Festival season is upon us, and with Glastonbury’s thirty-first year now the stuff of myth, perhaps it would be a good time to time travel to past concerts. To start, here is Pulp headlining the Main Stage at Reading on 27 August 2011 (exactly seventeen years after their first Reading appearance in 1994). This is, of course, the reunited Pulp, complete with guitarist/violinist impresario, Russell Senior.
Pulp is a band that still has it, as this video attests. They would have blown the roof off the place had they not been performing outside. Jarvis Cocker will be fifty in a few short months, but he exudes the same youthful energy he’s always had. Jarv gives us a typically spasmodic performance while he whips the crowd into a Pulp Frenzy™ with his hypnotic hands. The whole gang is present: Steve Mackey on bass; Candida Doyle on keyboards; Mark Webber on guitar; Leo Abrahams on another guitar; and, most significantly, Russell Senior returning to his guitar and violin duties. Watch below, all you mis-shapes, mistakes, and misfits:
Do You Remember The First Time?
Joyriders
Mis-Shapes
Pencil Skirt
Something Changed
Disco 2000
Sorted For E’s and Wizz
F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.
I Spy
[Apropos of nothing, Jarvis tells us that on that day in 1859 petrol was discovered in Titusville, PA]
Babies
Underwear
This Is Hardcore, in which Russell is appropriately swapped out for the album’s second guitarist, Sheffield native and former guitarist for Longpigs, Richard Hawley
Sunrise
Bar Italia
Common People – Jarv talks about how they debuted this song seventeen years earlier at the Reading Fest where he hurried to finish the lyrics before going on stage.
