Pulp has been one of my favourite bands ever since I was nine. Maybe that’s why I turned out so weird. To think that I grew up listening to that mucky man’s tales of debauchery. I can’t have known what he was on about until I was well into my teens. I remember asking my parents what Jarvis was on about when he said, “Grass is something you smoke, birds are something you shag.” How embarrassing!
Still, I think I can be proud of the fact that I was heavily into such a good band when I was as young as nine. I did take a bit of a detour in my early teens, but we can gloss over that.
A lot of people might think that it’s a bit strange that I’m still heavily into Pulp. But it actually makes a lot of sense. When I was young, it was their futuristic, spacey sound that initially captured my attention. Pulp were influenced more by techno and Steve Reich than the insipid Britpop bunch they were more commonly associated with. How many of those bands had a member whose primary instrument was the violin?
There has never been another song that sounded like ‘Common People’. When I saw them perform this song on Top of the Pops I was amazed. (I must be one of the last people in the world to have been moved to buy a single by a performance on TOTP…) ‘Disco 2000′ is simply genius for the way it builds up and up without employing ham-fisted techniques like upping the tempo or the volume. And Jarvis’ songwriting is responsible for just about the only times I’ve been interested in a song’s lyrics as much as its sonic qualities.
With the triumphant return of Jarvis Cocker with his new solo album, I’ve entered a bit of a Pulp nostalgia trip. I’ve even dug out all of the old books and other paraphernalia I collected ten years ago, at the height of my obsession. Pulp’s story is probably one of the most interesting in the music business. Most people probably don’t know that they were hanging around the fringes of Sheffield’s music scene for over a decade before they hit the big time in the mid 1990s.
It would be easy to think that their early music must have been a bit rubbish if it took them that long to become successful. The band members certainly had plenty of derogatory remarks about it. But in truth their early songs were quite good, even if they weren’t quite as polished as their more successful songs.
Pulp’s relationship with their record company, Fire, was not easy. For their second album they were given the budget of £600, and had just a week to record it! The end result was slightly rushed and rough around the edges, even though the songs had plenty of potential. The producer refused to have his name associated with it!
Still, the budget stretched to the odd video. I had read about these videos, but I thought I would never see them. Enter YouTube, the intarweb’s single greatest invention. All manner of obscure videos can be found on YouTube. And the other day, while I was idly searching for Pulp videos I found a few gems that have got me very excited. I present them to you below the fold.
Click “click for more” for more.
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