On 4 August 2015, back when Tumblr was popular, I posted a few screens from the Pulp:a film about Life, Death and Supermarkets movie, and I wrote: I fell for this, and I am only twenty years late.
That feeling is still very much with me today, but at least we got our very special 2023 summer.
Many summers before the summer of the 2023 encore, I was a teen and, as a teen, I was terrified by Jarvis Cocker. This is Hardcore came out when I was 14, for months his unimpressed grin and his spectacled supercool gaze stared at me from every music magazine my newsagent let me go through in my hunt for photos of some other artists. I knew that the album cover was controversial, dirty even, but I didn’t get why. I didn’t ask my mum, I bet she would have been delighted by my pure ignorance. So, no it didn’t start there.
It …

Read more

I’m very late to the Pulp party. Growing up in the U.S., I had never knowingly heard a Pulp song until I was 32, in 2018. It was “The Fear.” If anything could sum up the feelings of being in my early 30s, this cheeky-yet all-too-relatable lyrics of this song did the trick. “And when you're no longer searching for beauty or love
Just some kind of life with the edges taken off,” was the most relatable thing I could have possibly heard at that time where I beginning the slide downhill toward middle age, in a country seemingly on the brink of fascism, on a seemingly doomed planet. Who was this band? I began to research. I found “Common People,” and was just delighted by the wit, the snark, the sarcasm. I barreled into Pulp at full force. Different Class was so relevant that I could time my ride home from work that, if I started “Mis-shapes” in the parking lot, I would pass by boss’s house at the lines, “ What's the point in being rich
If you can't think what to do with it?
'Cause you're …

Read more

From a small northern town. Watching 2100 hrs on mtv, whilst parents were out, in the early 90’s a video and song came on that i instantly connected with. A dangly geeky guy, singing a jangly punching song. ‘Remember that band name’, i promised myself. A couple of months later, uni started, left home. City record shops abundant.

I hunted for that song. Found it; spending a fifth of my weekly allowance it.

Made a friend in a lecture. She was from sheffield. We both now had a cool secret that we could both share.

By the third year everyone was in on it.

Back in 2019, I discovered pulp thanks to my father, who was watching the MTV channel with music from the 90s and suddenly the great Common People video appeared. I was quite amazed by the song and later I started looking for information about the band. But it wasn't until September 2021 that my obsession with this group exploded, and I started listening to all the albums, one by one. Something curious is that there was not a single song that I disliked. Without any doubt, the album that fascinated me the most was the majestic "it" from 1983, which to this day is my most listened album of all time (I want to be buried with my vinyl copy). My first pulp item was the single by They Suffocate At Night (12") and from there I got the albums. My love for the group was so great that I even ended …

Read more

We saw Mis Shapes TOTP 1995. My brother bought DC on tape then. I still have it. If the house was on fire I'd save that. I vividly remember jumping 'round the bedroom with my brother and cousin miming to DC with the sweeping brush as a mic stand, tin whistles as drum sticks for air drums, and a snooker cue as a guitar. We got mad into Pulp. Bunking off school to sit in the pub playing Disco 2000 on the jukebox while the lads played pool. Great days. Walking back from the gig this June in Dublin we were reminiscing about the people we met on the way to our first gig in 1996 in Dublin. Those girls in the minibus holding the poster of Jarvis up at the window and us pointing to our Pulp t-shirts and waving, were you there this year too? I don't know what life is or what music is but I know it's been a better life and world …

Read more

I grew up in Chesterfield and used to go to Gotham City, it was the highlight of my week. Pulp played there on 10th July 1985 so yes, it started there for me but I can only just remember the first time. My boyfriend of the time Peter Boam was the support act. I'd met him a few months before and never realised until a few years ago that he had actually played in Pulp before I met him.

My first Pulp concert was at The Forum London 1995 and it was electric, my dad gave me extra money in case I lost my train ticket, but I spent it on a tour t shirt!! I remember getting to the front and dancing my socks off and feeling I belonged! That year most of my school friends still had posters of Take That and such on their walls, and couldn’t get my taste in music at all as I had Pulp, Suede and Pearl Jam, blasting out of my JVC ghetto blaster. It really was a year where I found my own taste in music, cut to 2023 and I did the same at the Hammersmith Apollo, still felt that same buzz and still felt like a teenager. What a great band, and Jarvis is just genius, imaging having a coffee with him and chatting about life over a fruit scone or two! I have no phot evidence of that time unfortunately but …

Read more

It was 4am round about the time Glastonbury is usually shown on the telly but it was in lockdown. As glastonbury had been cancelled, they put on a number of archival stuff such as concerts and documentaries. Anyway, I remember watching one half asleep and a song called Common People had appeared on my TV. It woke up and it had my full attention whilst my eyes were glued to the telly. Needless to say, it was the greatest 7 minutes of TV i’ve ever watched in my life and I’d give anything back to experience watching that song from the start.
This began my obsession and I immediately rummaged through my dads cd singles collection to find all the Pulp i could get. He only had the Disco 2000 single and Sorted single but nonetheless was more than enough to kick start it.
Then in Mid 2021 , I fell into a full blown Pulp obsession which i expected to get out of within a few months. As of writing this, i’m still well into it and show no signs of getting out. So i guess it started there…

Do I? I could tell you every detail about what I was doing, down to the clothing I was wearing. It was the 6th February 2019, around 6:30pm. I was drinking a hot chocolate, about to cram in some more revision as I was a sixth form student at the time. Out of nowhere, I got a message from someone I had never talked to, but I was ‘mutuals’ with on Twitter. They had sent me the Spotify link to Common People. “Heres a music suggestion for you…”

Now, I have no idea how Pulp had passed me by. I had forced myself into liking other Britpop bands my Britpop obsessed friends liked, as seemed the cool thing to do. I knew nothing before I first hit that play button, and that made it all the more special.

The only way I can describe how it was to hear Common People for the first time was like a head-rush on a fast paced rollercoaster downward spiral. I truly felt completely taken aback. I have never forgotten how I froze in my chair whilst hearing the ‘you’ll never understand…’ line for the first …

Read more

Theres the first' time and then theres the proper time for me. So for the first time I have this memory of sitting on the corner of my parents coffee table watching Rage (long running Australian music video show) and there was this song / video which I later learn is 'Disco 2000'. There's some guy singing in a TV screen and theres lots of colours and patterns and its super catchy. 'Charmless Man' by blur was also another song that sort of caught my ear but at this point pop music has not really registered just yet. Fast forward to late 1998. I'm now obsessed with anything Triple J and 'alternative' and any bands appearing on another Australian TV show called 'Recovery'. I religiously tape Triple J's Net 50 on a Saturday night and this is where I capture …

Read more

My ex used to have a habit of playing the first 30 seconds of a song, before moving on to the next song he was excited for me to hear. Babies was one of the first he ever played all the way through. I remember instantly loving it. I still get a thrill from hearing the opening bars. One of my favourite memories before we went our separate ways, was getting over a seriously rough time & holding hands dancing to I love life live at the Reading festival. This year I have a new memory of dancing to Pulp in a field in North London with my mates, watching the sun go down.

I was 16 when different class was released and listened to it on repeat. I first saw pulp live at V96 in Warrington and was hooked. Fast forward 27 years and I've taken my 15 year old daughter to Warrington, Manchester and Hammersmith this summer. It's been amazing to share the experience with her and see how much she loves the music.

90’s, in the U.S.. Different Class playing in the local bookstore. Immediately purchased CD, fan ever since.First saw live, and, met band on Coachella Cruise. Travelled to Dublin to see them again in 2023.

In my early years so say up to the age of 12 - I had a strange taste in music, we had not long had a satelitte dish installed and MTV was always on in our house. My favourite band at the time was Erasure. I was quite into all the weird groovy synth sounds and catchy lyrics...id even pretended to be like Andy Bell by throwing water all over my face as if i was sweating and doing all the dodgy dancing. I was very innocent then and didnt know anything about the homosexual nature of the band and what not. Not that there is anything wrong with that.....each to their own and what not? Then they did a cover version of a few Abba songs - and I was horrified to see my favourite band dressing up in drag - got worried that my friends would take the mickey out of me and bully me because of my taste. Again, I was very innocent and didnt understand about what was going on. I immediately stopped listening to them and started listening to the radio.

November 1995 came, and I remember listening to Red …

Read more

It started with "Do you remember the first time". Heard it a couple of times on the French radio, was in my early teens, thought it was good but at the time I was more used to listen stuff like Guns n'Roses or Nirvana. I remember going to the disc shop and seeing the CD, His'n Hers, the cover caught my eye but I couldn't afford it.
Couple of years later, it was Common People and then I never left.
Hoping to finally see you guys live next year (please, please European dates).
Arnaud

I was 13 in 2004 and I was a huge Franz Ferdinand fan. I started looking for b-sides, rarities, covers, etc. and suddenly I bumped into a Mis-shapes version they did for the BBC radio. I thought it was the best song I've ever heard and I felt so touched by the lyrics, so I went to find the original one. So it started there. I fell in love with Pulp and it almost inmediatly became my favorite band, til the present day. I love them so much I decided to include a cover version of Monday Morning in my first album, here's the link to it:
https://open.spotify.com/intl-es/track/1kFN5wNwI2qQPVUbAmEs5h

I haven't seen Pulp live yet (I'm from Argentina and I had no money when they came in 2012) but I will, in November.
Thanks for the space!

First of many live shows in the 90's I think was the NEC in Birmingham in 1996 with Edwyn Collins supporting. My brother and I were obsessed and my 10 year old sister was infuriated that she was too young to tag along. Pulp and Ocean Colour Scene were the soundtrack to life for the next goodness knows how many years and I'm grateful that I got to experience it all again this year in Cardiff.

The earliest exposure to Pulp I can recall is 2013, as I religiously listened to the soundtrack for the ‘The World’s End’ movie (hadn’t even seen the film at the time, I was just fascinated by everything to do with it as it was predominantly filmed in a neighbouring town) and lo & behold Do You Remember The First Time is featured on the tracklist. I credit that Br*tp*p-filled soundtrack as having almost entirely curated my teenage music taste (Blur, The Stone Roses etc etc) but I didn’t dive any deeper into the band’s catalogue at the time, the song came and went through my little head.

Flash forward to I wanna say 2018, I was sat in my parents’ car when Disco 2000 came on the radio. I’d been watching the show White Gold which features Laura Brannigan’s ‘Gloria’, and Disco 2000 interpolates it - and my silly brain exploded! Went on a full Different Class bender, eventually expanding to the other 2 “core” albums (reunited with Do You Remember The First Time!!!).

Flash forward to 2021, …

Read more

Got in the car to drive to work. The Kobe of work I was into was quite boring to me at that time. So I drove in silence, and got a bit grumpy. So I decided to switch on the radio to cheer me up a bit. And that bulleted me straight into "common people" exactly at the line: "I took her to s supermarket, I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere... so it started there"

Couldn't stop laughing for a while. Immediately bought the album different class that evening and listened to it over and over again. The nextn weeks I bought every album from before 1995 I could get my hands on.

I was a bit of a misfit as a youngster, never felt like I fitted in. I grew up in a very musical household so was always taught how important music was and how it had the power to influence your emotions. I remember seeing the video to Do You Remember the First Time and thinking 'this is MY music'! From then I bought a copy of His n Hers at a record fayre in Brighton and I couldn't believe how much I loved the album! It gave me goosebumps...I was only 12. The first time I saw Pulp live was at Wembley Arena in March '96 (a 13th birthday present from my parents). I cried the whole next day as I couldn't believe what I had witnessed. I'm now a 40 year old mum of 2 and I've just seen Pulp live twice during their latest tour. They still give me goosebumps to this day... :)

I was watching Glastonbury on TV in 1995 but had missed song title and band but was mesmerised by the lead singer and the music the band were playing. I was then on my quest to find out details. After chatting at work and getting hold of musical press I discovered it was Pulp and lead singer Jarvis. So then got cds, became a Pulp Person and my first time seeing Pulp live was V96. Hooked ever since and was beyond excited seeing Pulp on recent tour.

Well it happened years ago, Autumn of 1992 in fact. Saturday morning TV, possibly The Chart Show. I was sitting by the video poised to spring forward to press record for anything at all indie. And there it was, Pulp with Babies, the original video. And I fell in love.

First saw them live in 1993 in the tiny nightclub bit of Cardiff University student union. So long ago mobiles weren't even a thing & it was too risky to take your big decent camera to gigs, so no photographic evidence. Probably a good thing after a few Strongbows too many.

They absolutely blew me away live - the tunes, the styling, the moves, and Steve just being too cool for school. Man how cool was he. Straightaway I knew I was all in. They were talking about the real life that I knew. For me, no other Britband came close.

My bessie got married in 1998 and styled us bridesmaids to match the Different Class cover. After the 1998 tour I had to wait 25 years to see them again. And every last second lived up to their glory days.

At about 12 or 13 my Dad started introducing me to stuff that was, to be honest, probably too mature for someone who was barely out of childhood. It was often by accident while he was trying to show me something he really liked, but couldn’t remember how explicit it was. I distinctly remember being shown Pulp Fiction (not related to my discovery of the other ‘Pulp’…) and him being horrified that they were doing heroin onscreen while his 12-year-old daughter watched on. I’d also discovered his bootleg copy of ‘This Is Hardcore’ in our big tall CD stacker (or whatever you call this now-obsolete bit of furniture) maybe a couple of years before that and I remember being really scared by the cover. Or maybe just scared that I’d get caught looking at something I really shouldn’t be looking at, which was a naked half-dead …

Read more

My mom has been a big fan of Pulp since 1994, so the love just carried on to me. I started to get into pulp when I was 12. The first album for me to get was one of my moms CD’s, the “hits” compilation. I really wore that CD out until I got more of their discography. I was particularly obsessed with Babies, Disco 2000, and Underwear. Ever since, the obsession has just grown stronger, with me having a big collection of pulp albums/singles and a small collection of pulp merchandise.