No, not dodgy territory at all, it's just that after six or seven years I got rather tired of asking (and generally not even getting so much as a "no" by way of a reply), so there's no way on earth I'm going to waste my energies bothering to ask again!
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"Yes I saw her in the chip shop / so I said get yer top off"
Just to bump this, (I knew there was an old thread discussing the publication of a book on Pulp in French!). The author emailed me this morning. For those interested...
Hello Eamonn, don't know if you remember me, we had been in contact a year ago about a Pulp book I was writing... I want you to know that the book is finished and will be published in three weeks, on March the 13th. It's a 200-pages book and it is buyable from England, for example on my publisher's website (http://www.cahiersdurock.com/pages/livres/britpulp.htm), for 15 pounds all included. I don't know if we spoke about that last time, but it is not the same kind of book than, for example, Mark Sturdy's one (I'm not sure the French audience is ready for a 600-pages Pulp biography : it is more an essay on what Pulp meant in British pop culture of the 30 last years, on its connections with politics, other arts, society, other pop music trends (post-punk, indie pop, Madchester, mainstream rock...). That's why its title is "Brit Pulp. Pulp and britpop, from Thatcher to Blair".
Do not hesitate to ask me if you have questions on the book.
Huh, I have no recollection of this thread ever happening.
What is it with Pulp and the French, I wonder? Being half-French myself I have often pondered this question. II don't think they ever sold any great numbers of records over there (would like to see the stats on that, actually), and yet they seem to have a huge profile; they played fairly extensively between '91 and '96, earned the approval of Les Inrocks, did the Polnareff LP for a French label before they were famous enough to warrant any real attention in the UK, got FNAC (sort of the French version of HMV) to do a special limited edition giveaway CD with copies of Different Class, and even back when I started up Bar Italia in 1998 there were a few French fansites, one of which planned to have pre-Babelfish manual translations of all the lyrics into French (although they'd only got as far as "It"). Jarvis lives in France, having married a French woman. When I worked in Japan, the record clerks had never heard of Pulp or Jarvis, but asking for Pulp records in a Paris store gets you an immediate glimmer of recognition and an enthusiastic "ah oui, Zhar-vees." Is there any reason for all of this?
There is a certain Francophilia to Pulp, if only we consider the influence of Serge Gainsbourg and Jaques Brel (via Scott, naturally). This was definitely extant before the nineties, and I also seem to recall a comment of Graham Coxon's to the tune that he was surprised the likes of Pulp were lumped in with "Britpop" as they had always seemed more French to him.
One could also cite collaborations with Air and Charlotte Gainsbourg as further evidences.
Young Jarvis always struck me as being like a character in a Godard film: laying in bed all day with a beautiful woman, smoking, refusing to get a real job, over-analyzing the trivial, living in his imagination, picturing himself as some sort of radical outlaw. Talking, talking, talking.