Many moons ago, I played records at a Saturday night indie dance megaclub in Los Angeles. As is the case with LA indie clubs, Pulp was ridiculously popular with the crowd, only slightly less so than The Holy Trinity and Blur. Most of the time, the crowd was wont to hear "Common People" and "Disco 2000." Frankly, after my first few months of a three-year stint at the club, I had tired of both numbers. There has to be something else, I said to my AOL Brit Pop Room friends.
Fortunately, there were enough hardcore Pulp fans to keep the floor from clearing when I played "Countdown" for the first time. It was an older track, initially released in 1991, and found on a compilation of the same name. I imagine that this song was quite unfashionable when it was first recorded. There is a pogo disco beat marked by snippets of Shaft-style guitars and Jarvis Cocker sounding like William Shatner with an Alan Partridge-accent (and you must understand that I mean this in the most complimentary fashion). In late-2000, "Countdown" sounded modern, right at home with Magnetic Field's "Long Forgotten Fairytale" and Ladytron's "Playgirl."
Sometimes, my Brit Pop Room friends would request "Death Goes to the Disco," the second song on this disc, and sometimes I would oblige, playing it early because of the slow, jerky beat. Pulp's disco dirge has a variation of the Soul II Soul beat-- the shake, shake, snare drum machine pattern present on virtually every song recorded between 1989 and 1992. I wonder if this was Pulp's attempt to fit in with the British scene after a few years of playing to little attention, an attempt thwarted by an electronic maraca sound reminiscent of the demos on mid-1980s Casio keyboards.
Whenever I listen to this two-disc compilation, I'm struck by the pure strangeness of Pulp. On "Down by the River," the guitar hits tinny notes that mimic a tone deaf choir girl. "Master of the Universe" sounds like the Mission (actually Simon Hinkler of the Mission once played with Pulp, but I am not sure if it is on this song). "Dogs are Everywhere" is bizarre in that the lyrics seem so innocent for Cocker, whereas "Little Girl (with Blue Eyes)" is sort of dirty in a tears-of-regret fashion. On "The Mark of the Devil" Cocker's croon kind of, sort of matches the dark new wave keyboards, similar to Soft Cell's work on The Art of Falling Apart.
Everything that made Different Class a staple of my high school music collection is here, but pieced together in a way that does not work quite so seamlessly. Countdown is the story of a band in progress and perhaps that is why I still listen to it with reverence.