I know you’ve all been positively gagging for news about the new album, and who can blame you – without Pulp, our poor ears have been mauled, daily, by the talent vacuum that passes for the charts these days. Luckily, before we all go completely barmy, Pulp got it together and decided to record a new record. And as if that wasn’t enough, we get to see them live again too!! Sorry for the gap since the last issue but you all know I don’t send one out unless there’s something to say, and of course it doesn’t affect membership, which goes by the number of issues you’ve had, not the length of time it takes. So it’s better value for you!

Coming up: as well as all the usual features, I can offer you:

• Exclusive interview! Pulp talk about the new album, working with Scott Walker, Homelands, mobile discos, the Chocolate Layers and acting.

• Pulp Online – what’s new on the intercontinental superweb

• Pulpin’ All Over The World – Fans in far off places

• Archive Pulp: How ‘It’ was received 19 (!) years ago.

The merchandise situation is the same blank sheet of paper as it was last issue, but I’m hoping this will change soon. If you would like to order anything please use the list from PP30, and yes you do still get a pair of free sweatbands with every order over £4, while stocks last. You can also check out these items in glorious technicolour on the website, although you can’t order online. I’ve also been informed of a rather suspect sounding for pop and rock t-shirt, apparently B&M supermarket in Manchester sells them for £1.79, all official, new and wrapped up. Sounds too good to be true, eh readers? Well, it probably isn’t. But my source bought a V96, Pulp in circles(red), Pulp in circles(purple), all over Pulp print, and a Chelmsford Sunrise design – all for under a tenner.

Thanks for that Edward, just 16 (my new best friend). I know the idea of a fan club CD is an exciting one, and who knows, it might happen one day (probably won’t though).

Coming atcha with this issue is the second in the series of postcards – a mohair clad Candida, photographed by top society photographer Phil Poynter last year.
Love, Alex.

Bad cover version: mixing desk at Metropolis

NEWS

New Album

For once, the rumours were true. The man who once said he wished he could have produced Elvis (no imagine THAT) has been at the controls for this, Pulp’s seventh studio album. As most of you already know, the record is almost finished, although as this goes to press (if it ever does) no release date has been set, other than vaguely hinting at the autumn. Scott (right) has been assisted by his trusty engineer Pete Walsh, with whom he has worked since the 1984 Climate of the Hunter LP. Needless to say, the prospect of a Scott Walker / Pulp

collaboration has resulted in much excitement here at Pulp HQ, (that’s putting it mildly) and you can read more about it in the interview on pages 8 – 19.

The provisional track listing is: Bad Cover Version, Trees, I Love Life, “Bob Lind”, Birds In Your Garden, Wicker Man, Minnie Timperley, Weeds, Origin Of The Species, and Sunrise. None of these are re-named versions of songs you have already heard, although Wicker Man is roughly based around “The Rivers Porter and Don” piece Jarvis wrote for the World Of Interiors last year. Helping out on backing vocals are the fabulous Swingle Singers, interviewed in the last issue of Pulp People, plus a 40 piece choir.

Jarvis and Steve have done one remix of Sunrise with DJ Parrott and are currently touting around for other people willing to have a go.

Thanks to Giles Bosworth for the pic of RSPB birdwatching book (left) Yes, it’s called The Birds In Your Garden.

Homelands: Pulp Live!

Foor & mouth disease allowing, Pulp will co-headline Homelands Festival with Orbital on May 26 / 27 at the Matterly Bowl near Winchester. They are due on stage from about 7.45pm to 9.00pm on the Saturday night, followed by Orbital at 10.00pm. The site is on the Matterly Estate outside Winchester, in Hampshire, and is a 17 hour 1pm – till – breakfast type thing, so make sure you bring something warm.

Tickets for the event cost £46 and are on sale now from the usual angencies – Ticketmaster [...] / Stargreen [...], as well as selected HMV stores. There is a Homelands site at www.homelands.co.uk. and a 24 hour information line [...]. It’s no under 18’s, I’m afraid, so if you are it’s up to you if you want to risk it – dress old!

This will provide a great opportunity for Pulp to be a bit experimental, so who knows what kind of a set we are in for. And not only are we in for a live show but the Pulp DJ van will be setting up camp too – Jarvis explains all in the interview. As always, send me your reviews and photos of the event for inclusion in issue 33.

Loads more info in the enclosed flyer...

Marianne Faithfull Collaboration Pulp have contributed a song they wrote years ago to Marianne Faithfull’s next lp of [mostly] collaborations, together with Beck, Dave Stewart, Evan Dando and Billy Corgan. The song is called ‘Sliding Through Life On A Charm’ – Pulp play, Marianne sings.

Jarvis Records Vocals for Alpha Jarvis recently re-recorded the vocals for a song for Bristol based group Alpha. As suspected it’s a cover of Jimmy Webb’s “This Is Where I Came In”, so is bound to be ace, I can see the Jarvis / Jimmy Webb thing going down well. As with the Marianne Faithfull track, the song was initially recorded in 1999, but has been sitting in Alpha’s pending pile until now. It will appear on the forthcoming four track ‘South’ EP, out on April 16th on Melankolik (SADD12)

Mark Film Stuff Artists Film New York 1970’s April 15 & 22, Tate Modern. Showcases the work of artist film makers from the 1970’s. April 15: New York Portrait: Chapter 1(Peter Hutton, USA, 1976 -78); Still (Ernie Gehr, USA, 1969-71); Real Italian Pizza (David Rimmer, Canada, 1971); April 22: Soft Rain (Ken Jacobs, USA, 1968); Zorns Lemma (Hollis Frampton, USA, 1970); Necrology (Standish Lawder, USA, 1970) Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, £3.50, 3pm both days. Tel [...].

47th Oberhausen Short Film Festival May 3 – 8, “Floating Through Time” is a retrospective of master filmmaker Larry Jordan, known for his animated engravings and poetic live action films. Mark and Gregory Kurcewicz will present “The Somnambulists Retreat”, an informal mix of music and film to take you into the night on Friday 4 and Saturday 5. Check out the festival site at www.kurzfilmtage.de

Part time Pulp guitarist Richard Hawley releases his eponymously titles seven track mini-LP on 23 April on Setanta Records (SETCD087). Sounding a bit like a cross between Edwyn Collins and Bobby Vee, it’s a surprisingly gentle and personal record. There is an email information service which you can join by contacting [...]) and the still – under – construction – website is at www.richardhawley.co.uk You can buy the LP on amazon.com for a mere £7.99.

The 100 Best Record Covers of all time are the reason for the recent Q Limited Edition Collectors Special. The sleeves aren’t listed in any order and were voted for only by the contributors to Q, it’s possibly not the most representative

study ever. Record design guru Peter Saville comments that “Pulp have a remarkable understanding of contemporary culture...working with them was more like working for an art client”. The cover art for Different Class was created by Mark Tappin and Seb Marling at Blue Source and is directly ‘inspired’ by an idea Jarvis saw in Nova magazine, using cutout figures of Marx and Lenin.

DJ Dates Jarvis and Steve play Club Optima at Planet Peach, Glasgow on April 29th. 34 Queen St, Tel [...]. Jarvis will DJ at ‘Electric Stew’, Great Eastern Hotel, London, on May 5th.

Chris Evans still stupid: “Just wanted to tell someone that on the Virgin Breakfast show recently they were playing Common People. Half way through Evans interrupted it as he had some pearl of wisdom that wouldn’t wait until the end of the record and announced very confidently – ‘it’s okay to talk over Pulp as it’s over for them, they’re finished,’ I’m sure that the new stuff this year will be fantastic and he’ll be playing it and telling us how brilliant they are. Just wound me up! Keep up the good work and here’s to Pulp, back on Virgin’s play list soon!” Thanks to Lee Dainty for that.

Nick Rocks the House

It was Nick’s turn to man the decks for the Leadmill’s 20th birthday celebrations. Accompanied by Richard Hawley the pair wowed the audience with classic rock and... well, see for yourself (below). Didn’t stop them pausing for photo opportunities with Pulp People Rich and (left) Janine – looking good you guys!

Jarvis’ Dummy – Run

(This came in just too late for the last nme.com) A waxwork model of Jarvis was removed from it’s central London exhibition space to prevent it from being attacked by Michael Jackson fans. The effigy of the Cocker, currently sitting proudly in Rock Circus in Convent Garden, will be locked away to stop any planned attacks by Jacko’s wacko fans, still enraged at Cocker’s stage invasion at the 1996 Brit Awards Ceremony. Rock Circus made the decision to remove the waxwork after a flood of calls from Michael Jackson fans telling them to expect a visit. Members of his official fanclub are set to converge on the capital at the weekend for their annual conference and plan to visit Rock Circus, which houses three (three!) statues of their hero. “We decided removing the statue of Jarvis was probably the wisest option,” a spokesperson for Madame Tussauds, the owners of Rock Circus, said. “He’ll be

locked in a secure cupboard over the weekend so no-one can get the mitts on him until it’s safe to go back out on Monday morning.” Not unlike a normal weekend then. Those of you who received the 1996 newsletters will be able to nod sagely as you recall the spate of semi literate hate mail we received after the event. So funny. Naturally I returned it all to the senders parents. Why didn’t they just put the model of Jackson in the cupboard, and avoid having to suffer the Jacko fans at all? Or better still, melt it down and make some nice candles?

It was 25 years ago today... Pulp’s Management Company celebrated its 25th year in the business in February. Jarvis, speaking to the Independent on Sunday on 18 Feb, said “Rough Trade Management really helped us out. When we were starting to get a bit of interest back in 1992, 1993, we had this awful manager who was driving us crackers and who got is into these weird, kind of illegal business situations. Nobody would touch us with a barge pole – we were in the shit. Out press said “Yeah, I’d like to manage you”. At the time I thought everyone involved in the music business was just awful, and my experience of independent labels had been very unpleasant – so it was good to find another human being. That was the real turning point for us, and we kind of became popular after that”. Steve and Jarvis DJ'd at the opening night of the anniversary celebrations, in the V&A foyer, on the 23 Feb. (although the NME would have us believe otherwise: “Jarvis and Russell Pulp’s DJ set spans eras...”)

Bootleg News Those of you who couldn’t make it to Leeds last August or those of you who did but who want to re-live the experience, can do so with the Cocker The North bootleg CD. With a running time of 45 minutes you don’t get the whole set but it’s better than nothing: Something Changed / Minnie / Help The Aged / Sorted For E’s & Wizz / F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. / The Fear / I Love Life / This Is Hardcore / Sunrise.

Pulp on Telly Part of the Reading concert from last August was broadcast on VH1 on 12 January on a ‘Reading Festival 2000 Special’. Sadly only Sorted and Hardcore were shown, and Jarvis’s mic sounded a bit dodgy on the latter – still, better than nothing!

Venini, the group that Russell started after he left Pulp, split up in February. Russell had already left last year, having decided he no longer really wanted to be in a pop group. The group continued for a period without him but then decided to go their separate ways.

Finally... Pulp People who have done a runner without telling me include: [4 names] Where are you??? If anyone knows, do tell.

...The now obligatory page devoted to things online.

<-- can I get sued for that? I still get the odd mail from people who haven’t changed their bookmarks fro mthe old URL to the new one. There is a forwarding service to www.pulppeople.freeserve.co.uk to the new address, but it only works if you land on the homepage, not if you have the news page bookmarked or in your favorites. If you hear anyone complainging because the site hasn’t been updated since November 2000, please do me a favour and direct them to www.pulponline.com. Thanks very much. The site continues to be upsdated almost daily and has now had over 101,000 visitors! Regulars will have noticed the recent change in font from lovely manana to not so lovely arial – this was to get round the problem of it defaulting to the even less lovely times new roman on browsers that do no support manana.

Vote for your fave album online! You can now actually vote online in our new polls! No need to send me emails or lists – just a simple click and your vote is registered. It’s only been up a short while but 184 people have already voted, and it’s neck and neck between Different Class and Hardcore. ‘It’ is lagging behind slightly with 4 votes.

Music Saucer This is a site set up to help all you budding musicians out there. I’m often sent demos and asked for advice regarding getting into the music business, so here’s someone trying to help you make it big. “Music Saucer has been created to give universal exposure to undiscovered artists of all musical genres. A virtual forum for artists, industry, media and fans, each with an insatiable desire for the sounds pushing the frontiers of music...with MP3’s, images, biogs, articles for sale, links, news, views, reviews and much, much more...”. Check it out at www.musicsaucer.com, or contact them at [...], or write for info at [...].

Rockfeedback: There’s an interview with Mark on Pulp Person Toby Langley’s http://rockfeedback.com site.

Record Collector Any of you who don’t have a copy of volume1 of the Pulp scrapbooks might like to check out Pulp Person Giles Bosworth’s Acrylic Afternoons site http://members.tripod.co.uk/pulp/where he has transcribed the entire 1994 Record Collector interview with Jarvis about Pulp’s early years. Got a bit too much free time Giles??!

Mobile Mania

If you really can’t manage without it, you can have a Disco 2000 ring on your mobile from www.fonedream.com

Get an outdated Pulp logo from www.crazytones.co.uk (pulp is no. 1683)

new & recent links

www.themusicvaults.co.uk – well researched biographical and discographical band site

www.the0universal.com – music site

www.netsounds.com - shopping