What a strange experience it must be to join a band that you have been obsessing over as a fan for years. Stranger still to have the time that you are in the band be the most critically and commercially successful era. That unlikely progression from PULP fan to PULP member is what guitarist Mark Webber covers in this book. Similar to vocalist Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop, Bad Pop: An Inventory, this text is not simply an autobiography. It’s a form of artifact-mediated recall involving various bit of PULP ephemera that Webber has collected or kept throughout the years. Along with Cocker’s book, it makes for a solid history of the band, with a particular focus on their most popular era. It even includes a short coda about their 2023 reunion tour. Cocker’s book notably leaves off just as the band is about to release “His N Hers” and get the attention of the general public.
The dimensions of the book are also larger than Cocker’s text. This size difference is key because of the focus on images and objects that have been part of PULP’s history. Many of the trinkets in Cocker’s book were important to him as he formed his identity, which played a large part in the trajectory of PULP as a band. But they are not unusual items. What Webber has here are unique bits of PULP that have been collected and organized chronologically and analyzed personally. Because he started as a fan, it’s interesting to see what he deemed important enough to include in his collection. A similar book by Candida Doyle or Russell Senior would have yielded different items, or possibly nothing at all. (Notably, Russell Senior also began as an observer to PULP, reviewing an early gig of theirs in his zine.) In other words, who in a band decides when the band is worth documenting outside of its own recordings or flyers or reviews? It surely seems arrogant for every band to think from the start that whatever they will be doing must be worthy of inclusion in the history of human creativity.
In that regard, this book makes me think of the David Bowie Is exhibit that traveled the world from 2013 to 2018. Mrs. Tall Rob and I saw it in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art. One of the earliest items in the collection was a kerchief that Bowie had used to wipe off his makeup after a set in the “Space Oddity” era (or maybe even before). This object struck me as a prescient inclusion. Someone had to have thought that Bowie was already important enough to document for posterity by obtaining and saving this kerchief. Contrast that item with the records and news broadcasts and newspaper clippings that were on the wall in that room and it really stands out. He was hardly yet a thing and still someone backstage thought “ah, I better hold on to it” once he’d removed his stage makeup. The other media that documented him would have existed anyway—it’s just that he happened to be featured in them. The intentional choice to keep a discarded garment with some smears on it reflects a high level of devotion.
Webber’s book title comes from the BOWIE sticker “I’m with David Bowie, Aren’t You?” so the above digression isn’t really all that much of a step away from the text. He tells us right from the jump “I have always been a hoarder” and we are better off (as readers and as listeners) for that idiosyncrasy of his. If it wasn’t him collecting this stuff, then he maybe knew someone who had it. Take for example, a lascivious calling card from a London phone booth with a giant pair lips covered in deep red lipstick. This tiny promo image was a cropped version of a larger image that would eventually make its way to the cover of the “Lipgloss” single. A friend of the band had a copy of that calling card to share with Webber for the book, sure, but the bigger story is not just the documentation happening here. What is interesting to me is how bands take found images, whether innocuous or sexualized, and make them into their own art. No ideas spring forth fully formed from the mind of an artist. Every creative endeavor is a reaction or response to an earlier one, and images such as the lips on this calling card are evidence of that.
Truly, that is one of the important lessons you can take away from this book. The number of wild ideas Cocker & Co. had about how to do the band are well covered in this book’s pages. Some gigs were just gigs, but others were meant to be events. Not “record release” shows or NME showcases or package tours, but strange takes on what live music could be. Photos of PULP on stage with streamers or deflated balloons or various lighting rigs prove this out. They also gave away small pieces of an old pair of Jarvis’ plaid trousers to 500 members of their fan club. (Speaking of which, anyone have a lead on copies of Pulp People zine?) And, as important as a band’s visual identity can be, it’s cool to see them constantly experiment with different logos and fonts and other design choices on their flyers and album artwork. They had their inspirations but they were not wholly devoted to them. They took what was there and made something new or different out of it. That DIY spirit pervades these pages, even as the band becomes more well known. They’d be the last to tell you that “making it” was the goal of the band to begin with, or a goal that you should have for your creative outlets. All the same, Webber has shown us that you can make your mark by looking for ideas or inspiration in unusual places and by not limiting your vision to commercial success. Anything goes!
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