I was pretty excited when it was announced a few weeks ago that Pulp are getting back together to play some concerts next year. Pulp have been one of my favourite bands since I was nine years old. Yet I have never seen them live.

Many times my friends and I have discussed going to see one of Jarvis Cocker’s solo shows. But somehow it has never quite come together.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will play in Scotland. Only three dates have been announced so far, all at pretty far-flung festivals.

Mind you, I’m not too sure about the way it is being marketed as being “all the original members of the band”. It might be the “classic” line-up that propelled the band to the height of its mid-1990s fame. But it is by no means the “original” line-up.

The band had several incarnations throughout the 1980s until success was reached. Jarvis Cocker is the only common element of them all, although the majority of the band was in place by the mid-1980s.

I was listening to some Pulp from this period the other day. It reminded me of this footage from a 1980s documentary about the Sheffield music scene. The footage is pretty grotty-looking, but it’s great to have this rather rare peek into the band’s early days. This is available on the ‘Hits’ DVD.

Clearly, they weren’t quite the finished product. Masses of loo roll is an interesting choice of stage decoration, and Jarvis Cocker himself does not yet have the commanding stage presence that made him famous.

The band themselves always warn against listening to their earlier material, preferring to think of the 1992 release of ‘OU’ as their year zero. However, I like all of their earlier albums.

Even though their earlier material rough around the edges, there is still a lot of great songwriting and the potential can be heard. Fascinating to listen to with the knowledge of how they turned out to become one of the biggest groups of the 1990s.