Jarvis Cocker

"There was a house I lived in for a while. I stored a lot of stuff in the loft of this house".

This is a sort of memoir of Jarvis Cocker's early years, growing up with his mum and sister in Sheffield, becoming interested in music and forming a band while still at school. That band, Pulp, did have some early success including a local live following and an appearance on the John Peel show. It goes up to about 1985, a couple of years before he moved to London to study for a degree at one of Britain's most famous art colleges, St Martin's.

I say a sort of memoir - on the inside cover, "This is not a life story. It's a loft story".

So rather than a linear confessional narrative, Jarvis Cocker is sorting out a lot of things in a loft space in a Victorian London house, some of them almost forgotten, others affectionately remembered. He is deciding what to dispose of and what to keep. Objects include concert tickets, posters, records and cassette tapes, also toys and empty food containers, and handwritten pages from old notebooks - with ambitions for his band as well as song lyrics.

I first heard extracts from the radio and I enjoyed listening, then borrowed a hardback copy from the library. I have a Kindle copy but would recommend reading in dead tree format because this book is as much about the colour illustrations as the reminiscences and anecdotes of home, school, friends, musical inspirations, playing music, life in Sheffield, South Yorkshire as a young man.

Jarvis's tone is witty and self deprecating and I really enjoyed this memoir on the radio (abridged) and in print.… (more)

A very lovely read, not only considering Jarvis' wonderful insights into the songs - all collected at the back of the book - but for the weirdness of reading the lyrics while not listening to the songs (which goes against the Cocker ethos of never simultaneously reading the lyrics whilst listening).

An indie-and-pop-loving child of the 90s, I engulfed "Different Class" when it came out in all its forms, even bought some Pulp deluxes, but this volume speaks heaps. It's nicely formatted, and reading the lyrics when shaped like they are in this book, serifed with completely different formatting than in the album sleeves, brings them to life again.

And there's more to just Pulp here, songs that he's written for his solo albums as well as for Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marianne Faithfull, including short essays and a short one from Relaxed Muscle, his very short musical project.

All in all: a nice read, with terrific insights into Sheffield culture, the place that spawned Cocker and influenced his songs a lot.… (more)