避免一些網友可能不知道這是出自何處,我覺得有必要講一下....
"May I say nothing"是出自PET SHOP BOYS英國第17張單曲DJ culture中一段口白。
本單曲可在精選輯Discography及Behaviour re-issue找到。
以下摘自Behaviour重發版手冊:
Pet Shop Boys talked about "DJ culture"
Neil – This came out of two things. At this time Chris used to write on
a Fairlight in his sitting room in Islington, and he wrote a load of bits
and pieces, one of which became 'In private', one of which became – much
later – 'Dreaming of the Queen', and one of which became the chorus of
'DJ culture'. Then, when we were touring on the Performance tour, I wrote
down in my notebook this phrase 'DJ culture'. At the beginning of 1991,
just as we were about to go on tour, the Gulf War happened, and I'd had
this idea – rather a pretentious idea in some ways – of the way that
everyone talked about the Gulf War as though it was the Second World War.
It was a very odd war, the Gulf War, because it wasn't really hand-to-hand
fighting – it was like a computer game, almost, on television. And at
the end of the day no one really won it. At the same time the cult of the
DJ was becoming a big thing, and records being sampled too, and I thought:
people don't just sample records, they also sample attitudes from the past.
Things don't tend to be authentically experienced now, they tend to be
expressed as samples from the past so that we all understand them, and
that was what I really wanted to say.
People pretend President Bush and John Major are successful war leaders.
People pretend to sound concerned, or have that empty positivism. Musical
culture in particular had a relentless positivism that was completely and
utterly banal, a brainless positivism that just consisted of empty
catchphrases. There were a lot of bullshit attitudes going on in the early
Nineties, and the song is about how facile and pretentious modern life was.
The third verse is about how, if you have no history, you can reinvent
yourself. There's a reference to Madonna in it – 'She after Sean'; after
her marriage with Sean Penn broke up she sort of came back as a sex
goddess. 'Liz before Betty' is something Heather Carson, the lighting
designer, said on the Performance tour: 'that's so Liz before Betty' i. e.
Liz Taylor before the Betty Ford Clinic. It's one of those things I've
always liked, like 'West End girls', trying to be a bit like The Wasteland
meets Grandmaster Flash. In this there are all these different voices like
there are in The Wasteland.
It also quotes from Oscar Wilde who, when he was sentenced to two years'
hard labour, after the judge read the sentence, said, 'And I, may I say
nothing, my lord? ' I misquote it on the record. He wasn't allowed to say
anything. He was just led away. The chorus is about how, with all the
media and satellite television channels, there are very few genuine
responses to anything, only fake ones, drowning out people's genuine
responses, hence the Oscar Wilde quote. We'd had the idea of writing a
song with a song structure a bit like 'West End girls': spoken words and
a sung chorus. I wrote a chord change which became the verse to lead into
Chris's chorus.
Chris – We recorded it with Brothers In Rhythm at Sarm West. They'd done
remixes for 'How can you expect to be taken seriously? ' and 'We all feel
better in the dark'. I loved their records, 'Such A Good Feeling' and
'Peace And Harmony', and also Sabrina Johnston's 'Peace In The Valley'
which they'd done. The funny thing was, all those records were really
uplifting piano house, and of course what we get is miserablist…
Neil – We went into the studio with Brothers In Rhythm to make two hit
singles for Discography.
Chris – Obviously an impossible task.
Neil – Chris spent the whole time saying, 'Obviously they'll both be
flops'.
Chris – And I was right. I've always had a problem with the idea that
you write 'hits' for a greatest hits that haven't been hits, therefore
it's a bit presumptuous to put them on the album in the first place.
Neil – I agree. But I think it's a really good track, 'DJ culture',
actually, but it's not a huge international hit single. At the time
this was a record we thought might do something in America – are we
insane? But I love the chorus – we took the idea of Tessa Niles singing
behind me in the chorus from 'Absolute Beginners' by David Bowie; there's
a girl singing with David Bowie all the way through that and I've always
liked that. We did the twelve-inch in the studio at the same time. We
weren't quite happy with the Brothers In Rhythm seven-inch so we did the
twelve-inch thinking we might get ideas for the seven-inch. Then, quite
some time later, we brought in Stephen Hague to work on the seven-inch.
He suggested I change the words in the chorus – in the twelve-inch the
words don't change when there's a double chorus, but in the seven-inch
I add the '… wondering who's your friend' bit. He also put a string
line in the middle section which is really nice.
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psb=super PET SHOP BOYS fan
"I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing"
by Tennant & Lowe
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