His post SS solo albums are so e of the gayest stuff I've heard in my life, and I mean that in the most complimentary way. This Last Night In Sodom is one of the greatest albums of the 80s (at least) though, and they still treat it as a footnote in this, it's still too much for mainstream TV 26 years later.

If you can track down a copy of this I highly recommend it:

http://artworldsofpetshopboysandsoftcell.blogspot.com/2012/09/ authorized-biography-of-soft-cell-by.html

Oh cool, I bet that's a fun read. I also have always wanted to get a copy of Marc Almond's poetry book "Beautiful Twisted Night", but I haven't been able to get around to it yet.
Thanks for the suggestions. And yes, they are extremely flamingly fantastically gay. When I was really young I used to laugh at how silly Stories of Johnny was. Now I kind of appreciate the kitsch of it.

That book came out before This Last Night In Sodom, when he was in the middle of the year long speed binge (allegedly) that led up to it. One of the great things about the book is the way they try to stay ambiguous about Marc's sexuality throughout. It's not that convincing.

There's a legendary feud between Jimmy Somerville of Bronski Beat and Marc... I can't remember much about it, but it comes to mind when I think about gay British musicians like Marc, Neil Tennant, Andy Bell and the like.

It was an odd and experimental time in music history, midi synths had just come out, and you didn't have to spend all kinds of time mastering an instrument to play, so there was more time for experimentation and theatrics.

Bands like Yazoo and Human League were on top, but there were thousands of other bands on the underground making the music, look up Flexipop on blog, torrent, or Soulseek to find them, like I'm getting Last Night In Sodom right now, thanks for the suggestion Zircon.

Boom

Midi didn't come out until a few years after Soft Cell, they were playing everything live over a reel to reel tape of drums.

This Last Night In Sodom is amazing. They mixed half the songs in mono to make them even less commercial sounding. They printed the entire album and liner in metallic gold on red, it's almost unreadable and makes your head hurt. It's got a lot of guitar. It was a deliberate "fuck you" to everyone, not quite on a KLF scale but still respectable.

I hope you like it. It sounds exactly like how messed up and paranoid Marc Almond was at the time.

Se Dwarf was from a tabloid headline, supposedly about a real event:

"Sex Dwarf Lures Disco Dollies To Life Of Vice"

They pretty much wrote the rest of the lyrics around that headline.

I'd always assumed it was about Tyrion Lannister.

They were doing a Beatles Day In The Life thing then, cool, I never heard the story to that, just the 'run little Doggie' part. More recently Scooter did Sex Dwarf again.

I liked the one video of Soft Cell with Sex Dwarf where it's the guys on stage with a keyboard and big open reel tape recorder, and I thought that's where all of the instrumentation is actually coming from.

Boomer

All right, I had to go look that up Homer, Tyrion Lannister on the Wiki of Ice And Fire, and I see, he is a sex dwarf! I swear I thought that was some politician you were talking about, and here it's an angry dwarf!

My expertise is with Barkley, I'll stick with that moptop.. :)

Boomer

You've never seen Game of Thrones? You should check it out, the TV show is absolutely brilliant, and the books are even better. Probably the second best thing on television right now, after Breaking Bad.

Plus, a couple of the main characters are dog people! Well, not really dog people, but they have pet wolves, and they do this magical spirit-bonding thing where they inhabit the body of their wolf and run around doing wolfie things. It's really cool, if you're into medieval fantasy stuff, I think you might like it.

I'll look in on Game Of Thrones for you Homer, it might be fun. Now I'm getting a random one, Game of Thrones S03E08.

In newer series I've watched some from True Blood and Teen Wolf, True Blood has been particularly good for Dog transformation at times.

It's good to see this video and think about what else Soft Cell has done.

Boomer

Game of Thrones is story arc driven and has a pretty complex plot, so I wouldn't recommend watching it out of order; you won't know what's going on, and worse, you might run in to some serious spoilers (the series has some of the best "Holy fuck!" moments in television history). It's on HBO, like True Blood, so if you're an HBO subscriber you can probably find the first episode on their HBO Go website. Or just pirate it, cough cough cough.

But yes, Tyrion is a total sex dwarf, and I'm actually surprised I can't find any Sex Dwarf / Tyrion AMVs.

Boomer, the drums are coming from the tape recorder, and maybe the bass. The synth parts are live.

I think a big part of what makes early Soft Cell sound so good is that they used prerecorded live drum tracks (even if it was electronic drums) instead of a drum machine, it gives it a more organic feel that enhances the sleaziness.

Sex Dwarf always makes me think of Bloodsucking Freaks.

AMEN about the prerecorded drums O_Z

I finished watching this and that was a nice take on Soft Cell. In Pittsburgh they played a mix with them doing Tainted Love that then became Where Did Our Love Go, that was really cool to hear. I also heard Torch and Bedsitter, and Memorabilia on dance shows.

I like the sleaze factor with Soft Cell, and it's cool that they were playing the drum track from that open reel, at one point I thought it was recording the session when I first saw that, or playing something, but I couldn't tell.

Thanks for the Game Of Thrones info Homer, I'll see what's going on there. I just some early replies I made to PoE red after my site was posted ten years ago, I had them saved and found them. Were you around at that time?

Bark!

Boomer