B O N D P H O N E.
Words and pictures by Chris Lamb.

Pulp's "Different Class" could have saved me a lot of trouble.

I never got into Pulp during their golden age. At the time, they were that English band that wasn't the Stone Roses, or Blur, or Radiohead, or any of the anthem rock imports making up the bulk of Britian's contribution to American Alt-rock radio. They were that group Catherine Moon loved and wrote stories like; the reason she talked like someone in two places at once with twice the experience of her age. I get that now. She was someone who knew how to listen and dissect having the feeling of being in love and poor and alive beamed at her via Jarvis Cocker's hopeful romanticism. So instead of listening to her and picking up "This is Hardcore" and "Different Class" when we found them classing up a used record bin, I started seeing Jenni and hanging around Susie and went with Blur. Not a regret, just two ways of getting roughly the same place.

'Common People' is introduction to class warfare without the easy key of race, religion, or sex. Rich Girl slums it with Poor Boy, but instead of going the route of Disney Animated it turns into a bitter litany against her (mostly) unconscious condescension and trust fund. It's every dirty look or flicked cigarette at the crowds of NoHo Sex and the City gangs making out with East Village gutter trash and throwing money at the walls to see it stick. What starts as a wink-and-grin tour with hopes of a few free drinks and a one-nighter at the end becomes culture shock, the original attraction lost in translation from daddy's money to pidgin english. Then, it would have been an early warning. Now it's every baffled look at choosing between cigarettes and food and carrying my wallet just out of habit.

I needed 'Disco 2000' five years ago like a long talk with someone older and wiser. The never-ending crush with full romantic comedy trappings that gets fumbled too early or too late, Cocker's shameless confessional is me and half my friends then, pining over our own person The Girl or Guy who never had a reason to suspect. Every twist of the story makes me smile or cringe along, knowing I've got my own parrallel war wounds. His "I never knew you'd get married; I would be living here on my own on that damp and lonely Thursday years ago" to the intrusion of reality in to my own personal Happily Ever After that introduced me to drinking; my still stopping over certain songs to his "We never did it, but I often thought of it."

posted by chris  # 2:09 PM