5 ms·

Wow, I remember reading this site over twenty years ago. It’s neat that both PSB and this fan site are still going strong. There was a time around 1994-96 when

by pavlov 3y ago

Wow, I remember reading this site over twenty years ago. It’s neat that both PSB and this fan site are still going strong. There was a time around 1994-96 when almost every website was like this: dense, tightly focused, produced by someone with an amateur passion for the topic. Today it seems that content in that mold is much more likely to be walled inside social media sites, shared with relatively small like-minded groups.

tommek4077 3y ago
Those sites are still being made. You just do not find them with google. Maybe it is time to bring back curated lists and web rings.
- Baeocystin 3y ago
  Along the same vein: https://blog.kagi.com/small-web https://blog.kagi.com/small-web
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pvaldes 3y ago
> It’s neat that both PSB and this fan site are still going strong. As legit bearers of the "great white-nerd hope" crown, Pet shop boys never where small in Europe, but they were clearly too much for US. not only gay, but (their worse sin) too much focused in politics and history (socialist history) to be accepted. In the game of writing catchy songs that are well crafted and don't feel stupid, still can beat most of the current pop stars with both hands tied back. They still show the cool factor here and there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooIWFjD-Y84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooIWFjD-Y84 Or even better: the magnificient Love Comes Quickly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EuS9iJsdRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EuS9iJsdRw
- jacobgorm 3y ago
  I’ve seen them live both in the US and several times in Europe. In Europe they are completely mainstream playing large venues in front of evenly mixed gender audiences, whereas when I saw them in the US the venue was much smaller and the audience seemed to consist mostly of men.
  - pvaldes 3y ago
    Is sad that they are tagged as a "gay group" now, when the first three albums were simply two nerds doing insanely catchy, state-of-the-art, electronic pop that everybody loved. This ruins the experience a little probably.
    - jstarfish 3y ago
      > Is sad that they are tagged as a "gay group" now, [...] This ruins the experience a little probably. It's not so tragic. Being into a "gay group" in the 90s gave one the ability to signal a common interest while retaining deniability.
    - fortran77 3y ago
      And what's wrong with being a "gay group"? Why is that "a shame?" I mean, you don't get any gayer than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IXuRCeQKOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IXuRCeQKOg I've seen both Liza and the Boys in concert (and I've seen Follies!) but sadly not at the same time.
      - pvaldes 3y ago
        Is not a shame (currently, in the 80's it was a different history), but you can reduce your scope and alienate part of your potential audience. Pet Shop Boys often write deceptively simple lyrics with a lot of hidden context. Without webs like this page, most of the context, can fly over the radar for non gay people, and the same song, referenced locations etc, will mean also different things to non UK people. Kings Cross is just a song about a train station, Right? If you force the context as gay by default, some songs turn much more clear, but also smaller, less universal, and less accessible to non gay people. But we talk also about a group that have strong links with computers and nerd life. Computer graphics in the Liberation video for example were notable for a 90's videoclip. nobody was doing that in pop. They even appear in the Tetris film
- fortran77 3y ago
  Maybe it was too much for your part of the US, but on Long Island in the early 80s, WLIR played them all the time.
  - 15457345234 3y ago
    New York is the epitome and antithesis of the US simultaneously. Them being popular in NY is not at all surprising.
dfxm12 3y ago
Today, the info would be in wikia packed with ads/autplaying videos, or maybe a discord that is impossible to find. I searched "Pet shop boys go west" in google, and this page was below the fold, despite me having just visited it. Ahead of it was a bunch of videos (ok), lyrics pages (I only need one), a wikia page, a few ways to buy the album, two (!) different links to quora, and a bunch of ways to stream the song. I dunno if this site has poor SEO or these other sites are gamifying it. The quora links really baffled me, and I'm surprised at just how many different streaming/lyrics sites popped up before I got to a different type of useful info.
- Amezarak 3y ago
  Google has sharply deranked this type of webpage. I used to run a similar kind of thing and I went from #2-3 to #100 something. (Which means that most of the time it won't come up at all anymore.) The results are absolutely packed with wikias, blogspam, and ebay type stuff. I really miss the old web. This type of content is great. I obviously have no idea how Google works but I do wonder if it's because they don't index like they use to, so rich content can't be evaluated as such. For example, HN comment pages are typically in the "index", in that you can get them to turn up in a search, but you'll find that +"exact quote from comment" will return 0 results. It's as if Google doesn't care much what the page is actually about.

by pavlov 3y ago

tommek4077 3y ago

Those sites are still being made. You just do not find them with google. Maybe it is time to bring back curated lists and web rings.

Baeocystin 3y ago
Along the same vein: https://blog.kagi.com/small-web https://blog.kagi.com/small-web

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

pvaldes 3y ago

> It’s neat that both PSB and this fan site are still going strong. As legit bearers of the "great white-nerd hope" crown, Pet shop boys never where small in Europe, but they were clearly too much for US. not only gay, but (their worse sin) too much focused in politics and history (socialist history) to be accepted. In the game of writing catchy songs that are well crafted and don't feel stupid, still can beat most of the current pop stars with both hands tied back. They still show the cool factor here and there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooIWFjD-Y84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooIWFjD-Y84 Or even better: the magnificient Love Comes Quickly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EuS9iJsdRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EuS9iJsdRw

jacobgorm 3y ago
I’ve seen them live both in the US and several times in Europe. In Europe they are completely mainstream playing large venues in front of evenly mixed gender audiences, whereas when I saw them in the US the venue was much smaller and the audience seemed to consist mostly of men.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  Is sad that they are tagged as a "gay group" now, when the first three albums were simply two nerds doing insanely catchy, state-of-the-art, electronic pop that everybody loved. This ruins the experience a little probably.
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    > Is sad that they are tagged as a "gay group" now, [...] This ruins the experience a little probably. It's not so tragic. Being into a "gay group" in the 90s gave one the ability to signal a common interest while retaining deniability.
  - fortran77 3y ago
    And what's wrong with being a "gay group"? Why is that "a shame?" I mean, you don't get any gayer than this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IXuRCeQKOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IXuRCeQKOg I've seen both Liza and the Boys in concert (and I've seen Follies!) but sadly not at the same time.
    - pvaldes 3y ago
      Is not a shame (currently, in the 80's it was a different history), but you can reduce your scope and alienate part of your potential audience. Pet Shop Boys often write deceptively simple lyrics with a lot of hidden context. Without webs like this page, most of the context, can fly over the radar for non gay people, and the same song, referenced locations etc, will mean also different things to non UK people. Kings Cross is just a song about a train station, Right? If you force the context as gay by default, some songs turn much more clear, but also smaller, less universal, and less accessible to non gay people. But we talk also about a group that have strong links with computers and nerd life. Computer graphics in the Liberation video for example were notable for a 90's videoclip. nobody was doing that in pop. They even appear in the Tetris film
fortran77 3y ago
Maybe it was too much for your part of the US, but on Long Island in the early 80s, WLIR played them all the time.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  New York is the epitome and antithesis of the US simultaneously. Them being popular in NY is not at all surprising.

dfxm12 3y ago

Today, the info would be in wikia packed with ads/autplaying videos, or maybe a discord that is impossible to find. I searched "Pet shop boys go west" in google, and this page was below the fold, despite me having just visited it. Ahead of it was a bunch of videos (ok), lyrics pages (I only need one), a wikia page, a few ways to buy the album, two (!) different links to quora, and a bunch of ways to stream the song. I dunno if this site has poor SEO or these other sites are gamifying it. The quora links really baffled me, and I'm surprised at just how many different streaming/lyrics sites popped up before I got to a different type of useful info.

Amezarak 3y ago
Google has sharply deranked this type of webpage. I used to run a similar kind of thing and I went from #2-3 to #100 something. (Which means that most of the time it won't come up at all anymore.) The results are absolutely packed with wikias, blogspam, and ebay type stuff. I really miss the old web. This type of content is great. I obviously have no idea how Google works but I do wonder if it's because they don't index like they use to, so rich content can't be evaluated as such. For example, HN comment pages are typically in the "index", in that you can get them to turn up in a search, but you'll find that +"exact quote from comment" will return 0 results. It's as if Google doesn't care much what the page is actually about.