Hi. I have 2 free tickets for this weekend at the John Peel centre for creative arts. Saturday night they will be playing john peels personal vinyl of different class. Jarvis will be attending and there will be questions and answers after. . it should be an awesome night but unfortunately I can't go. Anybody fancy being in the same room as Jarvis?
I hope someone took you up on your kind offer as it was a really enjoyable couple of hours. The actual listening to Different Class on vinyl in a room of people including Jarvis (would loved to have seen his face...though from my vantage point a few rows back, I can confirm he didn't appear to squirm once in his seat during the 52 odd minutes of the best pop album ever made. This, despite repeating his old quote afterwards about listening to your own music being like caught masturbating. I was actually going to use that quote in my question to him in the Q&A afterwards. In the event, didn't get to ask him anything.
As for the main chat and revealing new information we may not have known before - he credited the engineer on the record Pete Lewis with coming-up with the running order of the album. ''I asked him how he came up with it, he just said it was all in the timings''. Jarvis' track-listing sequence was apparently very different. He panicked about how Common People would fare when a week before its release he found himself at a party with a member of Menswear who told him that the song reminded him of Carter USM! Chris Thomas was instrumental in the success of Sorted For E's & Wizz and pushed for its release as a single...Jarvis was worried they had ripped-off a Leo Sayer song (I forget which one he said). Other influences... Mark Webber got a mention for his love of Terry Riley and drones, and that going onto one of Common People's 48 tracks. Ant Genn put his own modern-taste of jungle music on the programmed percussion of FEELINGCALLEDLOVE (I'm sure that's been stated before). He was all-round impressed by Chris Thomas' modus-operandi. Thomas was/is more interested in the performance of the songs in the studio rather than getting them technically spot-on which was in tune with the Pulp ethos. He was asked and did speak about the first Peel Session, nothing you won't know already. He also mentioned his visit to Peel Acres in '95 shortly before Different Class came out and how they had premiered a few of the album's songs on that show.
The Q&A contained the type of questions you would expect although one about the ''Please do not read the lyrics while listening to the recording'' led to the quite funny quip ''Someone once said to me, why are you telling Nick Banks not to read the words?'' A ripple of laughter from those of us aware of Nick. Jarvis, acknowledging the fact, ''Bit of an in-joke''. A little girl was there with her Dad, a Pulp fan since Freaks apparently(! He even got his original vinyl signed by JC afterwards), and she asked what was Jarvis' favourite of his own songs. He said they're all like kids to him but after just listening to the album Live Bed Show sounded pretty good to him, more than he remembered.
The playback was a bit surreal. Seated in rows within the smart, high-ceilinged John Peel Centre, I think I was one of the few bopping my head along to the songs and singing/mouthing the words. Everyone was polite and quiet, barring maybe a whoop or two after some songs and an applause at the end. Had to start that myself though...I think people genuinely weren't sure how to behave! Judging from the Pulp albums being flashed after getting a signing, I'm pretty sure there were some hardcore Pulp fans in attendance. I only got speaking to the veteran fan abovementioned as well as a guy a couple of seats away who said he had seen them about 30 times, going back to Sheffield in 1993(Octagon? I asked, with a PulpWiki nerd's mind working over-drive). I hadn't brought anything along to get signed and I didn't want to bother Jarvis with obscure/non-pefunctory questions which is what he would have got off me, but I did get my girlfriend to ask Jarvis about new music when she went up for a photograph. As ever, he was evasive and a bit downbeat(?)-sounding about it...there may have been a few false starts or he might be being lazy, I guess we'll know in time.
If I think of anything else of interest that was said I'll post it but I think they were the main bits of note to us lot.
Hi. I appreciate your reply. thankfully nobody replied and we were able to go. I asked him about the possibility of a dbd from the homecoming tour. I can assure you that we were boogying and singing along big time. I was lucky enough to catch him outside as he arrived and have a chatabd also dduring the break. we also met him a couple of weeks ago at the leadmill. Jarvis is a very talented guy who gives the impression that he still can't believe how far he has come. I hope to bump into him on lots more occasions.
Wow, guys. Thanks for posting. It was really interesting to hear how it went. Not surprised by the awkward English behaviour you describe, though. I have found the same at quite a few Jarvis-related events. We are sometimes a bit polite for our own good.
By the way, roughly how many people were there and did JC look well?
Oh, one nice little story about the first Peel Session he told. The night it was broadcast Jarvis was away from home, spending the night near a university which he had an interview for the next day. He recalls straining to listen to the songs on some battered transistor radio. Was quite a sweet anecdote. He spoke about it in his usual dead-pan way, but as the interviewer (who was very knowledgeable and asked barely any of the usual questions he gets) said, it must have been an incredible experience for a teenager who had listened religiously to Peel for most of his adolescence up to that point.
That was a lovely anecdote, Eamonn. It's always interesting to hear Jarvis- or Pulp-related stories from their pre-fame lives. Often they are more interesting and illuminating.
As Jarvis did himself, you really would think you had made it if you were still only a teenager and you had done a Peel session! No wonder he was disappointed and felt so downhearted when his music career failed to take off. It's a fantastic twist in the tale that Pulp became so massive a decade and half later. Indeed, it's a story with the perfect arc for a film! (Who can we cast as Young Jarvis?)
I have just checked him out and I see where you're coming from, particularly the photos of him in glasses.
He might be a bit too pin-up-ish, though. Jarve needs to be played by someone who is extraordinary looking, in both a great way and in a not-quite-so-good way, too. Must be v pale.
I agree, maidmarion, and thanks so much for finding and posting this clip, Fran. (You are our Pulp super-sleuth when it comes to digging out these gems). And, yes, Eamonn, we spotted you!
Jarvis comes across as especially shy on this occasion, which is not surprising, I guess, as he was being forced to listen to himself, which is cringe-making for anyone at the best of times. I always find his shyness to be in quite striking contrast to his drive to be a star, though. Lots of very shy people couldn't bear the idea of being centre-stage.
Brill clip, though, and nice to see the John Peel Centre, too.
It's funny this whole shy performer thing. I am pretty shy and anxious in social situations, yet am completely happy giving presentations to a room full of people, yet some really confident extroverts I know are completely terrified of doing that. Discussing it, we concluded that the more peopley types who have confidence in their ability to guage the response of other people on a one-to-one level need to feel the feedback from the individuals they are communicating with, whereas I who have no real belief in my ability to judge people's responses anyway am happier just to talk at them as an amorphous group and not have to try to respond to them at all.
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