Jarvis is a legend; no! better than a legend - Pulp live in Hyde Park on 3rd of july 2011

At the end of the set, during a prolonged version of Common People, comrade Jarvis Cocker, poet/philosoper of british band Pulp talked to the masses:

“I want to applaud you, since you’ve been applauding us all the time.”
He then introduced his band, and ended by introducing himself:
“and also … me! My name is Jarvis Cocker.”
He then plunged again into an altered version of the famous chorus:

“I wanna live with
I wanna live with
I wanna live with
Common people
Common people like you
La lalla lalla la la la lalla lalla lalla!”

"Thank you for being here. It’s been great to play for you guys. Hope you enjoyed the bands today.I hope to see you again … in about 15 years time.”

I was extremely happy about being able to hear Pulp live. I didn’t see them because you had to pay to get into the festival area, but just outside the gates you could hear just fine. I have been a great fan of Pulp ever since I was 10 or 12 or something and first heard the album “Different Class” which came out 1995. I now consider it a masterpiece of classic modern pop music.

    Back then when “Common people” was a big hit on the radio, my buddy Theodor Sölvi Thomasson, actor/philosopher, asked me in earnest: “Do you think we are common people, or are we rare?”
    I have to add here that we were at that time sunk head over heels in the collectible card game “Magic the gathering”. In this game you had to buy packets with ten cards, and if you were lucky you would get one rare card. According to the official “Magic the gathering” magazine some of the rare cards were worth a lot of money. The so called “Black lotus” for example, was listed at some 300 dollars. We, the collectors of Magic, couldn’t dream of anything greater than to come in to possession of an expensive rare card.
    When Theodor asked me if we were rare I answered without hesitation:
-No, we are as common as anyone. The only people who are rare are Kings, Leaders of Nations and maybe CEOs of big corporations.
Theodor accepted this explanation and we went into his room to listen to Pulp and trade some Magic collectible cards.

Now I have completely change my mind. A revolution in my thinking has taken place.
It is the Greek girl with “thirst for knowledge”, which Jarvis met at St. Martins College that is common. I have understood what the great philosopher Jarvis Cocker is saying with this song. It is us, the poor peasants of the world that cannot afford personal jets and expensive tuition fees to prestigious universities, that are the real rare and special people. And actor / philosopher Theoder Sölvi Thomasson is by now a very rare young man – at the very least he is odd and strange.

You'll never live like common people,
you'll never do what common people do,
you'll never fail like common people,
you'll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw,
because there's nothing else to do.

Sing along with the common people,
sing along and it might just get you through,
laugh along with the common people,
laugh along even though they're laughing at you,
and the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.

Although the crowd cheered them on Pulp didn’t play any more songs on this Sunday evening 3rd of July 2011. Cocker and his comrades left the stage, and in about two minutes somebody played elevator music with saxophon solos through the loudspeakers in Hyde Park. This was so terrible that everybody hurried out of the festival area through the gates. I followed along with the mass on the way to the next tube station. On the way I heard snippets of conversations. They were all about the same thing.
“Jarvis is a legend.”
“Jarvis is better…”


Pulp playing Common People live somewhere else

Jarvis singing Common people at legendary concert in Glastonbury 1995


Hasta la victoria siempre!