Different Class UK tour, supported by Minty.
The concert was filmed and excerpts were used in the No Sleep 'til Sheffield BBC documentary: All of the live footage in the programme, Sorted For E's & Wizz, Mis-Shapes, Do You Remember The First Time?, Disco 2000, Common People, is from the Sheffield Concert. The exception is I Spy which is from an unknown show. The rest of the recording has not surfaced.
Pulp return home in a different class
Huge queues outside a sold-out venue, with screaming fans and communal singing to near chart-toppers... it wasn't like this in 1981!
Actually it wasn't like this a year ago as it is only in the last few months that Pulp's story has gone beyond fiction.
It is a classic revenge tale, in which someone picked on for being different somehow manages to make himself more popular than his persecutors.
The victim turned victor is Jarvis Cocker, whose between-songs rumination on how his name got him beaten up at school and which Sheffield pubs to avoid if you look like him, were only equalled for entertainment value by the songs.
You can tell how far the band have moved on musically by the fact they could afford to start the show off with three singles and still keep the crowds' interest until the end.
Russell Senior, Steve Mackay, Candida Doyl and Nick Banks (whose goal-keeping legend uncle Gordon attended the show) have been in this a long time together, and even new boy Mark Webber was a pal of Pulp during the long, cold wilderness years.
So it was little surprise how together they sounded, even under the pressure of their first home town show since becoming major stars. From the sound of the songs on the forthcoming LP, Different Class, they will have no difficulty staying up there.
And inevitably it was Common People, the song which catapulted them to the present dizzy heights, which ended a near perfect pop show causing near pandemonium amongst a crowd which Russell reckoned was one of the most restrained of their entire tour.
Wonderful.
A funny one this. The review above is slightly disingenuous about things. Yes, the band were note perfect but they lacked any kind of joy, it was curiously flat as a show. The audienece felt very much like one composed of people attending their first Pulp concert. I know that sounds incredibly snobby but it's true. There were plenty of young girls in the audience many accompanied by parents! Jarvis was in a particularly irritable mood for most of the show. At various times he screamed at the audience in German between songs, and I mean he really screamed at them. Lord knows what he was saying but it didn't sound complimentary. He also played a rather cruel practical joke on the audience. He claimed that he had been to his first concert at the City Hall and then named the band he had seen (the name of the band now escapes me but clearly a made up name). He then asked if anyone else had been at the same concert as him, several people cheered at which point Jarvis shouted at them to 'Fuck Off, I just made that up', and turned his back on the audience as the next song started. The setlist was very unremarkable for the time, the standard Different Class setlist but minus I Spy, which for some reason they didn't play. The show opened with Sorted For E's & Wizz. They simply walked onstage without saying anything and played the song. I later found out that Sheffield City Council had been debating whether to let them play the song or not due to its recent controversy in the newspapers regarding the drug allegations. A compromise was reached along the lines of: Pulp were allowed to play the song if they played it first, with no introduction and the minimum of fuss. Sheffield City Council had a reputation for being quite conservative with their choices regarding club licenses and gig venues at this time. I suspect this also explains why the girl from Minty wasn't naked during their support slot. The after show party didn't fare much better. I can certainly confirm that Gordon Banks was there though. It featured DJ's from Club Smashing, We Are Electric & Pulp (well, Steve from Pulp and I remember he played Airwaves by Kraftwerk from the Radioactivity album). Whenever Jarvis made an appearance he was quickly swamped by young girls, he didn't come out very often! Mark was lovely and so was Nick. Steve was a bit distant and also very popular with the girls and I didn't dare to talk to Candida as she looked so tiny and shy. I already knew Russell a little from some previous meetings so had a good chat with him, he bemaoned the audience demographic and was generally quite downbeat, he was wearing his Union Jack socks I remember. All in all, a very unsatisfying experience for me. I was expecting fireworks and they never really went off. Without doubt the least entertaining show I ever saw Pulp play.
