Pet Shop Boys: Their first concert in Athens, at the Lycabettus Theater, in 2000
In anticipation of the sixth consecutive visit of the English multi-platinum synth-pop duo to our country within the framework of the annual festival Liberation of Athens on Thursday, June 30, with Thievery Corporation, let’s go back twenty-seven years, when the magical theater on the hill of Lycabettus filled for two consecutive nights. is you see the first time that Pet Shop Boys came for a concert in Greece.
Initially the plan was for a single concert on June 28, but the unprecedented immediate exhaustion of tickets costing the pre-sale of ten thousand drachmas and the box office of twelve, forced the organizing company to complete another performance the following day, June 29. And yet. They both wanted a spacious amphitheater full of suffocation.
“Sometimes I find that we have nothing to do with dance music, as it is constantly moving away from the song,” the tall man told the media that year. Neil Tennant. It was nineteen years ago that with him Chris Lowe united their passion for dance music. And the one that had conquered the airwaves of the World as well as the nightclubs under the Disco label, but also the one that passed through a forest of cables and honored their own heroes such as the Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark, Soft Cell, The Human League, Depeche Mode.
Result; The Pet Shop Boys now count more than a hundred million records having won three Brit Awards, have been nominated six times for a Grammy Award, with twenty-seven thousand in the UK Top-10 of the four No-1s. Facts that wanted them in 1999 as the fastest duo of Old Albums according to the famous Guinness Book of Records.
Photo report Pet Shop Boys, K. Beta – Wednesday 28 and Thursday 29 June 2000, Lycabettus Theater, Athens
With “Angel Baby” roughly enriching the repertoire of the already very popular “Super Stella” and “Buster Keaton” that had preceded in 1999, Konstantinos Beta went on stage for a solid half hour around nine and a quarter. accustomed to warm, due.
It was ten o’clock when he conquered the stage like a cowboy, a tall boy, with his hat, having an unusually large cornice. Dressed in a suede black suit, Neil Tennant was stylistically the opposite end of stuck companion Chris Lowe who seemed ready to start jogging to the top of the hill. The first was accompanied by three African-American performers on the second vocals, a woman and two men, while somewhere in the background, hidden behind the giant screen, a drummer and a keyboard were the invisible heroes of the night.
Following the well-known and tried and tested recipe that wants three or four songs from the latest record to complete the coveted greatest hits, “Nightlife” was wisely sandwiched between their thousand-played standards like “Its’ A Sin” which “married” with “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, “Domino Dancing” and “Suburbia”, leaving “West End Girls” the leading position of the encore company with the cover of “Go West” by Village People.
But to see that with all that characterizes their empire as stars of carefree dance pop, homosexuality and kitsch aesthetics, Tennant & Lowe raised their voices as sensitized and politicized artists at the end of last February for the umpteenth time in a long time. . their career, unequivocally and repeatedly stating their opposition to the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine.
At one point, citing their pivotal song “The Most Incredible Thing” while posting a “teased” photo of Vladimir Putin. The other with selected scenes from the legendary movie “Battleship Potemkin” by Sergei Eisenstein next to “After All (The Odessa Staircase)”. Like statements on social media demanding “respect for all the brave Russians protesting Putin’s fascist invasion of their neighbors in Ukraine.” “And even more respect for the defenders in Ukraine.” Respect!