Paleo Festival, Nyon, Switzerland Tuesday 24th July 2001

Nyon is situated on the shores of Lake Leman, western Switzerland, between Geneva and Lausanne, not far from the French border. 

Proof (left) that the concert took place, the general consensus was that it went well although the sound was poor (not our fault - sorry folks). Camille Vonne says: "I was yesterday to Paleo, where I have seen Pulp (finally!) It was really great; It is so nice to see these songs sung, when you heard them so often...I think the group was on form ; Jarvis has sung and danced very well".

Jarvis continued with his naturalistic "doing concerts barefoot" style, whilst Steve opted for the pebble dashed effect (nice).

Check the Paleo site for more photos and reviews - when they say "photos of Pulp" they clearly think Pulp is a one man band...

And here's what competition winner Grant Lomas made of it all:

"Geneva! Home of watches, cuckoo clocks, chocolate and on the 24^th July 2001 – Pulp. We followed the crowds on to a tram at Nyon, which took us to the Paleo festival, where we picked up our tickets. In possession of full backstage passes, we wandered around for a while and after watching Ash, finally met up with Pulp outside their dressing rooms. We chatted for a while with Nick, Candida and Jarvis, who admitted he was nervous, but said that playing live would probably get boring if he didn’t. We also spoke to Mark, who commented that the bamboo-esque passages backstage were reminiscent of ‘On Safari with Christopher Biggins’. Fortunately, Biggins wasn’t there.

After a brief glance at the band backstage, we moved to watch the performance from a high platform – more of the safari connection. Jarvis introduced the band to the crowd, and proceeded to speak French until his vocabulary ran out, a feeling we had shared only too well when getting our tickets.

The performance was, as ever, fantastic, kicking off with Common People, very similar to the version played at The Garage and the Leeds Festival last year. It was the slow monotone introduction to the song, building the atmosphere before the fast and exciting conclusion. This got the crowd in the mood as two new songs followed. Weeds is one of our personal favourites and the group gave a much more confident rendition of it than heard before. Bad Cover Version was also excellent. The Fear followed just as the sun was setting, and the eerie tones of the song complimented the fading light and as ever, the fantastic use of lighting.

Pulp then reverted back to some old classics that everybody sang along to. The classic festival song Sorted for E’s and Wizz produced one of the loudest cheers of the evening, as "20,000 people standing in a field" sang along. This was followed by the tremendous F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E., which recently seems to have got a new lease of life. The song appears to be slightly faster, with more life to it than the original Different Class version.

A Little Soul followed and as this faded, their new forthcoming single blasted out, in the tree lined site at Nyon. Trees sounded more like a solid album track than a single. The song itself continues the trend of nature related songs that Pulp are now playing and Jarvis joked about writing it especially for Geneva. The theme continued with a great rendition of The Birds in your Garden – described by Jarvis as a ‘soppy’ song. This is far from soppy with a really strong chorus and a guaranteed future hit.

The group then played three singles from This Is Hardcore. Starting with the trusty Help The Aged, Jarvis again raised the atmosphere by playing Party Hard which was given a fantastic ovation. The title track followed but this was unfortunately slightly marred by some technical problems. However there were no problems with the superb Sunrise, which concluded the performance and definitely got the best reception of the evening; also our personal favourite.

Talking to the band afterwards, Jarvis, Candida and Nick admitted there had been a few technical problems but seemed reasonably happy. Sadly no Minnie Timperley or I Love Life (one of Candida’s favourites) from the forthcoming album, but as Nick said, they can’t play them all. Not too much longer to wait though, as the album should be out (fingers crossed) by mid October. Jarvis conceded that he had a few possible names for the album, but as yet remained undecided.

Many thanks to Alex, for making it all possible, Ian, for looking after us and providing backstage passes, Pulp, for making us feel welcome and for another amazing performance. And finally to the crew, particularly Roger, who provided us with sarnies, beer and general entertainment post-performance."