The Radio 1 One Live in Birmingham site includes a webcast and pictures from Pulp's performance.
Words & Pictures: Giles
The Fear proves to be as desperate and paranoid as ever and I'm dead chuffed that they're still bothering to play it live. Maybe it's an odd choice when you think there was only four non-We Love Life tracks in the entire set, but Pulp make it well worth the trouble. Who needs Babies, Sorted & Common People for the 100th time when you can have a superb rendition of The Fear for the 10th? Controversial maybe, but times have changed. And if you've ever the chance to watch Mark play that cascading guitar solo, then take it, cause some inept photographer eclipsed my line of view right at my most favourite Webbo moment. Bugger! I just hope he got (yet another) good photo of Jarvis who was by now starting to strip off under the strain of the heat. Having taken off his jumper (a rather nice and inoffensive one, before you ask) he suggestively said that, "We could pretend for people listening on the radio that I'm naked now." Pretend? But he really was naked. Honest!
There are times when Jarvis ruthlessly takes the piss out of an audience that in its collective excitement will cheer for almost anything. He asks what major rivers flow through Birmingham... "The River Birm? The River Ingham?". As he explains the next song is about the Rivers Don and Porter, a small enthusiastic cheer goes up as people know they're about to play Wickerman, the glorious centrepiece of their new album. Sensing his moment, and knowing full well why we're cheering, he jokingly comments that he didn't know there were so many river-fans here tonight. "So let's hear it for the River Trent?" he sarcastically asks. "Yeahhhh" replies the crowd, who enjoying playing Jarvis' game. Steve and Richard, chuckling away, look on at Jarvis through admiring smiles. At this one moment, Jarvis has got the band, as well as the entire audience, eating out of his hands. There was no doubt who the star of tonight's show was. Jarvis couldn't help himself... "And how about... the Severn?"... "Yeaaahhhhh-woooo!", came the reply. It could have gone on for ages. He tells us the next song is 8 minutes long and all about rivers. Skimming his stretched fingers over his nipples he wryly observes that we'll be 'Buzzing our tits-off'.
Now I admit that Wickerman might be a bit lengthy, and might require an extra ounce of attention, but if you can actually be arsed to really listen to the words and relate them to the epic soundtrack they frame, you're in for a wonderful experience. It was the only song I really wanted them to play tonight and I felt relieved that they'd opted to play it instead of churning out a couple of old favourites. The hits may well get the mosh-pit going, but it's moments as sublime as this that make the most special concerts - think how great it is that Blur still bother to play 'This Is A Low' when they could churn out a couple of old singles instead. Hearing Wickerman gives me a similar sense of satisfaction and is definitely a song worthy of the patience it demands. By the time you reach the end of it, the fact that Jarvis has just transported you on a cinematic subterranean journey through the Sheffield grime is surely special enough to want to hear it all over again. During the song, Jarvis tangled the mic lead around his neck and shoulders, though he confessed afterwards that he really didn't know why, but it did make for a great photograph (left). 
Jarvis' comedy chatter continued apace as he explained to us that it was his dad's birthday today, and what with his dad being born on Halloween, and with his mother being born on Friday 13th, he must have been devil's child! As if that wasn't random enough he went on to tell us how a few days ago, this girl lifted her skirt up to flash him and he noticed that she'd got '666' tattooed amongst her pubic hairs. Nice story Jarvis! Momentarily slipping back into his stand-up routine, he eventually realised he was supposed to be singing and promptly got stuck into I Love Life. I admit to not being a huge fan of this track when they debuted it last summer, and I'm relatively indifferent to it on the album, but like Sunrise, it's final half is just fantastic to watch and hear them play live. The energy, the wall of angry noise, the physical release is just what you need mid-way through a concert. By the time it ends my body feels toasted by the inescapable radiation of the sound. Eventually, the song can't work into anything bigger, louder, any more contorted or passionate and it shatters to pieces all over the place, leaving an exhausted Jarvis barely holding himself upright, just being able to "breathe-in, breathe-out". It's like we're all wired up on some communal life-support that's about to give way. It really was superb!
The excitement of Sunrise is not exclusively confined to the instrumental, but also in the long build up to it. As the anticipation rises, the stage lighting gradually changes from dark blue into a golden yellow. At the end of the vocal, just before the instrumental really crashes in, Jarvis abandons his mic and prowls along the front of the stage in a 'come-on then, let's-ave-yer' style provocation. He knew we really wanted it and as he limbered up his jangly mass he sent the audience into clapping frenzy who were picking out the ascending beat. The clapping got louder and faster, drawing in almost everyone there. At the break of the sun, the infectious hand-in-the-air clapping gave way to an energetic outburst of jumping, pushing, moshing and cheering. It was bloody fantastic, and the following 30 seconds of Pulp were worth the ticket money alone. You celebrate this Sunrise moment however you choose, but one thing's for sure, and that is if you celebrate it with a crowd of like-minded people, it's one of those 'sum of parts' moments which gives me some sort of shared experience which takes you higher than you'll ever imagine. I know it's a cliché, but your spine really does tingle, even at the memory of it. It's hard to imagine what your parents did before the invention of TV, and in a similar way, it's also hard to imagine what today's Pulp concerts would be like without Sunrise.
They come back after the encore and launch straight into Party Hard which sends the audience absolutely mental. If like me, you're the sort that has to gasp for breath during the break in the Sunrise instrumental, then Party Hard just leaves you out of breath altogether. But there's no let up tonight because as soon as its over, the swirling synths of Common People are whipping up the expectation and excitement further. The enthusiastic response was assured and with the rousing finale complete, they stroll off the stage just before 11 o'clock, having managed to play most of their new album, yet still entertain a pretty sizeable crowd. From the new album, only Bob Lind, and most surprisingly, Bad Cover Version fail to get played tonight. I can only assume that the guitar pieces in Bob Lind are a bit too tricky for Richard Hawley to play live, though not playing Bad Cover Version, which I'm still hoping will be a December single, is unexplainable. Anyway, nine songs out of eleven is pretty good going, although it did necessitate dropping a couple of Hardcore singles, F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E and any His 'n' Hers regulars they would normally play.