Pulp – The Boss (demo)
When we last left my music history lesson, I had just been exposed to general “alternative” music. I naturally gravitated towards the radio-friendly British bands, but the timing was right for me to branch out a little further. My first exposure to Pulp was when a friend gave me a tape of His ‘N’ Hers and Different Class with a few B-sides tossed in at the end. (Actually, now that I think about it, I did hear “Underwear” on Rodney on the Roq, I just didn’t know it at the time). Anyways, I think my friend was on her way to the Pulp concert in LA when she handed me the tape, and she told me I should check the show out. I was a little wary paying for scalped tickets for a band I hadn’t even heard the tape for, and besides, the show was sold out. Boy, did I regret not even trying to get a ticket. Pulp never played another show in LA again. Unlike other British bands, they never toured regularly to try and garner a stateside audience, and we all missed out.
This song makes me absolutely giddy. It makes me want to jump up and flail around and act like a total nerd without worrying about who sees me. It is like someone held an entire album of mid-90s Pulp in a vault somewhere and decided to release it all so you can feel as if you fell into a time warp. Don’t let the demo tags fool you; each of these songs on the deluxe editions of these albums sound pretty polished, at least to my amateur ear. My only (major) complaint is that these were not all compiled onto some sort of album. Instead they are interspersed with B-sides and live bits that I already dutifully collected over the years. So I give this to you as a taste of the new (old) stuff. With it, I can revise history and feel like I was there all along, being the well dressed kid with the right shoes…
–Nooker