The experience of reading this book is not unlike listening to PULP’s music. You get the sense of an unguarded look at the complexity of one person’s life as they discover their identity, with a clear focus on the most awkward, misguided, and salient moments in that process. This book gives a closer analysis of some of those half-remembered moments in PULP vocalist Jarvis Cocker’s life through artifact-mediated recall. Basically, he tells a significant chunk of his history through discussion of the objects he has accrued over the course of his life. He’s kept them in a loft in the attic of an old residence of his and he shares a fairly therapeutic recounting of that alcove’s contents.
Cocker takes us through these objects chronologically, beginning with early trinkets and toys that he uses to explain his interest in science fiction, music, and clothing. Part of the fun of this narrative framing is attempting to guess whether each item will survive the purge, or, in his words, which to COB (a word meaning to throw, as used by the people of Sheffield) or KEEP. If you’re anything like me and have been drawn to the music of PULP for Cocker’s use of inner thinking and spoken monologues during many songs, you’ll be easily able to conjure the sound of his voice in your head as you read.
The history of how those very spoken monologues came into being is a part of the book, too. In the early days of the band, he and Russell Senior (guitarist) took a day-labor job and their drives to the site in Russell’s mother’s van were soundtracked with a BARRY WHITE cassette. The player was no longer able to eject the tape, so they would repeatedly listen to the a-side, rewind, and listen again. It was during the interminable listens to these songs that Cocker had the idea of talk-singing over some of the instrumental passages in PULP’s songs (most notably in “My Legendary Girlfriend”). This moment, among others, was informative in explaining how some of PULP’s signature sounds or styles came into being. He explains this influence, as well as a few others, including SCOTT WALKER and Eurodisco, as being foundational to the project of PULP.
You will also enjoy that there are more than a few childhood and adolescent family photos featured in the text. Lest you think his ungainly stage presence is a put-on, these photos and the stories behind them will reassure you that he has always been awkward. It would have been quite humorous to learn from this book that he had been a football hooligan or top-form student as a youth, though! The funniest of these moments was his choice to grow facial hair after analyzing the back sleeve photo of Hugh Cornwell from The STRANGLERS. It’s clear, even from the tiny image in this book, that the facial hair in question is not hair at all. It’s merely a “shadow cast by the cleft in his chin,” as Cocker comes to realize. This attempted stylistic mimicry captures plenty of what makes PULP and Cocker so endearing. Plenty of similar charming indiscretions are found throughout the rest of the text.
As the page count increases and the amount of remaining pages decreases, you might be doing some mental calculations and inferring that there will not be a lot of time spent on PULP’s most popular era. The book ends just before this time, with a tantalizing image: Cocker’s acceptance letter from the Central School of Art and Design. The letter explains how that institution will be merging with St. Martin’s School of Art and Design in the future months… He implicitly promises another entry in this series, presumably beginning right as “Br*tp*p” (as he calls it) becomes inescapable. I’m looking forward to adding that book to my KEEP pile.
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