MP3: Pulp Discography - Part Six: PulpIntro (1993)

Other parts in this series: One / Two / Three / Four / Five / Seven / Eight / Nine / Ten / Eleven
Right then. Back to business. I'm going to really make an effort now to get these Pulp articles done a bit quicker, because from my stats I can tell they're quite popular, and it seems like years since I got started doing them. This article, the sixth in the series, will look at the three singles recorded after the Separations album and that were later compiled for the compilation PulpIntro in 1993.


At this time Pulp had finally managed to leave the awful Fire Records, and in 1992 they were signed to Gift Recordings, an indie-ish spin off of the quite wonderful Warp Records. It's interesting to note that around this time Jarvis was also involved in filming some of the very earliest Warp music videos, most of which can be seen on the recent DVD compilation. Jarvo's contributions are a little basic, but they were recorded for about 5p each so that's understandable. Anyway the three singles that they released for Gift were O.U. (Gone, Gone) in June of 1992, the legendary Babies in October of 1992, and Razzmatazz in February 1993. OU is a pretty decent single, the weakest of the three but still interesting. The name came from the fact that Jarvis thought that the keyboard intro sounded like the music from the Open University. The bside so for this one was Space, a rather great monologue that serves as a nice introduction to the PulpIntro compilation when it came out. Babies is in my opinion one of the greatest British singles ever written, just absolutely perfect in every way, with a great great video, and it was deservedly recorded and rereleased on the Sisters EP and on Pulp's next album proper, 1994's His N Hers. The bsides for this single release were the quite brilliant Styloroc (Nites Of Suburbia), which is available below and is one of my favourite Pulp bsides (it even has a riff that sounds like Fugazi!), and Sheffield: Sex City, a semi-legendary 8 minute spoken word ode to sex in council estates. The third single from this period was the equally lovely Razzmatazz. It's probably my favourite non-album Pulp single, and I feel it could have definitely replaced one of the weaker tracks on His N Hers. The lyrics are quintessential Pulp: 'Am I talking too fast, or are you just playing dumb?', and it's very much underrated. The 3 bsides for this singles were something a bit special, a 3 part song saga called Inside Susan: A Story In Three Songs, made up of the songs Stacks, Inside Susan and 59 Lyndhurst Grove. All three are really good, and i've chosen Stacks as the third mp3 below. The Susan story was later resumed with the song The Babysitter on the Do You Remember The First Time? single in March of 1994.

After the success of these three singles, the band were soon released from their Gift contract and were signed to Island Records. From here on in it was up, up and up again. But anyway that's next time, so for now, hope you enjoy the tracks.

Download: Pulp - Styloroc Nites Of Suburbia - MP3 2.18mb
Download: Pulp - Razzmatazz - MP3 2.51mb
Download: Pulp - Stacks - MP3 1.86mb



Discography: (click to buy @ amazon.co.uk)

It (1983)	Freaks (1986)	Separations (1992)	Intro (1993)
His 'N' Hers (1994)	Masters Of The Universe (1994)	Different Class (1995)	This Is Hardcore (1998)
We Love Life (2001)	Truth And Beauty	Anthology	Ultimate Live