I've purchased all of the demos online, but now I'm having a bit of trouble downloading them. So, whilst I'm waiting, I'll give you the rundown of the songs I've heard: "We Can Dance Again", "Don't Lose It" and "Catcliffe Shakedown".

We Can Dance Again-
There are quite a few new lyrics in this that we haven't heard before. It's sounds really good. Candida's keys are all over this track, and thank god for that! This is going to please the His n Hers fans in the room. The only thing to suggest this isn't a propper studio track is Jarv's voice, which sounds just a bit less polished than you'd expect from 1995.

UPDATE:I've been listening to these songs on my headphones, but I just listened We Can Dance Again while I was out in the car, and it seemed to lose something. Hmm. I might grow out of this song quickly.

Don't Lose It-
Give me a few days with this track. I do love how upbeat it is, but I haven't cottoned on the lyrics yet. It's almost TOO UPBEAT... if you know what I mean. I should love it, but I don't yet. The song starts with Jarvis whispering, somewhat comically, "Do it!"... Do I hear saxophones?!

Catcliffe Shakedown-
THIS IS IT! Jarvis, you've done my email addy proud. As I listen to this one, I get that certain feeling, like butterflies in my stomach, that I only get from the very best Pulp songs. It's a bit like Madness meets The Fall, but with Jarv's totally unique lyrics. It's almost too much to take in at once. Too great. Too too too great! How did this go unheard for so many years! I have no words. Seek this one out, people!

The rest of my songs still aren't downloading properly. I might have to write an angry letter!



-- Edited by Fuss Free at 19:55, 2006-09-11

-- Edited by Fuss Free at 23:59, 2006-09-11

Paula-
Pulp went through a "funky" phase, didn't they? YOu could put together a short "Pulp Goes Ska" album with this, Mile End, Monday Morning, Catcliffe Shakedown and Don't Lose It. I like it.

Frightened-
Now, I should note that all the HnH demos sound a little bit lo-fi, probably because the tapes haven't aged well. It shares some lyrics with His n Hers "frightened of James Dean posters", but the music is darker, with organs pointing back to Seperations. And guitars that point the way toward This is Hardcore. Interestingly enough, I feel this song could have fit comfortably on any album save DC or It. It's like the ultimate "dark Pulp song".

Watching Nicky-
Just a cleaner version of the song we've all heard before. It's good, but it ain't no Babies.

THe Boss-
Thank you. That's all I can say.

You're Not Blind-
This is the first I've heard this one, right? It's good, sort of in the vain of You're a Nightmare. The guitars sound really really good (dare I say "Smiths-y"). This song doesn't jump out at you the way some Pulp songs do, but I can see this becoming one of my favorite songs over time.

where did you downloaded them from, may i ask?

(your reviews have got me half out of my mind...)

Personally, on a geeky keyboardists level, I'm thrilled to hear the return of the stylophone on We Can Dance Again. I thought it was just put into permanant retirement after His N Hers!

Those of us that live outside the UK can't purchase the songs via Itunes. For some reason Apple prohibits international sales. Bloody stupid, I think. Especially when their competition is doing it. Apple sucks.

I purchased from 7digital.com, which Eamonn placed a link to earlier this week. Like I said earlier, I had some difficulties downloading the songs from their site and had to keep restarting my web browser. Then you have to register the song before you could play it. Is that normal? This was my first experience paying for downloaded music and I feel a bit dirty.

I don't think I reviewed "Can I Have My Balls Back, Please". I don't have much to say about it, but it is my favorite of the Hardcore demos after My Erection.

Overall, it seems that whilst His n Hers has the best B-sides, and Different Class has the best Demos, This is Hardcore, with its 38 page booklet and wealth of new material, is the best all-around value.

Catcliffe Shakedown has some of the funniest Cocker lines.

They were going to build an airport, can you imagine it? Whilst you're in the area whilst not stock up on string, or try some of our duty-free parkin.

Name-drops lots and lots of different songs too. General gist of it seems [still very early impressions] to be get out of Catcliffe or you'll end a character up in a Pulp song...

I put all the demos on a single CD and listened to them for several hours yesterday, and I have to say Catcliffe Shakedown wins the prize. Its still too early to say for sure, but I'm probably going to call it one of my favourite Pulp songs, ever. Its a beauty.

there's actually a lot of material here that i like a lot more than i expected. i'd say Catcliffe Shakedown is the big boy, but i always liked that slightly demented take on straight sugary pop. Modern Marriage is great fun. Don't Lose it as well. I very much enjoy the viola-synth on Can I Have My Balls Back, Please. Catcliffe Shakedown and It's a Dirty World are contenders for the all-time list. The Boss will be given to my DJ friends to be spinned immediately. the dance floor is going to pretend that they know it...

Interesting, interesting stuff. The three CDs are all superb, they each have some great stuff on them.

The His 'n' Hers one is probably the best all-round disc (though "Street Lites" is mistitled "Streetlights", which gets some angry disapproving clucks from me); it's the only one of these reissues where you could make a case for CD2 being the equal of CD1, or of sounding like a great album in its own right. The proper studio demo of The Boss is really very, very good indeed; fucking superb, in fact, easily the equal of the not-dissimilar 7" mix of OU. A shame there's no companion piece for Live On; the version here is the one from the Mark Goodier radio session which is already pretty well-shared in the wild. Still excellent though. You already know the pretty but inessential Watching Nicky, and a radio session version of Space is a nice little bonus. The real meat on the disc, though, is the two remaining new songs, neither of which I'd ever heard anything of before.

Frightened is basically a terrifying, alternate-universe demo version of the song "His 'n' Hers", with several shared lyrics (as well as some stuff which eventually ended up in the original album sleevenotes); musically it's a breed between the opening, semi-spoken bits of She's A Lady, and the remainder is Seconds. It's good, but not quite as good as His 'n' Hers, to which it's far too similar to co-exist.

You're Not Blind, on the other hand, is phenomenal, I can't believe this didn't surface anywhere. It's a relatively rough demo compared to the rest of the material on the CD, which is a shame, but it's still rather special. People have been comparing it to Babies, but to me it sounds more akin to Lipgloss. A fine, upbeat pop song with a catchy chorus and some lovely lyrics, this has vaulted right up into my Pulp top ten, and is even better for having been entirely unexpected. So, I guess I just ruined that for you. Er, anyway, it's ace.

Different Class. Right, first off, everyone will head to We Can Dance Again, which just isn't as good as I'd hoped; unlike the full demo of The Boss on the HnH CD, it doesn't live up to its potential. Listening to the horrible-quality live tape and the Chevette cover, my mind had filled in the blanks to create a storming, monster lost hit single. Instead, this is pretty good, but lacks urgency and punch, the newly-decipherable lyrics aren't all that, and - ultimately - every single song on Different Class is better than it. Which makes sense of a 12-year-old mystery; it was dropped because it wasn't quite good enough, and that's the end of that. I like the rough demo of Ansaphone, because I always found the B-side edition a little bit overproduced; if you're one of the many people who thought that version was magical, you probably won't like this so much. Paula is a pointless, throwaway mess, despite a couple of pretty musical moments wasted in a song like this; the cheesy Bontempi semi-calypso music in the verses and the faintly rubbish lyrics make it a bit of jaunty fun, but completely outclassed in this kind of company, and rightfully cast-off. Catcliffe Shakedown is bonkers, but the rewarding kind of bonkers. The conversational narrative is very similar to that in Wickerman, and features several of the same images; in fact, the song is probably best described as being "like Wickerman, if Wickerman was upbeat and silly". Very likeable, though, which is good. The only other thing on here of interest (aside from a listen-once-and-discard Nick Cave cover of Disco 2000 which sounds like a boozy karaoke session, as opposed to the woozy waltz cover he provided for Bad Cover Version single) is Don't Lose It, which I'd never even heard of, never mind heard. Anyway, this is quite nice; the demo is kind of makeshift and sounds "early" in the song's development, but given a full-on treatment and production this could have been special, and provides a nice window into what another b-side from the Different Class singles might have sounded like; actually it's more similar in terms of songwriting (to me) to something from the We Love Life era, but performed in full-on DC six-man line-up style. Probably would have worked really well live, I think. Anyway.

This Is Hardcore. This has the most "new" stuff, including several fascinating things; the original single mix of Cocaine Socialism, and several of the songs whose titles were bounced around as possible evidence of the more accessible pop numbers intentionally left off This Is Hardcore LP for fear of typecasting. I have to say, and I never thought I'd say it, that Jarvis was right to put his foot down. They're pretty good, all of these lost songs, but they throw the general aura gloom and moodiness which pervades TIH into sharp relief. Jarv's statements about not wanting to continue to write in the groove already dug by Different Class, lest he become a parody of himself ("I saw her at the bus stop / And I said get yer top off", I believe his example was - or perhaps "I'm only trying to give you what you've come to expect/Just another song about single mothers and sex/Okay, you've heard it before, it's nothing original...") becomes less a reason to criticise our most talented songwriter for a pointless, self-pitying act of flagellation and more a very real risk. Put simply, although none of them is entirely finished, the evidence provided here allows for an alternate history in which Pulp released a much poppier, more accessible album concentrating on the same kind of themes as Different Class, three years after Different Class, except it wasn't as good. Better to make something new, some kind of new statement, even if it's not the same Pulp we know and love, rather than descend into, well, typecasting. That's not to say these aren't ultimately some good songs, but there's just something missing from them.

Anyway. Cocaine Socialism is much the same as the version on the Little Soul CDs, but with added horns and female backing vocals. It is a tiny bit overblown and cheesy, though that may have been the idea, I don't know. It might have been a good comeback single in early 1997, which is when it was supposed to come out before Jarvis killed it; or it might not have been... if it wasn't going to be as big as Common People, why release a Common People soundalike as a comeback single at all? Plus, ultimately I think I prefer the B-side version. And last-minute replacement or no, "Glory Days" is ace anyway, so shut up.

Can I Have My Balls Back, Please is entertaining and has a good tune; the lyrics and title sound like placeholders to me, and I assume if they'd kept working on it, they'd have changed them. My Erection is a fun squib which isn't as good as its obvious cousin Ladies' Man. Both would have needed some serious work to be anything more than silly throwaway B-sides.

Modern Marriage sounds a bit like the band consciously trying to do a "classic Pulp song", with its pithy lyrics, big singalong melodic Britpop chorus; it's good, but I can't imagine it fitting on any album or single, so I don't know what was supposed to be done with it. Maybe - maybe - it would take Sylvia's place and slot between Seductive Barry and Glory Days on the finished album. Too many slow bits to be a single, too big and catchy to really work as a b-side. Good, though.

You Are The One sounds like it was written in the 60s or 70s, like Pulp doing a Beatles cover or something. Again, it's a pretty good song, nice enough, but entirely inessential.

Street Operator is really rather good; again, it sounds like a We Love Life-era song, performed by the TIH-era Pulp. No more poppy, or upbeat, or catchy, than some stuff which *did* end up on the album; but unlike the songs already mentioned, it wouldn't have sounded out of place there. I see this as being a missing b-side from the Party Hard singles, really.

It's A Dirty World, on the other hand, is a revelation, because it really does sound like a thirteenth song from This Is Hardcore, where it would have lived quite happily, possibly between Help the Aged and This Is Hardcore. Not really a pop song by any means, but a lengthy epic. Takes more of a Different Class approach to sex than a TIH one; I guess this is more a companion to stuff like Pencil Skirt, I Spy or F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E., except it's swathed in the same glossy-fuzzy TIH (over)production as the rest of the LP. Anyway, I always have a soft spot for the moments of sex-obsessed Pulp. Maybe it was felt to be just too close to some of the other, preceding sex-obsessed Pulp. I don' t know. It's fucking ace, anyway.

So those are my thoughts, coming soon to a site near you. This one, in fact.

-- Edited by Steve Devereux at 13:25, 2006-09-14

I agree with Steve about 'We Can Dance Again'. It just isn't that good. I really couldn't see it standing up well along with the likes of 'Disco 2000' and 'Common People'.

Then again, the demos of Common People and Disco 2000 probably weren't perfect either. When Jarvis performed WCDA live, he sang the chorus with far more passion than he does on this demo, which leaves us to wonder what a final version might have sounded like.

I can't see where WCDA would fit on the album though. I've been thinking about the original tracklistings a lot lately, and I think the only change I'd could make to DC is to put Mile End on in place of Underwear. I know I'm in the minority on this one, but Underwear has always seemed a bit clunky to me, like another failed attempt to recreate Babies.

Ian wrote:

---

My Thoughts:
My Erection
Pretty fun disco music with vocoder bits. It's better than the vocoder remix of 'Common People' but I can't work out what the hell he's singing about!

---

The lyric booklet insists the vocodered bit is just him repeating "When I get lost and I can't find my direction / When I get lost, I'm gonna follow my erection", though it sounds like there's more than those lines being sung there. Maybe just more placeholder gibberish.

If you don't have the lyric booklet, the only other line listed is the one he sings normally, "I don't need no compass, I don't need no map / Just gonna follow Cyclops sat right here in my lap". The greatest lyricist of our times, there. Thanks for that.

-- Edited by Steve Devereux at 22:57, 2006-09-14

-- Edited by Steve Devereux at 22:58, 2006-09-14