I had almost forgotten I owned this LP because I keep the bootlegs and unofficial records apart from my main Pet Shop Boys collection, like a dirty secret that might somehow contaminate the respectable releases. I bought this record from my favourite second-hand emporium in April 2024, but because Discogs does not allow the sale of bootleg recordings, I had to look elsewhere to discover whether I had been charged fairly or mugged in broad daylight. Popsike suggests that “Performance ’91” has sold for between £20 and £50 over the last couple of years. As I paid towards the lower end of that scale, I can declare myself happy with the purchase and postpone the buyer’s remorse until another day.
I have another live bootleg from this tour called “Birmingham ’91”, which, as its admirably literal title suggests, was recorded during one of the shows at the NEC in Birmingham. This recording, however, was made at Wembley Arena on 7th June and includes “Being Boring”, which was not played at the Birmingham shows. With only two vinyl discs available, the final track, “Your Funny Uncle”, appears to have fallen off the recording despite still being listed on the sleeve, presumably because nobody had the heart to tell the typesetter.
As an audience recording, the sound is predictably short on dynamics and dominated by a deep, booming bass that overshadows almost everything else. In a way, this works in the record's favour because it reflects my experience of this tour. My recollection is that the kick drum on “This Must Be The Place I Waited Years To Leave” was powerful enough to move my clothing, while Neil sounded as though he were singing somewhere off in the distance with his testicles in a vice. High fidelity it is not, but vivid memories sometimes arrive wearing steel-toecapped boots.
As I have said before on this blog, I found the setlist for the Performance tour a little bemusing, and the decision to let the backing singers take over a couple of songs has always felt uncomfortable. I understand that the elaborate sets and costume changes required the band to leave the stage occasionally, but I would still rather have heard almost anything than Derek Green butchering “My October Symphony”. More than a single interval, perhaps. Or several minutes of meaningful silence might have been preferable.
As the first record ticks along, you gradually adjust to the room reverberations baked into the recording and can almost convince yourself that the sound is not too bad. There are a few clicks and pops, but I doubt the records were cut by Abbey Road engineers. They are also more than thirty years old and have passed through an unknown number of previous owners, so a little extraneous noise is hardly unreasonable. There is some wow from the source tape here and there too, although it never distracts too much. The spell is broken only when you have to turn a disc over or swap records, at which point the arena briefly becomes a room containing a middle-aged man wrestling with vinyl.
I like this record because it comes surprisingly close to what I heard at one of these concerts. Close your eyes and turn the volume up until the speaker cones look ready to make a break for freedom, and it is almost June 1991 again. For those of us lucky enough to see the show, that gives the record a peculiar charm. For everyone else, it is probably just another murky bootleg. Perhaps that is why it belongs in the separate section of my collection after all: not because it might infect the official releases, but because nostalgia this concentrated really ought to be quarantined. 3/5
