Pet Shop Boys - Seize The Opportunity (1983)

While Neil Tennant was working for ITV Books (shortly before starting his tenure at Smash Hits) and Chris Lowe had an apprenticeship in architecture, they struck up a conversation about musicians and synthesizers in a London hi-fi shop on King's Road in 1981. After going their separate ways from the hi-fi shop, they kept in touch and soon became friends and musical collaborators, writing songs together in Tennant's apartment on his synthesizer. Although in general they had different musical tastes, they found they shared a passion for Euro-disco and hi-NRG music, and a fondness in particular for the American dance producer Bobby 'O' Orlando. In 1982 they made their first demo tape in a studio they rented for £6 per hour, and deciding that their duo needed a name, they tentatively decided to call themselves West End. In the summer of 1983, Smash Hits assigned Tennant the task of traveling to New York City to review a Police concert and to interview Sting. As it happened, the building in which he was scheduled to meet Sting was the same building in which Bobby O had his offices, so he arranged to meet Bobby O, which was not a particularly difficult thing to do considering his credentials as a British pop music journalist. 
Tennant and Bobby O wound up having lunch together, and during the course of their conversation, Tennant mentioned that he was a member of a songwriting duo interested in making music somewhat influenced by Bobby O himself. The producer immediately agreed to get involved, without having heard a single song or demo tape, so Tennant returned to London to file his articles with Smash Hits, and a few weeks later he was back in New York, this time accompanied by Lowe, and with Bobby O producing they recorded several of their newer songs, including 'West End Girls', 'Opportunities', and 'One More Chance'. It was also apparently around this time that Tennant and Lowe decided to change the name of their duo to Pet Shop Boys. Although these initial recordings with Bobby O achieved only limited success, it was enough to get the band noticed, and two years later a re-arrangement and re-recording of 'West End Girls' launched their career. Only a few of the Bobby O recordings ever made it to official release, as b-sides to early singles, although most of the others were eventually re-recorded for the 'Please' and 'Actually' albums. Some of the songs on the bootleg of these sessions have since been proved to have been recorded the previous year at Ray Robert's London studio, and so this album consists of just the Bobby O demos, including the extremely rare 'Pet Shops Boys' song, which I don't believe has ever been included on any of their anthology releases.  

Track listing

01 West End Girls
02 Pet Shop Boys
03 Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)
04 I Get Excited
05 One More Chance
06 Rent
07 Two Divided By Zero 
08 A Man Could Get Arrested
09 I Want A Lover
10 Later Tonight
11 That's My Impression
12 It's A Sin