can’t even imagine to think how much this equipment would have cost in 1986?!
Here is the recreation – played live
And here is the orignal performance
Here is the background from Analgue Solutions;
“I remember watching The Pet Shop Boys performing Opportunities back in the 1980s live on the BBC. It was entirely live despite what some people might think. In recent years I always thought it would be great to get those original synths back together again in one room. I never thought it would happen since DX1s are extremely rare, and as it happens so is the PX1. And Fairlights don’t exactly grow on trees. After much hunting I finally completed the set, including the Friendchip SRC synchroniser.
So this video isn’t really intended as a cover, but more of a synth reunion in honour of The Pet Shop Boys and that iconic performance.
The two Fairlights are synced together and playing their sequences live. All sounds are original. One Fairlight is playing the original sequence, the other I had to reprogram myself.
All other synth parts are played live (no MIDI sequencing). All audio was recorded into 3 Zoom R8 digital audio multitracks (you can glimpse one on the floor). The audio files where then dragged into Logic Pro X and mixed. As great as these synths are, in this day and age the whole thing doesn’t sound too great mixed dry.
With only one camera and no film crew the performance had to be done several times to get some different angles. Each time we played live and had a lot of fun. So forgive me if there are any video sync problems.
I made a video wall using 9” CRT monitors with two DVD players providing the video feed.
I will post a ‘behind the scenes’ tech tour also where you will hear some sounds in isolation.
I will not be selling or offering copies of the samples or sequence discs due to the many favours, hard time and cash I had to put in to get hold of them.
“
Given the post above, has you an exciting acoustic version? (and I don’t mean Frank Bennett)
That is a great find.
Makes you appreciate the insouciance of Chris Lowe and the unique vocal style of Neil Tennant even more.
On the other hand, you could forget about replication and get into reinterpretation.
The way John Coltrane reinterpreted “My Favourite Things”.
Case in point, Kraftwerk’s “Radio-Activity” Revisited, by Matthew Bourne & Franck Vigroux.
“One problem is the instrumentation Kraftwerk used, things like the Vako Orchestron, of which there are only 75 in the world costing ten grand each, or vocoders which nowadays would cost £12.000.” said Matthew Bourne. “I thought, no, we don’t want to do it like this? So in the end, we kept the melodies, we kept the main element but then treated it in more of a jazz way.”
“Some of the sounds are associated with the original but a lot aren’t.”
Not so much a cover version as a discovery version. A launchpad for analogue and digital exploits that is far truer to the spirit of Kraftwerk than mere duplication.
“They are the most sampled band in the world alongside James Brown. The influence is huge, there is no question. Everywhere, all of the sounds of today.” says Franck Vigroux.
Ooo, with you on this, Mike. Re-interpretation wins.
A Fairlight CMII alone would have cost around £100,000 today’s money.
One of the reasons Martin Hannett parted company with Factory Records was he wanted them to invest in one – they chose to open a massive Nightclub called the Hacienda instead. One can only imagine what Martin would have done with the Fairlight but Trevor Horn and Chris did some pretty good stuff with it nonetheless.
Maybe Martin would have just got lost in the endless menus and parameters and never done much with it – as it was The Fairlight had a pretty short shelf life and was already outmoded by the time the Hacienda was really taking off in the late 80s.
Nice spot, Native, thanks!
There’s a band out there (semi-)called “Introducing”, whose “thing” is perform records live that clearly were never intended for live performance… I think they’re a 7-piece, and I’ve seen them twice, recreating DJ Shadow’s “Endtroducing,” and doing a Daft Punk set, and they’re excellent, the Daft Punk show in particular raising the roof and showing how that music could go down in a traditional band-gig-crowd-club setting…
I’d hazard a guess and say the original clip is probably the only recorded example of this kind of act performing in this way – sequencers and keyboards with no tapes and no central control.
That said, it’s not really any different to using tapes. Especially considering that the PSBs even used programmers such as J.J Jeczalik and Blue Weaver for some of the Fairlight heavy lifting. Somebody like Jeczalik is probably behind the scenes hoping the sync doesn’t break on that clip.
You’re right Mavis – Blue Weaver was with PSB during this performance, behind the scenes. I noticed in the comments on the YouTube clip, he answers one or two questions from people.
Another interesting question is: how did the Analogue Solutions get the complete original sequence on one of the two Fairlights? That’s surely worth knowing. Did the PSBs, Blue Weaver, or someone else share the disk? Or did they buy/borrow the original Fairlight?
I bought a DX7 in 2006ish, sold it. Bought another one in 2010ish and sold it. There are actually some pretty decent emulations for PC that do the job OK, but there’s something about that board that seems to never leave me. They’re pretty cheap these days too.
Must. Resist.