Our favourite Virgo and Pulp frontman, one of the most successful bands in the UK, Jarvis Cocker has a new book slated for release next month.
After forming Pulp at high school and going on to become one of the biggest bands to come out of the 90s (they last played together in 2012) Jarvis Cocker has pursued a solo career in journalism and radio. He’s not one to stop there, he has just released his first long-form prose, Good Pop, Bad Pop.
Over the last eight years, Cocker hosted Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service on the BBC, as well as the award-winning BBC Radio 4 documentary series Wireless Nights, a podcast dedicated to Cocker’s wide-ranging interests and true-life experiences. Episode titles ranged from ‘Jarvis Cocker goes into hospital and the anesthetic gives him very strange visions’, to ‘Jarvis Cocker gets lost in the forest at night and encounters some intriguing characters’. Cocker has imbued his distinct dry wit through all his creative endeavours, and his new book, Good Pop, Bad Pop is no exception.
Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop, Bad Pop shares his journey of clearing out his loft as he takes an inventory of everything that he has gathered over his life so far. Sorting through the old clothes, and memorabilia from his time in Pulp, led him to a little introspection, and he found himself asking, what if the things we keep hidden say more about us than those we put on display? Who do you think you are? Are clothes important? Why are there so many pairs of broken glasses up here?
We all have things we have collected, things that made us – photos, ticket stubs, clothes, souvenirs, all stuffed in a box, or packed away in a suitcase. When Cocker began the task of clearing out his loft, he finds that everything he unpacks is akin to a diary entry, a perfect catalogue of his story, and this is what he has used as inspiration to share his very unique life story.
From a polycotton shirt to a pack of gum, from his teenage attempts at songwriting to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book, displaying hard evidence of his remarkable life when Pulp was at its biggest, memorabilia from the good times and the bad. Cocker unpacks the loft, and shares in the creative process of how the past shaped and led him to where and who he is today.
Good Pop, Bad Pop is slated for release on June 15.
