I have just had a listen now as I was listening to the new Ash album this morning, which I would recommend.

The right single was certainly chosen this time and the radio edit only removes a few seconds from the intro and outro so doesn't really spoil it in any way. There was a poll on the official website for the next single and "Birds in Your Garden" won, but only just, "Bad Cover Version" was next. Alex was quick to assure us that the band, not the fans, chose the single and it was just a coincidence.

I haven't listened to the cover versions for years and, admittedly, I don't give the B-sides the attention they deserve. "Yesterday" is great, I like how it builds up towards the end but not too much. For the first time, I have started to speculate what some of the lyrics are about. Could they be about the band's fame? "Yesterday you were the dogs' but then you blew it, you set your sights on the best of all, you got it" - I'm thinking that this could be a nod to the band's sudden popularity in the mid-90s through to their rejection of fame from 1997 onwards. I also like "Forever in my Dreams" which I had heard an instrumental of before it was released. These two songs make up for the lack of B-sides on "The Trees"/"Sunrise".

The cover versions are interesting when compared with other Pulp covers and the 3 million or so remixes we had to put up with on previous singles. I have always liked Nick Cave in his own right so it was great to hear him on a Pulp record. The Roisin Murphy version of "Sorted" is a bit long and repetitive but it sounds like a 90s dance song which is a plus.

The video is a considerable improvement on the last one but it does have a bit of a novelty feel to it. First few times, great then once you've seen it, you've seen it, kind of thing. That said, if they had released it in 1995, it would have probably won every "Best Music Video" award going. The DVD was also great; the only real item of interest on there was the "Bad Cover Version" video which was then made obsolete by the "Hits" DVD but even so, it was nice to see them making the effort and it was great to be able to watch the video in the pre-YouTube days. The fanclub also sent out card boxes to hold both CDs and the DVD which was also great.

All in all, I'd say that this single demonstrates exactly what the band were capable of and was much needed after some of the others. I remember someone once saying that it was their first attempt at a hit single since "Disco 2000" and I agree. As for it only reaching number 27, I'd say that was quite impressive under the circumstances. It had been around 6 months since the album was released and the single wasn't on any Radio 1 playlists. Therefore, 4 places lower than the previous single was not too bad.

They both are, "Yesterday" was originally recorded in October 1999:
pulpwiki.net/Pulp/October1999Demo

"Forever In My Dreams" was recorded in March 2000:
pulpwiki.net/Pulp/DepotDemos
It was also performed as an instrumental by A Touch of Glass at the Meltdown festival (this is the one I have heard and it's on my site).

The B-sides are finished versions recorded in 2002 before the single release:
pulpwiki.net/Pulp/BadCoverVersionSession

-- Edited by Ian on Friday 15th of September 2023 08:16:25 PM

amazing they got in touch with you to review the files they were intending to use. did the consultant ever hint at whether there was more to come like? that last FB about Bad Cover version did state there were lots of unreleased songs from the WLL era 

It was only ever the Island singles... reading back, their first post about Lipgloss laid out their mission statement:

All your favourite Pulp singles from the Island Records period are coming soon to your favourite streaming platform. Our friends at Universal Music Recordings are beginning to upload a series of Digital EPs that will bring together all the tracks that appeared on Pulp's original UK single releases during our time on Island Records from 1994-2002.

The music consultant who rang me up was just contracted to work on these reissues, and had been doing so since January... He was working under instruction from Mark, who was representing the band, and who appeared to have a very clear idea about what should be reissued and what shouldn't. Whenever I asked about including the French and German B-sides, or tracks from promo releases, or re-issuing more unavailable material (like This Is Glastonbury*), they always pushed back and said that they only wanted to include the tracks from the original UK singles.

Whether there's anything further in the pipeline, I have no idea. Whilst the consultant had some nice ideas about some further releases he'd like to make happen, including some physical media, I didn't get the impression that he was realistically in a position to make that decision. By his account, the archives are in a bit of a mess (which is why they couldn't get the right tracks, and had to resort to the original CDs), so I doubt there's an easily accessible list of unreleased tracks that they could just put out - I think it would need inside knowledge, and a proper curator of material - i.e. someone in the band, or one of their producers, who actually know what's there.

* To be fair, I didn't hold out much hope for This Is Glastonbury. The recordings are owned by the BBC, and reportedly they are asking for rather more money for licensing their material these days (as they have every right to, of course - I'm not complaining about that!), which the consultant had a grumble about! That's likely why the Peel compilation isn't currently available on streaming services - it's likely just a little bit more effort (and possibly cost) for Universal have to deal with, so I'm guessing they are just keeping things simple and only putting out material that they wholly own. 

(I didn't draw attention to the Common People live at Glastonbury or You're a Nightmare Peel session being owned by the BBC, in case that caused a panic. Maybe there's different licensing for those tracks for some reason... or maybe they've been forgotten about and they slipped through the net!)

-- Edited by hawalius1 on Saturday 30th of September 2023 07:48:07 PM

Now, would you look at that - the Party Hard video contains an extra intro that was cut!

 

-- Edited by lipglossed on Monday 9th of October 2023 11:18:49 AM

Ian wrote:

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From memory, I think that the "Hits" DVD had little snippets in between the music videos and that is one of those.

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 Ahh, that makes sense. Funny though - it looks older than Hits, at least judging by Steve's appearance. Wonder why it was shot.

Yeah, think there's one or two others (Razz?).

As would we all.