Cicero / Pet Shop Boys - Future Boy 2016 vs 2023!

Hello, how are you doing and we are in a new installment with everything new, everything new, new lights, everything new, not because I have earned anything with this because I haven't even monetized yet but hey, at least I look human, right? well today we are with "Cicero" the Nick Kamen of the Pet Shop Boys? swallow that well let's talk a little first about the history of Cicero. He was born on May 29, 1970 in New York and moved to Ireland. Let's say he is Irish-American. He had made a lot of

songs before 1990 and released a song on Spaghetti Recordings, in some places it is listed as Spaghetti Records but it is Spaghetti. Recordings, which is the Pet Shop Boys' label, the Pet Shop Boys' label released everything from Cicero, Boy George's The Crying Game and a couple of MasterBoy cuts, God knows why but other than that they didn't release anything at all . nothing, the issue is that Cicero didn't do very well with the first cut, which was "Heaven Must Have..." that he released in the

90s, it didn't go well at all, the song passed without pain or glory, even though there was been released by the Pet Shop Boys label, I really don't know how many people knew that Spagetti Recordings belonged to the Pet Shop Boys. I didn't know until long after he released the album, I had no idea about that but well then the single I was referring to is "Heaven Must Bla Bla Bla" which came out on August 12, 1991 and doesn't rank at all in the 100 singles from England, neither England nor any p

lace until that moment, obviously no one knew who Cicero was beyond the support that the Pet Shop Boys were giving him, from that moment on the Pet Shop Boys began to promote a little more heavy and in January 1992 the second cut is released, which is "Love Is Everywhere" and ranks at number 19, it is a super achievement to rank at number 19 for having only two cuts, personally for me "Love is... "It's a nice song but it doesn't seem like a song for number 19 or crazy but well it reached number

19 but beyond having reached number 19 it still didn't become as popular as it should be so it opens a door and that door is "Top of the Pops", for those of us who are in music you know that "Top of the Pops" was... you were on "Top of the Pops" and you sold a lot, it didn't matter if you were a One Hit Wonder that you were going to have a single song, you were selling your life so for Cicero it would have been brutal or to sing "Love Is Everywhere" or the next cut, the issue is that at the same

time that Cicero was already on the ship to do his performance Michael Jackson announces the premiere of Dangerous, if you remember, the Premiere of Dangerous was worldwide, it was that 10-minute film in which the world stopped to watch it, which was basically the video for "Black or White" then "Top of the Pops" said, we have to release something of 10 minutes or two 10-minute performances to put it to Michael Jackson and one of those was Cicero and I think that was the beginning of the end, r

ight? because that would have been, let's see, on "Top of the Pops" there were groups that had one song and disappeared from the face of the earth. For example "Babylon Zoo" with "Spaceman", the song is great but if you listen to the rest of the record and you want to shoot yourself... so and "Babylon Zoo" sold like crazy, right? So it would have been fair for Cicero to have had those 5 minutes of fame in which he would at least have recovered all the time he put in, let's see, Cicero is a keybo

ardist, he sings, he's not Madonna's Nick Kamen, right? and Cicero's album itself, if you like the Pet Shop Boys, is a good album, unlike Nick Kamen's albums that have a couple of good songs and the rest is unbearable, what happens is that what It's good, it's very good, "I Promise Myself", "Each time you break my Heart" is a song that I love, that we all love, so Cicero doesn't have "Each time you break my heart" on this album. ? So I think the "Top of the Pops" song was the final nail in the c

offin, right? In April 1992 he released the second cut produced by the Pet Shop Boys, which is "That loving feeling" which I liked. Personally I love it, for me it's the best song on the album because it's Pet Shop Boys, right? and the super Pet Shop Boys video too then, I don't know how many of you like this song but I love the song, I would have liked it to have a little more Remixes... but hey, it is what it is, Beyond that "That Loving Feeling" is a song that I think would have deserved more

, it reached number 46, again it is an achievement to reach number 46 in England, it is very hard, reaching the first 100 places means that you are doing well to go well and yet it didn't happen, right? Cicero didn't continue after that either, but it was time to release the entire album and in June 1992, "Future Boy" came out. The entire album is the same, it's nice to listen to, if you like the Pet Shop Boys, I wouldn't have bought it. This album would never have been possible if the Pet Shop

Boys had not been involved, which is the same thing that happens to me with Liza Minelli's album, if the Pet Shop Boys had not been involved I would not have ever bought a Liza Minelli album in my life, Dusty Springfield would have bought it. I myself would never have bought a Dusty Springfield album in my life if the Pet Shop Boys hadn't been there, so the album was basically what we expected, right? a production by the Pet Shop Boys, not the best but a production by the Pet Shop Boys, it alway

s caught my attention, maybe I'm wrong, you tell me because you know more than me, some PetHead out there can tell me, but no versions ever appeared sung by them from Cicero's songs, right? Strange, from that point on I think everything went downhill and Cicero went down in history as Nick Kamen of the Pet Shop Boys, right? Well, let's go a little with the new editions. This is the edition that came out in 2016, the edition is super nice, I bought it on CD because it was signed and at that time

it was the only thing there was, signed by Cicero, I remember If you still don't know, I make music too and when this came out I was doing super well, I was ranking super high and I remember that I contacted Cicero who had it on my Facebook and I asked him if he wanted me to make a remix for it. and he took out [ __ ] well... short stories, these are the CDs, one of the CDs is the album and the other CD is all the remixes, how does it sound? It sounds good I would have liked them to equalize it

a little brighter but it sounds good, it is what it is I have nothing to say I did not find any errors, normal in Cherry Pop, Edcel and Company well in this case I did not find any errors and after 2023 A few days ago the 2023 edition was released, which came out on vinyl + DVD and on CD, which I am not going to buy because I can't find anything special about the CD, the vinyl is this, the vinyl does not come with a bonus of any kind and inside it comes like this with the lyrics and then comes t

he DVD that comes with the video and then comes "Cicero An introduction" which is like a mini documentary in which the super young Pet Shop Boys appear, it's great, they show you part of the videos and they show you things and then there are four songs from a recital, the recital is filmed strangely because at times they film it and you can see it, the kid had it like he had the lens next to his cheek and it's a very small painting, I don't understand why he did that and here I start spitting po

ison, right? There are four videos, how long are four videos? 18 minutes? 19 minutes? Nowadays, if you have a computer with a Windows operating system, you have Adobe to fix video and you have 840 other programs. If you are on a Mac, you have Final Cut Pro, you have Davinci Resolve, programs that a fool like me has installed and It can work wonders then, the videos are seen with some pixels, some with terrible saturated colors , there are videos that are originally with a lot of color but in thi

s case they saturate which is crazy, right? So let's see, you have programs that correct selective saturation, what does that mean? I tell it that when the red reaches a range point I lower it and the program does it for me while I eat a Milanese sandwich, right? I don't have to do it manually, you have Artificial Intelligence programs that cost $29.99 that generate new pixels, so I ask you, if you have a 65" 50" TV whatever and it's 4k and you put in a DVD, the DVD is 720p it should look very b

ad and it doesn't look bad, do you know why? Because there is a video card that generates new pixels to make it look better and does upscaling. So, if an ordinary television can do upscaling, why don't they do upscaling on these videos? because the idea of ​​a DVD is that you put it on and you have to enjoy it, you don't have to suffer it. So what ends up happening? I end up ripping the DVD to my computer, I end up fixing it myself, but no one pays me and I paid them for what I bought so this co

st me I don't know £20 when the minimum wage here is £1600 £1700 but you who are in Latin America and I who am Argentine have to buy it at a gold price with an exchange rate that destroys you, you have to eat a month and a half of delivery praying that it arrives, if the kid from customs (Customs) is In a bad mood he keeps it from you and you have to go look for it and you have to explain to him what you paid, they want to charge you more and a lot of things, if he is in a very bad mood he steal

s it from you because his son likes the Pet Shop Boys and When it arrives, you put it in and you find that they didn't put any effort into it, so I think that's when it becomes disrespectful, right? when they don't realize that there are a lot of people who expect them to do a professional job for what they are charging, then it seems to me that they are giving this to people who are not suitable to do the work, what happened to me Same thing when Aretha Franklin's last album came out and they p

ut a piece of music that put autotune on all of Aretha's voices, Aretha is the queen of Soul, what autotune or autotune, are you crazy? How are you going to put that to Aretha Franklin's voice! They did it and the album is crap so people don't understand, the same thing happened with Falco, Falco released 6 digital EPs with remixes made by Mongo Aurelio (John Doe), the producers are all young people who don't have the slightest idea who he is Falco, let's see, if you are 20 years old now, you kn

ow who Charly García is in Argentina or you know who Soda Stereo is but you didn't live it, it's different, you didn't live it, then you are out of time, you are liking something that for you It is vintage, it is from the past that does not represent the present so it is important that when someone makes a remix or masters something they have respect for the past in which it was made, if you do not have respect and you do not understand what you are doing What you are going to do is this rubbish

that they did here, so I understand that we are all happy because everything was published once and for all together, but the taste is bittersweet, right? because on the one hand it's great, on the other it's a [ __ ] So the same thing happens with a lot of things, I ended up doing the one with the Debbie Gibson videos again, the one with the Kim Wilde videos again, the one with the videos of Belinda Carlisle again, I have to spend hours processing audio, processing images, fixing chroma, doing

upscaling because these guys charge you a lot of money for what they sell you and they do nothing so you know that I complain about everything But, I believe that what is fair is fair and when you buy something you expect it to look and sound as it should be seen, you don't have to put on a DVD to suffer it, try putting on Kim Wilde's when the new version of " You Came" turns down the volume because it breaks your windows and speakers, it's 20 times louder than the rest of the entire DVD, we're

all crazy, it's a total lack of respect, but still I bought it So now I bought it What I'm going to do is I'm going to show you, I'm going to show you the comparison between the old edition and the new edition at the signal level well then we're here and we're going with "Heaven..." the 2016 version as you will see sounds good it has a good There is nothing wrong with Dynamic Range, it is fine and let's go to the one from 2023, which is the one that came out now compressed and limited, so I won

der, why did they compress it and limit it? so that? What's the point of compressing and limiting it? This previous version, the only thing it would have needed was to increase the volume by two dB and in some songs, not all, especially all the remixes a little more love when it comes to equalizing nothing more, no, they added compression so you look at the beginning of the song, you'll see it better in another song, I'm going to show it to you here, you look at "That Loving feeling" the end and

the beginning when that is lower that means that the artist wants it to be lower why because when you listen to music, you hear things in the center things to the right to the left and sometimes it is further back than the right and further back than the left so it is important that everything is in the sound spectrum and is in its correct place. If you compress and limit sometimes what happens is that you bring those things that are back, you bring them forward and you burst the idea of ​​the

song So here you have the original song and look at what the compressed song is, do you realize that the difference between the highest peak and the introduction is not that much? So that makes the original idea of ​​the song a ball, so I'm going to show you how the 2016 song sounds, it was at -1db, it was divine, they would have left it like that, look, I'm going to enlarge the signal so you can see, it's divine, there are no peaks, There is nothing wrong, it is divine and now we are going to 2

023. I don't know if you hear the difference, do you realize that the entire equalization changes? that changes the whole idea of ​​the song for nothing, it doesn't make any sense. So as you see, there was no reason for the compression and limitation they gave it because it wasn't necessary, so well, this was my spit of poison, I'm going to leave you the links to Amazon United States, Amazon Spain and Amazon England, in case you want to buy the vinyl, I recommend it because it is great, it is gr

eat because it is white vinyl, everything is pretty, it is great, so I would really recommend that you buy the vinyl The CD is much more enjoyable, buy it digitally, see...eh, buy it digitally, eh, but what counts is the vinyl, the vinyl is great, let's say the edition is great, it's nice quality, let's say it's not the best quality in the world, no It is 180 grams but it is good and it comes with the DVD. But hey, this was my review, you see that now my skin looks at least human color, right? B

ut I'm still learning, I'm still learning But hey, I'll see you next week !!!!