I'm in Crookes too and I've been smoking your cigarettes, drinking you Brandy and messing up the bed you chose together etc, etc

Can't believe how young you all are! I'm the same generation as Pulp. I was obsessed with Portishead in the early 1990s. I can't remember when I first heard anything by Pulp. A friend invited me to the launch party for Do You Remember the First Time at the ICA but I couldn't make it (something I really regret now!). Pulp really registered with me when I watched Glastonbury '95 on tv and I thought they were fantastic. I subsequently bought H&H and DC but didn't explore earlier stuff. And, of course, because my name is Deborah when Disco 2000 came out people used to sing it to me. Wasn't that keen on TIH when it was released and didn't like WLL at all. I think I gradually stopped playing Pulp but started getting into them again when I had a lot of time off work 4 years ago after being diagnosed with cancer. I spent a huge amount of time in front of my computer on iTunes and posting on iLike, often in the middle of the night in steroid/chemo induced insomnia. I played TiH one day and it absolutely blew me away. I was at a particularly low point and maybe that's why I identified so much with it. From then I explored the stuff I had. I bemoaned the fact I'd never seen them live and probably never would (thankfully the cancer hadn't spread and my health gradually returned). A year ago I had a huge reconstructive operation and another 6 months off work and did some more very intensive listening to Pulp, this time really exploring pre DC stuff and Jarvis' side projects. I was so delighted when the reunion was announced and decided it was now or never I HAD to see them live and have been to Wireless and Brixton this summer.

Hey, I'm not that young. I first saw em in '93. I agree though it can be a little unsettling.

I'm an American. I was a college student in the mid-'90s. I had heard "Common People" and "Disco 2000" once or twice but they didn't really grab me at first. I did really like "Mile End" from the Trainspotting s/t. Then, around 1998, a friend lent me his copy of Different Class. Now I was getting hooked, but the release of Hardcore a few months later really turned me into an Pulp fanatic. That album really captured the feelings of fear and desperation I felt as someone who was going to have to find a job soon and make it in the world, even if that isn't really the theme of the album, as Jarvis conceived it. A year or so later I had acquired the Countdown comp and His 'n' Hers. By the early 2000s, I was spending a lot of money on Ebay getting The Sisters EP and other singles. And that is directly because of the Bar Italia site. Steve's reviews of songs like "Seconds" and "Street Lites" convinced me I had to hear these songs. And he was right.

I was listening to Do You Remember The First Time during my first time!

I'm also American, became very obsessed with British music in high school, wouldn't even consider listening to anything American (the last American record I can remember buying in high school was Nevermind). Don't know if any of the other Americans here are in Southern California, but there was a cable access show called "Request Video" that I watched religiously (parents were too cheap to get cable); I was introduced to a lot of great music from that show. Blur was probably the first contemporary British band I got really interested in (was already obsessed with The Smiths and a lot of the new wave bands). Anyway, I remember reading about Pulp's documentary in Select or NME/MM, then soon after found myself in a record store where they played the single, "Do You Remember the First Time?"...and my life was changed forever, bla bla. Thankfully my parents "let" me drive to Hollywood a year before I had my driver's license--during the whole Britpop explosion--so I don't think I missed any British band that came through L.A. Even living in America I have seen Pulp 7 times: once with Blur in 1994, twice on their own tour in 1996, Finsbury Park in 1998, T in the Park this year, and the 2 shows at Brixton.

To me, Pulp is the best band in the world. My obsession sank a bit after Russell left--still stings a little to think about how I felt when I'd heard he left the band. So this reunion has been extremely satisfying.

btw: very excited to see what owl and saw come up with!

I like telling this story - its sort of in 2 parts. The first time and then the proper time.....

The first time I knew about Pulp I remember sitting on the edge of my parents coffee table watching Rage (video show) and Disco 2000 must of just been released so this is around 1996 (in Australia) and being about 11 or 12 not knowing much about music, but this video was just so colourful and fun. I didn't really like music apart from East 17 and whatever my parents listened too.

Then in 1998, I heard Party Hard on the radio and saw the video and just thought it was the greatest bit of pop music ever - guitars and that synth stab.... I taped it off the radio and just used to play it over and over and over again. I can honestly say it all kind of changed from there - Pulp are my baseline - I listened to them from Year 9 (1998 for me) nonstop till probably my first or second year at uni and then I got totally involved with anything Factory Records related. Around this time, His'n'Hers, DC and This is Hardcore were re-released in those Deluxe Editions. I went and got This is Hardcore and remember driving around Newcastle with it blaring thinking how on earth I had forgotten - well forgotten's a strong word, I think when I was going through Uni - like I said, I was just totally obsessed with New Order and the Happy Mondays and anything douf - but driving around with this album - it all sort of flooded back. Then Jarvis released his first solo record and I had left Uni and had a real job which mean't cash flow. I also vowed that I would start collecting stuff, as I could now afford it AND if they ever toured again, I would go......

I can also pinpoint and remember from every single shop where I got my Pulp records. This is Hardcore(v1) from the Grace Bros Pitt Street store in Jan 1999, Different Class for my 15th birthday, His'n'Hers and one of those Countdown Fire issues from Sanity at Settlement City, another Fire re-issue from Target in Tamworth.....I could go on but I won't.

I had been thinking about asking this question myself, as a new member of the board. I have been reading the board for quite a while, but am generally very reluctant to get involved in internet discussions as so many people seem to get so abusive so easily, but everyone here seems really nice and thoughtful. Its fascinating to hear all your different stories.

I got into music in big way in the late 70s/early 80s as teenager. I was a bit of a nerdy girl with no life doing physics homework listening to John Peel. As an exiled Sheffielder, the popularity of Heaven 17/Human League/ABC at that time made me rather homesick, stuck as I was by then in the rural south of England (or alien planet as it seemed to me at the time). I lost touch with music in late 80s/90s largely due to an inability to tolerate radio 1 DJs or commercial radio adverts, nothing to do with the music, I became a radio 4 listener what a relief to have radio 6 now. But my husband used to feed me occasional new CDs for the car and one of them was Different Class. Now I am not terribly musically literate, I relate mainly to the words and melody and the overall musical feel. My husband is very musical and is forever hoping I will appreciate some bassline or drum ryhthm, but its all a bit lost on me. I am very drawn to music which creates powerful images and stories, whether its fragmetary images like Ian Durys Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick or The Jams Thats Entertainment or a mini-novel like the Rolling Stones Play With Fire, Mothers Little Helper or 19th Nervous Breakdown. So for me, Pulp, in the first place Different Class, fell right into that with the strong imagery in the lyrics, powerful melodies and all delivered with that gorgeous, Sheffield voice. Mis-shapes the most meaningful track for me off the album (not necessarily my favourite), it is very cathartic for me as I remember all those feelings of being different and odd as a teenager and hating the super-trendies as I labelled them in my school and I remember having all those sentiments of revenge when they were still stuck in their dull lives and I would be the nerdy, clever one that went off somewhere a lot more fulfilling. Interesting how many of you have mentioned Mis-shapes given the bands apparent dislike of it (until recently, thankfully). And I always particularly liked Bar Italia, which seems to get a rather bad press for reasons I have never understood.

As Ive got to know more of the rest, I find more points of connection with my northern childhood, a classic yet trivial case in point subject of figurines! I remember my parents and their friends having endless conversations about which sets they were collecting, which they liked best and which colour supplements you could order them from. And yes, they do take over the house. I particularly like the ramblings of songs like Wickerman and Deep Fried In Kelvin. I love the proper northern bluntness that calls a spade a spade and sees straight through all the nonsense those at the top and the haves can spin themselves to justify the status quo Im thinking the Weeds songs, Cocaine Socialism, ommon People and most of all, Running the World, but not just those bigger things, but all those tales of ordinary life seen as it really is. I know Jarvis said something along the lines of being fed up with the perfect, unreal world you hear described in normal pop music and wanted to describe all the messy, fumbling bits, something like that, a kind of observation you only normally get from a good stand-up comedian who dares say those things the rest of us only think. Theres also the dark places, The Fear. When I first read about This Is Hardcore (the album) before  I listened to it, I was genuinely scared that it would be unbearable, but I just appreciate the insights into different experiences and take reassurance if I start feeling too low or generally loopy that these experiences are just a fairly normal part of the human condition and I am not uniquely losing the plot.

That must be more than enough for now.

-- Edited by Fran on Tuesday 4th of October 2011 12:25:54 AM

Fran,

Great post about how you got into the band! Even though my route to Pulp was very different, I think you really captured what makes the band so special for a lot of us.

Nicely put, Jean.

;) thanks folks. The way I look at it Pulp gave me the sex education a Catholic school will never give! "that goes in there... and then it's over" ;) Nah but seriously Pulp spoke about things concerning ordinary people that I didn't hear anyone else doing (and I'm not talking about Common People but like Fran about the figurines that take over the house and my granny had a James Dean poster at the time too) and you know Jarvis is probably the only person of recent times in his solo work who is still the only one saying anything that matters to my life and many of your lives I would imagine in a song like 'Running the World' so that's why I love Pulp. The whole group. That's my life right there in that back catalogue. I can tell you what was going on in my life when I bought Separations and so on. Such a joy to see them again this year. And that's enough from me before I get too emotional ;)