‘All voices should be heard’: Pulp open Adelaide Festival with 90s nostalgia and a simple message
Thousands turned out to see Sheffield’s finest Britpop exports kick off this year’s Adelaide Festival with a euphoric free set – and a pointed rebuke to censorship.
“Things are better when everybody is involved in them,” Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker told the crowd at Elder Park / Tarntanya Wama on Friday as his band played out their old classic ‘Common People’. “There’s no such thing as ‘common people’. There’s no us or them. It’s all us, we are all the same. But then, as I look out at you in this audience, you all look different, and that’s the magic of it.
“We can’t perform without you – it would just be a very long and expensive rehearsal.”
It’s a poignant moment given how close this concert came to being an empty park, an expensive rehearsal. Just across King William Street, the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden is all crickets and tumbleweeds on the eve of what would have been day one of Adelaide Writers’ Week.
A little over a month ago, the Writers’ Week controversy also threatened to derail this big, free, opening night concert when Pulp, its sole attraction, quietly signalled their intention to drop out over the “dreadful situation”. The festival’s new board subsequently reversed their predecessors’ decision to disinvite the Palestinian Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah, clearing the path for Pulp to proceed.
All things considered, it’s a small miracle Cocker and his crew took to the stage at all, let alone on this perfect Friday evening. Last minute weather warnings of rain and lightning conjured images of a Glastonbury-style washout, but by the time Cocker and band saunter onto the stage to deliver ‘Sorted for E’s & Wizz’ from their 1995 hit record Difference Class the better-prepared punters are left clutching dry umbrellas while the crisp afternoon sun gives way to a cool wind coming in off the Karrawirra Parri.
Flanked by his longtime bandmates Candida Doyle, Nick Banks and Mark Webber and several helpers on guitars, keys and percussion, Cocker is a consummate frontman. Dressed in the all-black uniform of a Gen X rock star, he struts and poses with spectacles and sharp elbows, splitting the difference between Mick Jagger and Bernard Black.
The band play a handful of songs from last year’s More, Pulp’s first album in over two decades, while dipping into their back catalogue from ‘Disco 2000’ to 1993’s ‘Razzamatazz’. There’s plenty of nostalgia as Cocker and pals wryly reflect on days gone by, the screen behind them projected with “informative videos” of his elfin younger self, along with old press photos, and imagery of the Sheffield nightclub “where we first heard dance music, music with bass.”
“It’s no longer there – it’s been demolished,” Cocker adds.
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He chats to the crowd about the band’s first Adelaide show at the Thebarton Theatre in October 1998, some 28 years ago. “Now I’m looking into the audience, and you all look very young. So obviously none of you were there.” An indignant response from a big chunk of the crowd begs to differ.
Later, he reflects on the circumstances behind this latest Pulp reunion tour, which began, as most bands do, with a handful of friends gathering in a living room and giving it a bash. They strip back to acoustic guitars and play ‘Something Changed’, another Different Class track dating back to the early ‘80s.
‘Where would I be now if we never met? / Would I be singing this song to someone else instead?’ he sings poignantly.
The quiet moment doesn’t last long before we’re back to those four-to-the-floor beats, chugging guitars and euphoric synths of peak Britpop. Inevitably, all roads lead to ‘Common People’, that fist-pumping rumination on class and privilege that hasn’t aged a day in 30 years. It hits particularly hard coming out of the festival’s opening night play, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard transposed to the ultra-wealthy of modern South Korea but with enough salient social commentary to hit hard in any time, in any city.
“This song was inspired by a conversation with someone I disagreed with,” Cocker tells the crowd near the end of the song, carefully reading from a piece of paper to make sure his next words land with clarity and intent: “So all voices are important. And all voices should be heard. Never forget.”
It’s a poignant moment, not at all undercut by the grand finale. As the band perform More’s closer ‘A Sunset’, they eschew the usual pyrotechnics display for a stage full of those inflatable men you see flailing outside used car dealerships. It’s a silly triumph, and perfectly Pulp – tongue in cheek, hand on heart, limbs flailing.
Pulp performed at Elder Park on Friday February 27 as part of Adelaide Festival
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