the missus and i headed out to sunset park last night for a rooftop screening of pulp: a film about life, death & supermarkets. the director, florian habicht, saw pulp's farewell show at radio city* in 2012 and invited jarvis cocker to his latest project's debut at the london film festival. they decided at an ensuing cafe meetup that florian would go up to sheffield, scare up and film a bunch of locals, and then follow the band's final hometown performance in motorpoint arena. the documentary they put together (quite together: jarvis watched three different cuts back to back before giving florian notes) is even more enjoyable than i, the easiest of easy marks, thought it would be: butchers at castle market speak of jarvis's family's affinity for fish,** a tween girls' dance troupe performs to "disco 2000," an elderly singing group accompanies a guitarist upstairs at the market through "help the aged," an old knifemaker notes that if he had his life to live again he'd spend it making knives. the concert footage is as marvelous as that radio city show was for me (i still can't bring myself to delete the long, terrible iphone video i took of "this is hardcore"). the rooftop venue is as close as we get to something as lovely as cinespia (no graves out there among the warehouses, but the moon was bright and the whole block smelled like baking bread). i came extremely close to breaking my no-talking-to-celebrities rule and introducing myself or awkwardly asking for a picture one of the ten jillion times jarvis walked by, but my willpower kicked in right when my nerves settled down, thank god. i'm a little sorry that i didn't try out for the pulp karaoke contest jarvis and florian judged at the afterparty even though "like a friend" wasn't on the song list—in the words of youtube's jerseygurl620, there is a dark remote corner of my heart only [that] song can access—and a smidge sorry that we left just before a nine-year-old won the whole thing with "this is hardcore," but who am i kidding? nights like that are the superb fairy-wren songs that tell me this town's my baby.***
YOU CAN EVEN BRING YOUR BABY: PEOPLE YOU WILL MEET AT PULP KARAOKE
01 the girl who marched up to jarvis and said, "mister cocker, may i shake your hand?"
02 the guy who asked jarvis to autograph his relish
03 the pregnant woman who performed "monday morning" with a talcum-powder finale
04 the guy in a hoodie pulled up over a ball cap who earned the chance to perform "sorted for e's & wizz" by photoshopping his head onto lil' kim's body
05 the girl in the gin line with panther-frame glasses
06 the gangly frizzy-haired kid who wore a marvelous cockeresque maroon suit, performed the first half of "babies" with flawless moves, then fell off the back of the stage ("i have fallen off the stage many times myself," jarvis noted)
07 the guy who "performs karaoke in bars around the world," showed up in a white jacket with black piping and an embroidered crest ("a good jacket," per jarvis) and simulated his own reverb for "disco 2000"****
08 the girl who earned her spot when, informed that the nine-year-old had already claimed "this is hardcore," said "i can fucking beat a nine-year-old," then went for it with a delivery that sounded like nancy sinatra talking in her sleep ("you had a difficult song with a minute of nothing at the start, and you handled that well," jarvis said; "also you drove me to this place, full disclosure."*****)
09 the girl who came onstage dressed like an old lady ("help the aged") and sang-talked slowly (joe: "she's shatnerizing this?"), stripped down to a black one-piece bathing suit over the course of her performance, then asked for the glasses she'd whipped into the crowd ("i actually need those to see.")
imaginary reading group discussion questions
01 would you have introduced yourself or awkwardly asked for a picture with jarvis cocker?
02 what would you wear to pulp karaoke? what would you sing for it?
03 what would your family's superb fairy-wren song be?
04 is it reasonable for a nine-year-old to sing "this is hardcore"?
05 is it reasonable that joe wanted me to come home with him even though i don't get sleepy? (the walk back to the subway was sketchy, he argued.)
06 should i hunt down those panther-frame glasses?
*gather ye dirty while ye may indeed.
**not quite as squicky as it sounds; his saturday job was at the fishmonger, which, as he explained, made it difficult for him to chat up girls later that night (he soaked his hands in bleach for ten minutes to try to get rid of the fish-stink, "and then i smelled of fish and bleach, which was even worse").
***so are brooklynvegan commenter fights about show recaps, if we're being honest.
****he weathered some serious glitches on the part of the karaoke machine with professionalism. "if we were scoring for accuracy you'd be the top, but we're not," said jarvis.
*****i thought that was a metaphor until he explained that he was afraid of not having a ride home. the crowd booed her (high) score.
3 comments:
...and the nine-year-old is a buzzfeed story, unsurprisingly.
And 9, in my opinion, is just a little too young to be supported in singing that song. Eleven would be OK.
I let D go home by himself, against my own misgivings, when I wanted to bail on Saturday after the brew crawl and, as I suspected, it turned out to be a minorly bad idea. He fell asleep on the subway and then thought walking all the way home from Hollywood/Highland was reasonable (which it possibly is, if you haven't been drinking all day). But he did eventually make it home.
All that to say - I kind of sympathize with Joe (in both the sleepiness and the worry) but I suspect you're much more responsible.
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