{"id":481,"date":"2010-03-06T23:39:39","date_gmt":"2010-03-07T06:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=481"},"modified":"2010-03-07T15:50:18","modified_gmt":"2010-03-07T22:50:18","slug":"song-of-the-day-kings-cross-by-pet-shop-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=481","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Day – “King’s Cross” by Pet Shop Boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nNot that there’s anything wrong with that.<\/p>\n

Today’s “Song of the Day” post is about….<\/p>\n

Sorry, I have to make a childish joke first.<\/p>\n

“Dong of the Gay”.<\/p>\n

Heh.\u00a0 Derp.<\/p>\n

Okay, this post is about how sheltered and naive I used to be.\u00a0 When I was growing up, my parents were very strict about everything.\u00a0 Religious beliefs will do that to parents.\u00a0 I only started listening to “Popular Music” in 1987, and I had no idea what homosexuality was.<\/p>\n

Now that I am an adult… childish jokes notwithstanding, I am cool with homos.\u00a0 Especially when they’re women.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nAnd especially when one or more of them are androids.<\/p>\n

But back when I was listening to the Pet Shop Boys in 1987, I didn’t know that Neil Tennant’s often ambiguous lyrics were about dudes.\u00a0 And for a while, I didn’t listen to the Pet Shop Boys because I was uncomfortable about love songs from dudes to dudes.<\/p>\n

But I’m over myself now.\u00a0 I really couldn’t care who any man fucks.\u00a0 And I can listen to great Synth Pop like the Pet Shop Boys without any of my past hangups.<\/p>\n

I even just bought some of their earlier stuff on Amazon.\u00a0 I only had a shitty tape-to-tape copy of that stuff, so it will be nice to hear it again on CD.\u00a0 I’ll then have all their stuff up to the album “Very”.\u00a0 From then on, they’re pretty much Dance Music, so I will have to hear some of that stuff first if I buy any of it at all.\u00a0 Which I’m guessing I won’t.\u00a0 The early stuff from them has sentimental value for me.<\/p>\n

This song in particular<\/a> is beautiful.\u00a0 I don’t know what it’s specifically about, and I don’t want to think to hard about it.<\/p>\n

Heh heh…. hard.<\/p>\n

Okay, turns out I wasn’t done making childish jokes.<\/p>\n

When I had the cassette version of 1987’s “Actually”, from whence this song sprung, I owned a very shitty “walkman” type portable cassette player.\u00a0 It sure looked cool as hell though, it was dark red and black, and had a kind of futuristic look to it.\u00a0 It ate tapes however.\u00a0 I have several cassettes from way back then that got damaged when I played them in that walkman.<\/p>\n

Something happened to produce an audible “dip” sound in the tape.\u00a0 It’s like all the high-end frequencies got erased for a brief moment.\u00a0 I think it was actually due to errant electrical charges going through the reading heads.<\/p>\n

In any case, it only cost $9.99.\u00a0 That was the only reason I could afford it.\u00a0 I eventually smashed and took it apart in the back yard.\u00a0 Oddly enough, I still own a portable cassette player.\u00a0 It’s a fucking top-of-the-line Sony Walkman that I bought when I was in Japan.\u00a0 It’s awesome for listening to cassettes.<\/p>\n

But I haven’t used it since about 1995.\u00a0 That’s actually when I stopped listening to the Pet Shop Boys.\u00a0 Go figure.<\/p>\n

But don’t go figure skate.\u00a0 Unless you’re gay.\u00a0 Or a woman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Today’s “Song of the Day” post is about…. Sorry, I have to make a childish joke first. “Dong of the Gay”. Heh.\u00a0 Derp. Okay, this post is about how sheltered and naive I used to be.\u00a0 When I was growing up, my parents were very strict about everything.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[46,50,219,220],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-day","tag-80s","tag-dance-music","tag-pet-shop-boys","tag-synth-pop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}