Little Girl With Blue Eyes. Definately always in my top 10 songs, let alone Pulp songs, any time. But having just listened for the godknowshowmanyth time to the White Room version, how amazingly crap is the studio version? Well, same goes for most of the Fire stuff. Great songs, badly recorded. Anyone'd be forgiven for thinking that Fire didn't HAVE a studio previous to Separations, despite how great the songs were. I mean, I know they (Pulp) only had £800 or something to record Freaks, and only two weeks, but didn't they have a decent time and buget to do the previous singles/EPs? OK, the sound quality is all down to Fire, but the tempo on Dogs Are Everywhere & Little Girl... just sounds wrong! And then, on I Want You, it's quite obvious that the band were very on form, but the recording itself even DISTORTS! I'm not having a go at Pulp by any means, but Fire may as well be Running The World...how different would it have been if Pulp had a decent lable in the 80's? Could've been bigger than The Smiths or even New Order. Oh well. At least Jarvis' solo debut is far, far more interesting than Waiting For The Siren's Call. Which brings me to another point. The media sucks. I'm talking about New Order now, sorry, off topic. But Get Ready was fansoddingtastic, and the media slated it. Then the media said that ...Siren's Call was a return to form. And it was so bloody dull, a real dissapointment! But now we have Jarvis' I Will Kill Again, Big Julie & Fat Children, so who cares? At least us lot know where to find really good music! Okay, I'm gonna go now, 'cos this is in serious danger of turning into a rant. Live On.
And to go completely off topic, how great would WLL have been with an experienced producer? I mean, imagine Bob Lind without the (paraphrasing Candida) out-of-tune bassey crap, and adding some yummy Farfisa! & look how great Birds In Your Garden was on Jonathan Ross with just Jarvis & Candida. A legendary artist does not always make a good (or even half-decent) producer.
I actually really like the single version of Little Girl. It's fair to say that some other stuff from that period doesn't sound terribly good though. Still, I don't think Fire are necessarily to blame... listen to stuff that Fire was releasing at the same time as Pulp something like the 'Great Fire of London' LP and most of the other bands sound like fairly tidy Cure/Smiths/Sisters soundalikes. And on the other hand, listen to live recordings of Pulp circa '86 and they pretty much sound like the records!
No doubt at all that Freaks and the rest would have sounded better if a bit more money had been thrown at them, but you've also got to take into account that Pulp clearly wanted a scratchy lo-fi sound for those records, they used wilfully crappy instruments that they couldn't really play all that well in any event, and they hilariously recorded Freaks in a studio that proceeded to wipe the mulitracks before they could go back to do a final mix, forcing them to put the rough mix out instead (which probably explains the distortion you can hear on I Want You).
Observe how 'It', despite being actually recorded on a similar budget to Freaks, in a similar timeframe, in an even worse studio, somehow sounds pretty good. Must've been Cliff Richard's microphone!
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"Yes I saw her in the chip shop / so I said get yer top off"
I think I may have been a little harsh there. I was kinda pissed & knackered! I actually love Freaks, mainly for Fairground & I Want You but all the songs are pretty good. & while we're on the 80's, how great is 97 Lovers? Like an early I Will Kill Again, I reckon.
Were Pulp really such bad musicians during the 1980s? Jarvis had spent plenty of time since 1978 or so honing his guitar skills though hardly brilliant, have always been more than adequate for a singer who strums the occassional ballad. And listening to the brilliant outro on Lipgloss or even the impressive riffs on Live On and wah-wahing of My Legendary before it, quality lead-guitar noodling was surely a part of Russell's armoury from an early stage, no?
The "wilfully crappy instruments" thing is certainly true, but the whole Pulp aesthetic at the time of Freaks (and Sudan Gerri) was in creating off-beam, abrasive music that was both primal and basic leaving little in the room for two minute solos or layered keyboard parts. The change in tact (and line-up) on Seperations saw a lot more technical nuances, which may be as much down to better production and hard work, practising the various musical parts etc. but I think Pulp always had a decent level of musical werewithal (going back to Turkey Mombo Momma!) aswell as a knack for creativity and flair.
