"Hello, we're Pulp and we're tonight's turn"

Not even Jarvis can have it all ways. Either you take the Holsten shilling or you don't. He has. So have I, and so has every other hack on this odd combination of press junket and 18-30 package tour, wherein hundreds of media people and competition winners have all been shipped over to Spain to promote the rebranding of Holsten Pils. Of course, I'd rather be in a puddle at Reading watching Sebadoh than in Barcelona with two of my favourite bands, but I'm never one to shrink from duty.

"It's getting dark here in Barcelona's secluded amphitheatre, where many years ago people were dragged and thrown to wild animals. We're going to be recreating that later; we're expecting some English football fans."

[...]

"Do you think you're common people? Corporate people?"

But the following night - this is the business. The Teatre Grec is a miniature amphitheatre hidden in the hills, pressed up against the lush foliage of a cliffside, at the edge of a villa and garden where the party is not so much thrown as daintily scattered. Wrong beverage, maybe, but this is a Martini ad to which the uglies and proles have been granted admittance, and don't think we're not grateful. It's also Pulp's last gig for who knows how long, and certainly the only chance we'll get to see them this close-up until they hit the Butlins circuit well into the next millennium.

Jarvis seems filled with disdain for the crowd he's playing to, and you can see his point - it's not like these people came here to see Pulp. For a band of Pulp's instincts and new-found status, being used as the garnish on a promotional weekend for lager must feel like one of life's tangier ironies. But then, surely they were under no obligation to play tonight. They might have had their reasons for agreeing to it, and that hardly puts them in a position to judge the audience. I might have it wrong, of course. Perhaps Jarvis is merely being his usual acerbic self.

"Get off my shoe, y'twat, I'm trying to sing a song here."

All the same, when they take the stage, Pulp appear to be playing a game of "last one to the end of the set is in Cast". It doesn't help that it's still daylight, and that they're obliged to perform beneath a giant inflatable beer bottle (which later breaks its moorings under suspicious circumstances and is last seen floating into the path of Mediterranean air traffic like some vast, hallucinatory insult to teetotal pilots). "Mis-Shapes" is as cursory as such a splendid call to arms can be, which is not very, and "I Spy" - perhaps the finest few minutes of "Different Class" and, indeed, 1995 - operates at only 73 per cent insidious vitriol. Diffident Pulp is better than no Pulp, but almost anything is better than no Pulp. Pulp aren't just a band, they're a necessity.

"I'd like to dedicate this next song to myself"

Then it gets dark, and the magic of the place swells in power. The party, as all good parties will, has become bacchanal, and there could be no better setting. Maybe the band sense it, maybe their relief at ending an exhausted tour makes them soar, maybe Jarvis is too vain not to put on a good show. Whatever it is, the gig (although referring to this as a gig is tantamount to calling The Field Of The Cloth Of Gold a picnic) takes off. "Babies" thrusts and needles like the sting of lust itself. "F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E" never sounded stranger or more urgent. There's a new song, a massive ballad you could drown a whale in. "Whiskey In The Jar" - "Whiskey In The Jar"? Wha'? Yes, and not a frivolously camp reading, thank Christ, but a plain and affecting take on a wry yet serious song. Not such a curious choice of cover, when you think about it. "Common People is as stomping a finale as I've seen it anywhere. F***ing stupendous.

"No, no, no, the karaoke isn't till later."

[...]