dublin01

Set List: Weeds / Minnie Timperley / The Birds In Your Garden / Something Changed / Joyriders / Live Bed Show / F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. / Bad Cover Version / Trees / I Love Life / This Is Hardcore / Sunrise / Sorted / Babies

Sounds like the concert was a bit of a nightmare - it had been the intention to play Laughing Boy, Party Hard and Underwear after Babies, but because of the behaviour of the crowd Pulp decided they'd had enough - there's only so many pints of Guinness you can put up with being thrown at you, plastic glasses or no plastic glasses. What a waste of time.

It was a bit of a weird show. There weren't any Pulp fly-posters around Dublin - just posters that said 'Do You Remember the First Time?' with the Witnness logo on them - which appeared to be a bit of a Guinness spin off. We turned up late afternoon to see if there was any activity going off around the Ambassador. There was. Red carpets were being rolled out from the three front doors. Spot lights that said Witnness on them were being erected. Signs that displayed 'Witnness 07.12.01 Standing' were posted up above the doors. We knew that we had turned up for no ordinary Pulp event. In fact Pulp wasn't mentioned anywhere. Not even on the event list posted on the front door. It was only afterwards that we discovered that Pulp were the secret to this Witnness event. We experienced the opposite - we knew all about Pulp and hadn't a clue about all the Witnness stuff going on around us. What was going on? Doors weren't opening until 9pm and were closing at 9.45pm. Pulp were not due on until 11.30pm. Well the purpose of seeing Pulp in Dublin was to experience seeing them in a different country and this was certainly different!

We didn't think that Dubliners would want to get there too early before the event - we were wrong. An hour before, there was a hefty queue alright. However, we soon found out that this was because there were 100 free tickets being given away! Now they tell us! Whilst queuing up they gave us a wristband that entitled us to 3 free drinks, a heart shaped sparkler (?) and a lollipop.

We had heard that there was a comedy act before Pulp. The Cuban Brothers. Basically a few blokes singing along to dancy poppy Spanish, holiday style music, dancing and breakdancing in a very tacky fashion culminating in a not-so-obvious strip tease which ultimately ended in nudity. My boyfriend noticed that the bloke had shaved his bollocks!!! Anyway it no where near topped that of the Fat Truckers who we missed dreadfully at this event!

At 11.45pm, finally, Pulp appeared in the same fashion that they had throughout the tour. Flowers on the projector screen, the band enter without Jarvis, they begin playing that dramatic entrance to Weeds and then Jarvis enters with his shaker (does he get a discount for buying these in bulk?) Now I don't know whether or not it's the fact that Pulp haven't played Dublin since 1996 or the free booze/tickets, but the Dubliners were so mad for it that by the time the second verse of Weeds was completed we were off the front row. And I thought that Sheffield was bad!

The set, as usual was on top form and the crowd wanted to mosh to anything - they even tried with Birds! Nicks drumming was particularly good on Minnie (we missed the Fat Truckers for Weeds though - they certainly made a difference!) Jarvis commented on the Guinness Witnness link saying that if you have too much of the former you certainly wouldn't be able to Witnness much. I guess that was true about the event itself.

It was a great surprise to hear Joyriders and it sounded wonderful and gentle. A nice replacement for Laughing Boy that night (although I did miss its tenderness during this set). It's obvious that the set has been perfected now. The extended parts of Live Bed Show are an absolute dream and I savoured every moment of that song wondering if it would be the last time that I would hear it. The thrill of the first extended part followed by the tranquillity of the second part. Brilliant. Bad Cover Version sounded so full of sound it was amazing and Sunrise - what more can I say. I can't imagine a Pulp show without it now. It's always a highlight - particularly Richards guitar bits and the huge climax of it all. It's just perfect.

Unfortunately the crowd were a bit too pissed to understand that throwing the free drinks onto the stage was bad idea. It was a bit cruel to throw a pint of Guinness over Jarvis whilst he was trying to play the guitar to Trees and being able to do f*** all about it (it was Richards guitar as well!) He didn't react to it, I thought he'd be a bit sarcastic about it to make a point, but he didn't. I think three pints were thrown in all. I remember him almost falling over to FEELING and actually falling during Hardcore and ending up on the floor for the last bit of the song (nothing different there I guess). He really seemed to shout the lyrics to this - was this physical pain or just the way the song was going that night? A bit unfair really and most likely the main reason that the concert was cut short by three songs - I don't blame them really.

However, they played absolutely brilliantly that night, one of the best nights I'd seen them this year and it was a shame that it was cut short. Jarvis asked the crowd before Birds if they wanted to come for a walk with him the following day - I think he changed his mind later on the show! (Yvette)