This week it was announced that Pulp are to reform and play at the Wireless festival. So far, so ho hum. With this news the rumour mill kicked into action and suggestions that they might play at Glastonbury started to spread. Exciting stuff?
I canvassed the opinion of a few people I know who have Glastonbury tickets, and they seemed pretty unmoved by the news. Still reeling with the disappointment of the headliner rumours (U2 and Coldplay sheesh) they were not going to have their enthusiasm renewed by this latest piece of gossip.
Pulp - in the past where they belong
I’m always torn by bands getting back together. In general I think it is a bad idea. It destroys a lot of the romance and magic, and in most cases the band becomes a cash generating greatest hits machine. In some cases it works (Madness have released an album that sits up with their best work from first time around) but in most cases it ends up disappointing.
I’m a sucker for my favourite bands coming back, and loved seeing the Pixies and Pavement second time around, but a part of me wishes they’d stayed dead. The memory of them was better than the reality in lots of ways.
Pulp’s reunion is an example of a different phenomenon. The long term strategy of a band to regain lost credibility by splitting up and coming back after a long enough period that people think you were still cool. James did it and more recently Suede. Neither band ended because of in-fighting or “creative differences”, it was lack of interest in their records that killed them.
Nobody liked A New Morning (or anything that Brett Anderson has done since for that matter) but 8 years later all is forgotten and they can be the band that sold a load of copies of Coming Up all over again.
I liked Pulp, they did some great pop singles and were unlike any other band from their era. However, in a career spanning three decades they only released two albums of any real significance. With Different Class they reached their pinnacle but This Is Hardcore and We Love Life alienated the fans to the point where they couldn’t even sell copies of their greatest hits collection.
The latest (non)news is that Alan McGee thinks that Oasis will definitely reform at some point. Now, despite what I say above, I think Pulp will be good live. They have enough great songs in their catalogue to make a decent set and Jarvis Cocker is one of the best front men of his generation. A reformed Oasis live would be terrible. Their back catalogue is largely awful (not even they like half their albums) and they are one of the worst live acts this country has produced. Noel Gallagher has some wit about him, but a showman he is not. The rest of the band don’t have a personality between them. That just leaves front man Liam. His swaggering sneering face routine got tired decades ago (and was a lazy John Lydon rip-off to begin with), and given his appalling live vocals he doesn’t have any other tricks to back him up. Evidence of how bad they got can be seen below with a clip of them playing at Glastonbury 2004.
My advice to Pulp (or any other bands that had a brief but brilliant moment in the limelight) is to stay dead, preserve the magic. Oasis, on the other hand can do what they like, they never had any magic to start off with.
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