As I remember the “Old Grey Whistle Test” performance features a CMI IIx, but Neil and Chris would have more commonly used a series III machine after 1985. Ok so who didn’t use the Fairlight in the 1980’s? A whole industry had sprouted around this machine companies hired them out, specialist programmers had to be employed to work the machine, someone had to move 50-70kg of gear around, but almost everybody used them. The Pet Shop Boys chose to work with the Fairlight CMI music computer widely, but not exclusively. When looking at the equipment used by the Pet Shop Boys we must start with the Fairlight CMI.
The synthesizers of the 1980’s might have been unique, some even say “classic”, but they were also expensive, cumbersome and bloody difficult to get synchronised. What you don’t see is the blood, sweat and tears that when into programming and setting up those synthesizers. If you look back at Neil and Chris’s performance on the BBC’s “Old Grey Whistle Test” you can see the sheer volume of equipment required to reproduce a passable version of their early songs like “Opportunities” or “Later Tonight”. As we move into an era where a small laptop computer can store and generate any sound imaginable, it’s easy to forget that 20 years ago you needed to be very lucky or very rich to possess the equipment to achieve what we can do now with the click of a mouse.
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