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Jarvis Cocker :: "One Man Show"B-Side (2007)
And so Jarvis Cocker continues in the time-honored British tradition of releasing b-sides that completely fucking obliterate just about anything on their parent albums.
The former Pulp frontman played "One Man Show" in the middle of his set when I saw him at New York City's Webster Hall last week, and the collective "What the hell was that?" look on the faces of the audience was proof positive that it should have made the cut on Jarvis as opposed to, uh, anything after its first five songs. Good luck finding a copy of the CD single for "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" under 18 bucks unless you're from across the pond, but the interweb goes a long way towards evening things out in that regard (with credit in this case due to Matthew Perpetua's Fluxblog).
Beginning as a sultry bassline with a whispered vocal and exploding into the type of arm-waving, pint-flying, glam-rock Britpop workout that Jarvis could have seriously benefited from, it would have made a hell of an album opener, but probably got cut on account of being a tad upbeat amongst Jarvis's predominantly gloomy confines. Heck, he should've just called Jarvis "One Man Show," ditched that lame-ass thirty second piano song, and kicked off his record with him screaming, "this is my one-man show!" over triumphant E-major power chords. It'd have been both rocking and hysterical, not to mention arguably the catchiest thing he's done since "Disco 2000."
David M. Goldstein :: 1 May 2007 |
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