As if they nearly played

Spoiler

59 Lyndhurst Grove

Hard luck guys.

They should have a rest now, shouldn't they? They'll have learned from past mistakes. Mark and Candida look like they're having a great time in the live clips, but both are hinting they want to stop (for a bit at least). Would be good of them to play Australia for the fans out there, if there's enough demand, and surely there's still enough of a following in France and Japan for dates there in 2026.

That 'Patchwork' rumour's still going around - unless that's been refuted now?

legohairjordan wrote:

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Me and my friend will be in Manchester for the final stop of the tour, definitely up for a meet up and a few drinks if anyone on here fancies!

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 Sorry, I'm pretty unlikely to be able to be friendly this time, which is a shame. We enjoyed meeting up with Eamonn and lipglossed in Brid. I'll have my husband with me and my mum went into hospital in York today, so who knows what back and forth we may be up to, assuming we make it at all.  

Eamonn wrote:

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Bootlegs aren't really a thing anymore but someone must be recording all the audio of these gigs. Ian's FEELING CALLED LIVE site demands new content!

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 RAISE YOUR HORNS on YouTube has shared the whole show on their channel across three videos, wouldn't be too difficult to strip & stitch together the audio.

Eamonn wrote:

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Bootlegs aren't really a thing anymore but someone must be recording all the audio of these gigs. Ian's FEELING CALLED LIVE site demands new content!

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I'm happy to upload anything that comes my way. I have always found ripping from YouTube a bit hit and miss and although there are some people who prefer the audio to be in a lossless format, I think that it's more important to preserve it in case it is removed from YouTube. 

Ian wrote:

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A couple of reflections on the tour:

The band seem to have retained (regained?) the energy that they had in the 1990s. This year certainly feels like the 1990s "Pulpmania" period is happening all over again although it feels very fresh rather than just a rehash of past glories.

The set is more varied compared to last time and I think that the song choice thing is a good idea. Hopefully it will carry on. It is great to hear some of the new songs being performed, "Spike Island" is a great opener and "Grown-ups" comes across better live. Hopefully some others such as "My Sex" and "Hymn of the North" will make appearances soon.

My only criticism is that, from a "been there, done that" perspective, I think that they could drop a couple of bigger hits in favour of others. For example, "Sorted For E's and Wizz" and "Babies" don't appeal to me as live songs anymore as I have heard them too many times. Perhaps songs like "Lipgloss" and "Bad Cover Version" could become regulars, they were still hits after all. "Common People" still rocks live though.

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Agree with all of this. I think 'Babies' is never leaving the setlist, but god I'd love it if they ditched 'Sorted'. There's just so many more interesting songs! But that'll never happen - it's part of their joint highest-charting single. I can see why they keep it:

1) it's a setlist-balancing 'slow' song, but still well-known enough to get casual fans on their feet in their seats, so a win-win
2) the set lighting is impressive and the Elysians clearly have fun, waving rattles and blowing whistles - there's a character to the performance
3) it segues really nicely into the next track - 'What if you never come down?' is an excellent ending in that track
4) all in all it's just an 'easier' one really

I have to admit though, I'd happily swap it for anything else off the Different Class album. 

I obviously agree about 'Lipgloss' too, agh, it really should be a live staple, there's no excuse! One of their more iconic hits, and now that they're playing 'Help the Aged', it's even more conspicuous by its absence, as probably the one other really well-known song - one of the verbal shorthands for Pulp that gets used in press articles - that they don't do. (I suppose also 'Underwear' seeing as it was, until More came out, #5 on streaming, but they've already played that umpteen times in recent years, while 'Lipgloss' has only been done twice - I'm so glad I was centre barrier for it in Edinburgh, I can die happy now!). As for 'Bad Cover Version', well, I love it but I'd love for more of the We Love Life album to be played in general, too! 'The Trees', 'The Birds in Your Garden', 'I Love Life', 'Minnie Timperley' - all wonderful songs that I doubt we'll get live ever again...

I am very happy they've shaken up the setlist. And I'm fortunate that I was at the three gigs where they revived songs - I got 'Seconds', 'Party Hard', and '59 Lyndhurst Grove', jammy bastard that I am! Six Pulp gigs I've been to now and I've been very fortunate with the luck of the draw when it's come to setlist variation.

The set they've played lately has a very strong spine to it. 'Help the Aged' and 'Acrylic Afternoons' are both INCREDIBLY welcome changes - two real live highlights, just in the performance, the quality of the sound, they're both HUGE tunes. 'Acrylic' gets the crowd going as much as 'First Time' and 'Babies'. Barrier were bouncing up and down like utter lemons, you would've thought it was a rave!

'OU' and 'The Fear' are slightly lower down my list of Pulp faves but you can't deny the sensational Pulp performance, they both go off so hard live. 'Mis-Shapes' has also made itself really, really essential - it was such a highlight of the London gigs, although it also seems to be one where the non-mis-shapes churn quite a lot - some of my mates said they'd thought they were in the music video what with the amount of Britpop Boys jostling them about!

They've been touring for two years and the new regulars sound so incredible, they're really so so good - this is clearly a highly confident Pulp, properly monstering these songs. But maybe it's just a teensy bit of a shame that the setlist rotation couldn't have started slightly earlier, because then the likes of 'I Spy' and 'Weeds' and 'Like a Friend' would've still felt so fresh and special. I remember being so happily surprised at Bridlington that they'd uncovered so many treasures, it seemed like a very adventurous setlist at the time, 'Glory Days' had been such a treat in particular. They could've mixed things up a little earlier I suppose? We know from the Mojo CD that they were turning out an exceptional 'Trees' back then, for example.

But if they were writing new songs at the time, then it kind of explains it, doesn't it? With hindsight, we now know: they were preoccupied. If you're working out 'My Sex' or 'Background Noise', you're probably not going to go and focus your efforts on, say, rehearsing and relearning 'She's a Lady'. All the same, if Jarvis had bitten the bullet and mixed in some less certain choices, instead of, like, very occasionally they'll do 'Joyriders' or 'OU', then there'd have been a lot less insufferable moaning, from me at least!

I mean, it's all worth it to hear 'Seconds'. Bloody hell.

It's interesting that the three "main" albums each contain a problem child of three key singles.

Lipgloss seems to be a hard song for them to nail live - only ever played at Brixton during the 2011/12 reunion and once in Chile a year later when the set was very varied at non-festival shows. It needed Mark, Leo Abrahams and our Hawley to pull it off at the Brixton show. And as mentioned, only once revived this time round. A real shame.

Misshapes was banished for years due to the band not feeling it anymore after '96, ridiculously relegated on Hits for Underwear. Restored in 2011 but not a staple in the way some of its less successful siblings were.

Help The Aged was their last hit. It did feature at a handful of stand-alone shows towards the last hurrah of the 2011-2012 reunion but it was never on the Festival A-List. And of course totally ignored last year.

I get that each artist has their faves and goes off some of the hits but the above three songs are all really key tracks from their respective eras including one that got to number two (Misshapes) and their last ever top ten single ('Aged - which, I repeat myself, but it would have probably have gone top three if they hadn't restricted themselves to a 1CD single release at a time when every artist took advantage of multi-fornatting to bring our 2CD singles).

Just seems a bit of a shame that these aren't stalwarts as it feels logical plus, importantly, they're all bangers.

Eamonn wrote:

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I get that each artist has their faves and goes off some of the hits but the above three songs are all really key tracks from their respective eras including one that got to number two (Misshapes) and their last ever top ten single ('Aged - which, I repeat myself, but it would have probably have gone top three if they hadn't restricted themselves to a 1CD single release at a time when every artist took advantage of multi-fornatting to bring our 2CD singles).

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Not only that, but there was very little promotion for it. I vaguely remember Jarvis saying that he wanted to ease back into things by simply putting a single on the shelves. It obviously got a lot of radio and TV play but the promotion certainly seemed about as "in your face" as it was for "Something Changed" i.e. not very.

Another thing, and I'm certainly not suggesting that Pulp would attempt to cash in on a tragedy, but the whole music scene seemed to be very downbeat following the death of Princess Diana which is when this single was released (about 8 weeks after). It was quite obvious that they weren't going to release anything else at that point as the album wasn't finished but "Help the Aged" certainly fit into the world around it at the time. 

I have just realised that this is the first time I saw them play "Acrylic Afternoons" and I agree with the above comments that it was fantastic.

Rather embarrassingly, I forgot about "Glory Days". The 2023/4 version was fantastic. 

I agree with the idea of rotating certain hits. Not sure if the choice thing would work with them as they would likely get similar reactions but only having to hear either "Babies" or "Do You Remember the First Time?" for example would be great as it means something else could be played. I also find "A Sunset" to be a rather weak closer so would bring it forward and finish on "Common People". That would keep more people in their seats until the end. 

Perhaps the set could be something like:

Spike Island
Grown Ups
Slow Jam
Sorted for E's & Wizz or Mis-Shapes
Disco 2000 or Party Hard
F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.
Tina
Help the Aged or Bad Cover Version
Farmers Market
This Is Hardcore
Sunrise

Interval

Something Changed (acoustic)
The Fear
O.U. (Gone, Gone) or Lipgloss 
Choice
Acrylic Afternoons
Do You Remember the First Time? or Babies
Background Noise
Got to Have Love
Glory Days
A Sunset

Common People