A good long while back I wrote an entry about Blur’s album Parklife and just how awesome vintage Blur was.
Yet there is, in my opinion, an even better band led by a tall, gangly guy who wears suits no longer en vogue who would be nearly blind without his glasses/contacts. A man that at some stage once broke a few bones pretending to be Spiderman and featured the wheelchair he was previously bound to in stage shows.
If Damon Albarn is the kind of guy that makes you want to thrust your bare breasts straight in his face so he can sign them, then that makes Jarvis Cocker the kind of man that you want to be holed up with in a dingy little cafe that’s falling apart, where the staff won’t bother you when all you order is a cup of coffee, and chat for hours.
I’d want to ask him if any of the lyrics from Different Class (1996) are in any part based upon…personal experiences? Has he ever drunk a toff’s brandy and smoked his cigars whilst bonking missus who wanted a touch of a commoner? Did he skilfully avoid dog turds as he rode on his bike?
Of course Jarvis isn’t above giving us the cheesy old ballad - ‘Something Changed’ is about meeting some random chick and going all romantic…rah rah rah - imagine those sweeping, lyrical violin passages and you might be able to get what I mean (if you’ve not had the pleasure of hearing the song).
Of course, ‘Disco 2000′ and ‘Common People’ were the commercial hits on that album but every song on it is a winner. I think seeing ‘Sorted for E’s and Wizz’ performed at the 1996 Brit Awards with Jarvis suspended in the air thanks to a harness is one of my favourite musical moments of all time.
The end of the album rolls along. ‘Bar Italia’ tells the story of that bloody loner who just won’t go home and you’re the poor bitch stuck on the late night shift. You just want to close up and it’s not at all nice to kick the patrons out now, is it?
I would love to be some random cruddy bar patron and would happily tolerate Jarvis’ conversation. Hey, I might even let him cop a feel: I am a slag born south of the Thames (in London: supposedly the ‘earthier’ types live round those parts and the more well-to-do folk north of the river). I’m cheap enough.
Ah…all hail Jarvis.
“…in a matter of hours we’d change the way we were going…where would I be now if we’d never met? Would I be sing-ging this song to someone else instead, I dunno it’s like you said…
…Something Changed.”
