Pulp's This Is Hardcore -- C or D?

"Seductive Barry" is killing me, though. I mean, I know everyone says it's a Barry White tribute/parody, but it seems a lot more than just that...

what other Pulp b-sides are worth a listen?

pretty much all of them since (and including) the "OU" single.

"Laughing Boy" was the only decent B-side from that era, I think. The rest were wisely kept off the album.

The B-sides from the singles are also vastly better than the Different Class b-sides too. The remixes on the singles were pretty crap though. Especially Party Hard CD2 and This Is Hardcore CD2. Ugh.

"Seductive Barry" is their tribute to Shriekback.

I always thought LB was a slapdash joke that should never have left the studio - one of the few examples of great lyrics failing to elevate a mediocre tune. Seconded re: "Ladies' Man", it's fab.

Otherwise, Pulp are basically the quintessential b-sides band, right up there with PSB. The Intro album has more b-sides than not, and is still my favourite Pulp LP.

This Is Hardcore is marvellous, very dark but lusciously so, sometimes oppressively emotional and overwrought but that's no bad thing - Jarvis may well have over-second-guessed the public by starting it off with "The Fear"'s killer lyrics "This is the sound of someone losing the plot, making out that they're ok when they're not, you're gonna like it, but not a lot" - this line alone put the idea into people's heads that TIH was somehow inferior to DC. They're vastly different records, almost incomparably so, but it's overharsh and trite to say "no pop=no good"...and what about "Party Hard" & "Glory Days" anyway?!

In conclusion...CLASSIC.

Anyway, this album? Pretty damn sweet.

TIH is really good, but sags a bit for my tastes. Different Class, and We Love Life are more consistently great, though I realise this is because I love different things in Pulp than others.

And every night I'd lie on the floor and give myself backache while my brothers lobbed stuff at me from the sofabed. And I'd put This Is Hardcore on me walkman and just listen, that being the only escape I had from anything at all really.

It wasn't the only album I had, cos I do remember listening to The Boy With The Arab Strap and XTRMNTR at some point as well, but I just kept coming back to it. And I fucking adore Seductive Barry. I dunno if I'd be able to remember the lyrics, but to me it had nothing to do with Barry White at all... if anything, it seems a bit like a flipside to Minnie Timperley, the whole theme of dirty, crappy sex, the one good shag in a million that people keep searching for. It's not a happy song, but it is far better than people ever give it credit for.

The greatness of The Fear had already been expressed, and so has Sylvia, but I always loved The Day After The Revolution the best. The "Bye-BYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEE..." at the end... Pulp could have just ended it there - fuck it, everything could have ended there - and it would have been superb.

I have not listened to This Is Hardcore in years, but I don't think I'll ever forget it. I'll have to do a longer thing about Jarvis one of these days as well...

P.S. on We Love Life - I have a copy but I've yet to listen to it... anyone that suggests that Weeds, Minnie Timperley and Sunrise are in any way a disappointment is very, very wrong, though.

"All I know is I can't even think of...can't even think of...AN-Y-THING CLEVER TO SAAAYYYY!"

Brilliant!

I must've forgotten half the tracks off it, annoyingly... off the top of my head, there's:

Fear
Dishes
Hardcore
I'm A Man
Party Hard
TV Movie
Seductive Barry
Glory Days
The Day After The Revolution
A Little Soul (another hugely underappreciated one... they released too many singles of that album, so ALS and PH got dismissed as filler. Sigh.)
Help The Aged
Sylvia

I think there were more, but I'm not sure. I do need to listen to it again, soon as possible.

i think this is true, by and large. the title track really achieves something interesting, though, doesn't it? reminds me in structure and theme (and the melding of the two) of one of those endless donna summer tracks like "love to love you baby."

i like how JC gets coyness out of way, right off the bat: "you are hardcore / you make me hard." it just descends from there. (there's one line in this song i don't like though.)

"help the aged" is pretty great too--jarvis limning the limits of our empathy and stupidity i guess.

the sequencing is perfect, but i'd lose the last song.

Classic, even though I can't always remember bits of the second 'side'. Dig the really grandiose bits...

I actually think the sequencing on this is a bit odd, because it's so off-putting, i.e. putting the bleakest thing at the front. Wilful obscurantism, and being difficult just for the sake of it wins no friends in my book, so I once suggested moving The Fear to track 11 and putting "The Professional" as track 1 instead.

Who directed the "This Is Hardcore" video? The usual places aren't telling.

i love quite a lot tracks on this but there are some awful sounding guitars on quite a lot of it.

Cunga, wasn't it Doug Nichol?
I love that song. :)

Classic and classic. We really need to poll this.

This album could REALLY have done with lopping off about 25-30 minutes of extraneous blargh.

1. The Fear
2. Dishes
3. Help The Aged
4. This Is Hardcore
5. Glory Days
6. Seductive Barry
7. The Day After The Revolution

^^^perfect.

Seductive Barry, I have determined, isn't for Barry White, it's for a different Barry, who a) collaborated with JC around this time and b) creates similarly sexy soundscapes. It's also the best track on the album, and one of Pulp's great achievements, imo.

In fact, my term for Seductive Barry is a sexscape...

xpost: OTM, you are sir! A fine album that could do with a bit of fat-trimming to end up as an A+ EP.

That's definitely still album-length! Christ!

Erm..kinda borderline, like Come on Pilgrim, which has been traded under either classification.

Depends on whether you want 5-minute TDATR or 15-minute cat-sleeping-on-keyboard thingy

Actually it doesn't depend on that, this is over 35 minutes whichever way = album

it seems I saw you in some teenage wet dream
I like to "get up," if you know what I mean

It's "your get-up". Meaning "your clothes".

shhh, you're ruining it

It's still pervy, either way.

Classic, of course!

Different Class is a great record, but this and We Love Life are the ones I really find myself returning to.

Pulp post-1996 > Blur post-1996, too.

the title track really achieves something interesting, though, doesn't it? reminds me in structure and theme (and the melding of the two) of one of those endless donna summer tracks like "love to love you baby."

A great observation. Never would occurred to me, but now you mention it...

Classic! I remember trying to hide the album cover from my Aunt as a young one. "Dishes" has a great solo.

Classic. I have such vivid memories of listening to this album on my discman on my Oakland to SF commute.

I don't think I have listened to it since the ol'days but I remember liking the title track a lot.
In my memory, the whole album was so dark with a morning after party hangover vibe.

They did a great thing on this tour (at least, at the date I saw), at the start of the show. Title track began, Jarvis came on to much excitement, hamming it up in true 1995 style. But was then revealed to be an impersonator as the real Jarvis walked slowly onstage behind him, like someone watching a real life replay of himself the night before the morning after.

Sounds a bit Pink Floyd, that!

Pulp post-1996 > Blur post-1996, too.

― Working night & day, I tried to stay awake... (Turrican), Thursday, February 16, 2017 3:03 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Pulp post-1996 > Blur post-1996, too.

Well yeah, that too!

It's funny how much some of Blur's stuff has aged quite badly, particularly Parklife which I find a bit of a cringefest these days. Modern Life Is Rubbish and Blur have probably aged the best.

Coming from a position of next to no expertise, I think the title track is superb, one of my two favourite Pulp songs (other being Wickerman, guess I like epic moody Pulp best) but I have to confess I've never listened to the whole album.

if you like epic moody Pulp make sure to seek out the "Complete and Utter Breakdown" version of the opening track

And if you need same:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODwoLQQRnlQ

This mix by Tipsy remix is also fabulous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebY1Inyk5MI

what a stark, wintry album. even the poppiest moments sound like they're suspended over a gaping chasm

except maybe "glory days" but that gets its tension through anthemic resignation

The Glastonbury 98 set the year it was released was so weird. Especially after the triumphant set in 1995. Come to think of it i don't think any band ever came back to headline again so soon. It was possibly a bad idea. They did almost all the album (9 songs just looking at Setlist Fm), pointedly leaving out many of their other hits (Disco 2000, Babies, Lipgloss, Mis-Shapes..). It had been easily the worst year for mud ever and this was the final night of the weekend, so many people had already long-since gone home. Whole thing was subdued and cold and bleak. About as far from the fancy lights and lasers big Glastonbury headline shows you see on telly nowadays as you could imagine.

Jarv was wearing a flashers mac that he kept on and i thought he looked awful, it's pretty well-documented what was 'going on' behind the scenes i guess. If you want an image of the 'Britpop Comedown' this was it.

https://pulpwiki.net/pulpwiki/wikiimages/TV/Glastonbury-98-1.jpg

Are you ready to rock?
Hmm, can you party with me?
Can you show me a good time?
Do you even know what one looks like?

"Why do we have to half kill ourselves..just to prove we're alive" is probably my favourite Jarvis line

Good a place as any to point out something trivial I was thinking about a while ago: UK number one albums inspired by mid-90s lounge revival in different, non-musical ways:
New Adventures in Hi-Fi (the title), I've Been Expecting You (the photographs) and This Is Hardcore ('this is our Music for a Bachelor's Den')

Ofc all three albums have at least one track that arguably ties in but even so

They went there musically on this b-side remix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebY1Inyk5MI