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jamesgeraghty
Sep 25, 20234 min read

Jarvis Cocker

As ever, here at Birds That Are Blue, we're a bit late to the party - but last week was the 60th birthday of the venerable Jarvis Cocker, singer with Pulp and all round cool dude.


So, what better way to help him belatedly celebrate, than to make him the starting point for this episode of Six Degrees Of Kevin Shields.....

Photo credit: Julian Simmonds

Jarvis Cocker was born on 19 September 1963 in Sheffield. During the 1980s, he had long spells being unemployed, and also a brief stint as a butler! But he also formed a band - Arabacus Pulp (apparently this is a tradable commodity he learned about at school). That band, following various line up changes, would of course become Pulp. They broke into the UK mainstream in the mid-90s with the albums, His 'n' Hers (1994) and Different Class (1995). Several more albums followed before they went on hiatus in 2003. Solo album Jarvis came out in 2006, before his more recent collaborative projects and of course, the recent Pulp revival. In 2017, he formed the band Jarv Is, that includes harpist Serafina Steer, Andrew McKinney (James Taylor Quartet), Jason Buckle (All Seeing I) and Adam Betts (Three Trapped Tigers). That year also saw him work with Chilly Gonzales on the Room 29 project, which was his first album in eight years, and was a concept around a room at the Chateau Marmont hotel in LA, which had a baby grand piano in it. The album wondered what stories that piano could tell.


(Official music video)


Chilly Gonzales, born Jason Beck, is a musician from Montreal, who was in the 1990s alt-rock band Son, but more recently has been based in Europe, ending up in Cologne. He is a noted classical pianist, compared by some to Erik Satie, but his collaborations have taken him into many different genres. Over the years he has worked with the likes of Daft Punk (on songs on Random Access Memories), Feist and Drake (on 2003s Let It Die). On 18 May 2009, he broke the Guinness World Record for the longest performance by a solo artist, when he played for 27 hours, 3 minutes and 44 seconds, in a gig at Ciné 13 in Paris, covering an incredible 300+ songs in that time.


Chilly Gonzales: Working Together - https://youtu.be/SNjVpThEEVk?si=7uB6uIxXrwEjGpIO (Official music video)


Photo credit: Nathan Gallagher

Leslie Feist is a fellow Canadian, who is known for her solo work and occasional stints in Broken Social Scene. In 1988, aged 12, she was one of the 1,000 dancers who performed at the opening ceremony of the Calgary Winter Olympics. In 1999, she was sharing an apartment above a Toronto sex shop with Merrill Nisker (now known under the stage name Peaches). Feist started working back stage at Peaches live shows, and they toured England together in 2000 and 2001, where they would stay over with Justine Frischmann and her housemate MIA.


(Official music video)


Justine Frischmann's father was a Hungarian holocaust survivor (who was chair of the Pell Frischmann engineering firm) and her mother was from Russia. She formed Suede with Brett Anderson in the late 1980s, after they met while studying at UCL. She left before they broke through, forming her own new band, Elastica. They were voted the Best New Band of 1994 in the NME. She also helped develop the career of her friend and flatmate, Sri Lankan rapper, MIA (Mathangi Arulpragasam). Elastica courted controversy across their relatively brief career (nine years and two albums), with accusations that many of their song riffs were very familiar, particularly taking from the bands Wire and the Stranglers. The issues were all resolved out of court, and the latter band's bass player, JJ Burnel would be quite phlegmatic on the subject, "Yes, it sounds like us, but so what? Of course there's plagiarism, but unless you live in a vacuum there's always going to be." Following Elastica, Frischmann lost the desire to play music, moved to the States and took up painting instead.

 

As a side note - here you can decide for yourself just how much the Elastica tunes sounded like the 'plagiarised' originals.... For what it's worth, I think: first one - absolutely; middle one - I can see it; last one - bit more tenuous.


The Stranglers: No More Heroes - https://youtu.be/2B4bsqYxwo0?si=Ca4zZdUF8fZZH4eS


 

Wire are one of the legendary London post-punk bands, whose influence on other musicians far exceeds their broader fame. Aside from Outdoor Miner just missing the Top 50, their atmospheric and often minimalist work has generally flown under most people's radars, which is a shame, as their first three albums in the late 70s - Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, 154 - are some of the most well regarded records. They have been key to bands like Sonic Youth and Minutemen, and the US hardcore scene and bands like Minor Threat and Black Flag, but also more recognisable indie favourites like The Cure, REM (who covered Strange on 1987s Document) and Franz Ferdinand. After going on a break between 1981 - 85 to pursue solo projects, when they got back together, they had no interest in playing their older material, so employed a cover band, the Ex-Lion Tamers (named after one of their songs) to act as their live support and play those older tunes. Their biggest reach came in June 1988, when they were on the support bill with OMD and Thomas Dolby, for Depeche Mode at the Pasadena Rose Bowl.


(Live in London, 2011)

In 1996, a tribute album of Wire covers, called Whore, was pulled together. It included contributions from acts like Lush, Mike Watt (Minutemen), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) - and also a cover of Map Ref 41° N 93°W by none other than My Bloody Valentine, fronted by Mr Kevin Shields.


My Bloody Valentine: Map Ref 41° N 93°W - https://youtu.be/s7y7DAux04s?si=NfOVAteKemUIwzTS

(Live audio recording)


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