Yeah the line about the dad is clearly him trying to get on his good side, i think it's pretty obvious you need to separate the first part of the sentence and the second part. And as said before, kissed the mother. but not on the lips, why would he say that to his girlfriend ? Pretty weird :D 

 

Jarvis never really made ambiguous lyrics I think. Bar Razzmatazz, which is the weirdest one, I dont know if he's talking about incest and stuff. But yeah, "low" humans are mentionned in this song  Maybe he means the brother is sleeping (like just sleeping, resting) like a baby in his parents' bed despite being i dont know 20 or soemthing. Ive seen 8 years old still breastfed so nothing surprises me... Or maybe they are half bros and sis with different mums. 

 

the only line i didnt get was the "straight" one from Do You Remember... but it's been explained now. 30 years later ! Wow. It's always made me think because it didn't make sense at all in the song. 

 

Yes Neil Hannon is from Northern Ireland as you mentionned the song Sunrise is all about that. Probably the only one in the catalog if i remember correctly. 

andy wrote:

 

 

Jarvis never really made ambiguous lyrics I think

 

---

 

"Cocker's short for sucker. I suck cock off. Yeah, I suck cock off... mumble mumble mumble"

 

I mean, I guess that's technically not ambiguous, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't being literal either.

Isn't it "A sucker of...", not "I suck cock off"?

Not that Jarvis can't suck cock if he wants to or anything. I just didn't think the song was quite so literal.

He's sending himself up in The Professional in spectacular fashion, the public version at least. And he always loves a pun.
And yeah, it's "A sucker of..."

He's clever and the nudge-nudge element underplays this but as an example of self-loathing there can't be many better by a famous popstar. He's at the peak of his lyrical powers on this track and the band more than match it with their musical backing. A total triumph. What a side-two opener on the album, it could have been.

For the first time in years, I listened to a live version of its sister-piece, Ladies Man last night - the only time he ever performed it live. And it was with Air, not Pulp!

There you go:
feelingcalledlive.co.uk/2019/06/25/2010-06-04-jarvis-cocker-and-air-live-at-cite-de-la-musique-paris-france/

Might be a lil biased coming from a queer person, but yes, theres something definitely queer about Pulp.
Perhaps its the ragtag thrift shop aesthetic that comes with their look, or Jarvis rather saucy lyrics, or maybe its the relatability that a group of Sheffield art nerds found each other and stuck together all those years. Theres always been a queer aspect in being an outsider, and thats exactly what Pulps lyrics sometimes feel like to me.

I'm gay and trans. I hadn't posted here before, but since you were looking for what LGBTQ+ people thought of the question, I figured I'd chime in.

Pulp is my absolute favorite band, and I've been able to tie many of their lyrics to my own experiences around being queer, despite that surely not being what the songs were actually about at all. That's the beauty of music I think, that we can all hear songs that were personal to the people who wrote them and twist them in a way that's relatable to our own lives. I think their music is easy for queer people to relate to, just like others who don't fit in or are different in some way. A large part of what drew me to Pulp was that they are so... okay with being weird and different, and that made me feel like it was okay for me to be too.

Eamonn wrote:

---

Lovely to read that.

Also, I'm observing that Russell is the avatar of quite a few of our LGBTQ+ members on here. Does/did he capture the "weird and different" best in the group?

---

 

He was weird and different in his own way. Kind of like Jarvis is, in his own. I'm not the biggest Russell fan to be honest. Songs from his era have a weird vibe around them. I Love those records dont get me wrong and there was a time in my life when they rung true, but i always felt that if i had to spend 5 mins around him i'd feel like i'm both in antartica and hell

Maybe that was just a pose. Or the act they wanted to be at the time. 

Jarvis has a more "funny" weirdness about him. Like Goofy. 

Eamonn wrote:

---

Lovely to read that.

Also, I'm observing that Russell is the avatar of quite a few of our LGBTQ+ members on here. Does/did he capture the "weird and different" best in the group?

---

Personally it's a little more of a gender envy kind of thing, but I also love that he is just so unabashedly himself. 

Oh, I hope I dream about that tonight  

 

Me and Russ try and push Mick Hucknall off Bempton Cliff but then I wake-up just in time before I become a murderer.

lipglossed wrote:

---

Eamonn wrote:

---

Another type of demograph-spotting for me at the Pulp shows has been more disappointing - I've seen one black person in all the gigs I've been to this summer. One more than I saw at Wembley for Blur but given the passion and presence of Latin Americans and South East Asians, it did pause me to wonder why.

---

 I haven't really been thinking about it, but come to think of it you're right. Not the most racially diverse crowd, although Bridlington is one of the least ethnically diverse places in the UK (East Yorkshire is statistically very, very white). I did actually queue next to a British East Asian student there though. We both got pulled out of the queue to do a bag-search - well, he was and I followed - we entered and I don't recall seeing him after that. Hope he got a good view, and had a nice time - he said he'd been listening to Pulp for years and years. (Like I said, lots of us young'uns. Or younger-uns...)

It's certainly worth remarking and reflecting on, though. Both gigs I've been to were very racially homogenous.

---

The audience for The Specials and UB40 when I saw them were predominantly white, well near exclusively.  Similar for Bloc Party. I have some Asian friends who have come to a few gigs with me.  Most interesting was a friend who came with me to see From The Jam who was a bit concerned about a right wing element in the crowd before the gig.  Having explained the background of Down In The Tube Station and that generally speaking Jam fans are a pretty tolerant if over exhuberant bunch he ended up having a great time.