So two similar-ish groups to Pulp (in terms of popularity and a bit of shared aesthetic and sound) have both, this month, announced deluxe/superdeluxe version of albums that are their equivalent to This Is Hardcore and We Love Life.

The former is the album The Art Of Falling Apart (which Jarvis probably wishes he could have nicked as the name for TIH) by Soft Cell - no top twenty singles from this after the popularity of their debut which spawned the cover of Tainted Love (most successful single of 1981). This new reissue is a 6CD affair. (The link for this has been up and down over the past couple of weeks, some fans preordered already but no official announcement has been made. I'll link to it when the page is working again).

Supergrass' fifth record, Road To Rouen, came out exactly 20 years ago. I remember my local recordstore owner giving me a free promo CD of the gorgeous single St Petersburg. This era of Supergrass "got lost" even more than We Love Life. But it's a beautiful record. The 20th anniv reissue is suitably understated - just a 2CD affair (plus double vinyl - the original goes for silly prices). https://tinyurl.com/yxf4k38y

They have made a bit of a splash about it on social media, including a teaser video with Twitter/Facebook/Insta screenshots of posts from fans demanding a Road To Rouen reissue. If Pulp ever have the same idea, they can just screenshot the fcuk out of all the Bar Italia messages wailing for a WLL deluxe!

Supergrass have also cleverly spun one of the only unreleased songs from that era as a "lost single" and it got a play on 6Music this morning. Imagine Cuckoo Song being given a public platform for the masses to marvel at....one can dream.

Anyway, just thought the above might be of note in terms of "benchmarking" against our beloved We Love Life.

Ian wrote:

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Sturdy wrote:

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How about we set up a record label ourselves? Any music licensing experts in the room?

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I thought that you would know all about it having set up the Venini label all those years ago .

So would I be right in thinking that it would be similar to the compilations of Fire material that appeared in the 1990s? Set up a small label, pay Universal to licence the tracks then get it released and hopefully make our money back.

The main album is presumably of higher value to Universal than unreleased material so just getting the "lost" album released may be more financially viable.

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Ha! There wasn't a lot of business involved in what I did with Venini...

But yes, I think that would be it in a nutshell. I imagine that Universal, by and large, would be happy to licence material to anyone who coughs up a sufficient amount of cash (hence the third-party vinyl reissues over the years etc). The bigger part of the job would probably be getting the band's co-operation - not all the demos would be in Universal's vault necessarily (if it's just stuff they recorded under their own steam), so it'd be a case of getting access to Mark's stash of CDRs and so on.

Obviously setting up a proper record label and all the legalities and admin that entails would be a bit more complex than that, but for someone with the right amount of cash and know-how, I don't think it'd be insurmountable. (I guess the worst case scenario would be Universal, on being approached, turning around and saying "Hang on - why aren't *we* doing this?" and them going ahead and saving us a job!)

Check your lucky numbers...

Here we go:

https://feelingcalledlive.co.uk/release-a-deluxe-edition-of-we-love-life/

Feel free to share. I'm a bit busy at the moment but if anyone wants to help just send me a message and we can discuss in the next couple of days.

Eamonn wrote:

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What happened to the original petition on PulpWiki? I found the page but all the names and messages were gone. Is that a GDPR thing? Was just curious to see how many signatures it got - pretty sure it was well over a thousand albeit it was "active" over many years since 2011 or thereabouts.

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I'll restore the list of signatures and comments for the PulpWiki petition when I get a chance. In total there were 1334 signatures. Looking at the list there are a few spam or duplicate submissions that need weeding out but I reckon well over 1200 are genuine.

The PulpWiki petition launched in October 2011. I had planned to make Universal and the band aware of it in some way when it reached 1000 signatures, but it lost momentum around 800-900, and by the time 1000 was reached in April 2014 my mind was on other things, and I let it fizzle out. The petition did appear prominently on the front page of the wiki for a few years, so I assume the band were aware of it.

I imagine a new petition would get more signatures now. In part because the Pulp community on social media is bigger now.

Not my words . A Wordpress error which I think I have now resolved