Aug 28: "It's just a sunset"

‘A concert is an event where songs come back to life. That's why this album is called “Live! It's both a statement of fact (it's a recording of a live band) & a challenge (come on! Everyone come alive!).”

Jarvis

The final track on a newly released Pulp live album is 'It's a Sunset'...

Please share your best sunset pictures and I'll add them here...

Here's one of mine from 2018 at Wells next the Sea.

Aug 27: Music Books #7: "Good Pop, Bad Pop"

 There’s something really beautiful about using your life as raw material and making it into something that, if you do it right, it’s like a thing that’s there for ever and people can access it and it will do something for them.

Jarvis Cocker

I met Jarvis a few years ago in St. Pancras Station. I've seen him quite a few times heading to or from the Eurostar check-in with guitars and other luggage over the years.

The newspaper has an interview with Jarvis by Olivia Laing and there are plenty of mentions of the importance of the quotidian and the everyday in influencing his music, and that of others.

Jarvis' excellent book here is about his start in music and the influences of the everyday. It is similar to some of the work of Jonathan Meades.

This takes Jarvis back to his early days and is an inventory of some of the objects that remind him of different stages in his career.

There's a strong element of everyday geographies here too, and the ephemera that we collect. He shares images of items, and the design is nice as it changes from format to format throughout the book with lots of pictures e.g. early posters from familiar Sheffield venues such as the Leadmill, Hallamshire Hotel and the 1980s 'fun pubs' that I remember (avoiding).

Jarvis has been the frontman for Pulp for decades. My friend Simon saw him in New Zealand with Pulp playing live and said it was one of his favourite concerts - and he's seen Led Zeppelin and all the greats play live.

He has also worked on a couple of films with Wes Anderson.

I have a signed copy of the hardback first edition of the book and am going to get deeper into it to add something more substantial as a response to the book. I liked the memories of the hole in t' road.

Music is just organised noise.

Jul 26: 1998

1998 saw more excellent albums appearing in people's collections.

REM released 'Up' - not quite to the same standards as their earlier golden period.

Pulp released 'This is Hardcore'. Dark in tone.

Madonna's Ray of Light was given some William Orbit treatment...

1998 was the year I got married. 

We had our wedding in the church in Swithland, Leicestershire, and the reception was at a large stately home like venue called Beaumanor Hall.

I made a mix tape to be played at the wedding reception as guests were arriving, and before the jazz band started later that evening. 

This was the first song on the tape. I remember having some of our wedding photos taken with this music playing...

What were your favourite albums from this year?

May 17: 'Groovy, Laid back and Nasty'

The new book by journalist and writer Daniel Dylan Wray explores the history of independent music in Sheffield.

In today's 'Sunday Times' he shared a tour of some key locations in the city of Sheffield.

There are some familiar stories here. I watched a lot of bands play at the Grapes - not the Arctic Monkeys though. 

Here's a feature on BBC Radio Sheffield.

Details of the book can be found here from the publisher.: White Rabbit Books.

Daniel Dylan Wray traces nearly seven decades of Sheffield’s independent music in Groovy, Laidback and Nasty, a sweeping account of a city whose creativity has always thrived on the margins. From electronic futurism and post-punk to pop, metal, bassline and bleep techno, Sheffield has consistently produced era-defining sounds shaped by isolation, economic struggle and a fierce DIY ethos.

The book explores how this understated city became home to visionaries who reshaped British music. Drawing on more than 150 interviews with figures including Pulp, Arctic Monkeys, The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, Self Esteem and Richard Hawley, Wray builds a rich portrait of scenes that evolved through determination rather than civic swagger.

Positioning Sheffield alongside – and often ahead of – more documented UK music hubs, Wray offers both cultural history and a heartfelt tribute to the people who forged the city’s singular sound. As a writer embedded in Sheffield’s creative community for over two decades, he brings rare insight to a story that has long deserved this depth of attention.

Groovy, Laidback and Nasty stands as the definitive celebration of Sheffield’s independent musical legacy.

A podcast interview here.

May 5: Music related CPD - John Wilkinson and Miranda Sawyer

I mentioned earlier in the blog that John Wilkinson was a key inspiration in the development of this blog, and he has now developed a new online PTI course which may be of interest.

This online course will explore how Britpop can be used as a lens to examine the socio-economic, political, and cultural landscape of 1990s Britain. It will consider how music reflects identity, lived experience, and sense of place, while addressing the challenge of maintaining academic rigour when using music in Geography.

Participants will learn how to use music as a focused and effective stimulus for discussion, grounded in the cultural zeitgeist of the 1990s, and aligned with the Key Stage 5 Changing Places curriculum.

Aims of the course:

• Apply the nexus of music, sport and politics to explore the socio-economic, political and cultural landscape of 1990s Britain
• Examine how Britpop reflects cultural identity, lived experience, and sense of place

This course is for:

• Teachers delivering Changing Places at Key Stage 5
• Teachers seeking to enrich their teaching of place, identity and cultural geography
• Teachers interested in using cultural material (e.g. music) to deepen geographical thinking

The guest speaker is Miranda Sawyer. Miranda is an English journalist and broadcaster. Besides her features and radio criticism for the ‘Observer’, her writing has appeared in ‘GQ’, ‘Vogue’ and the ‘Guardian’. She is a regular arts critic in print, on television and on radio. She broadcasts on Radio 4 and for The Culture Show (BBC TV) and was the host of the popular podcast, Papercut. She is on the board of Tate Members, the South London Gallery and Sound Women. 

Her latest book, Uncommon People, was published in 2024.

It's a good book. I got it out of the library and a review is forthcoming in a future post.

Book using this link.

Free for PTI Unlimited schools & PTI member departments. Just £20+VAT for non-members.

Apr 12: Bands and football shirts

A posting from a while back on Facebook explored the connection with sport and music, with a share of some outputs from a Twitter account called @_Bands_FC 

It was shared on a Facebook page called Periodic table of Synthpop.

The post led to lots of replies with some examples of actual shirts.

e.g. this one...

What are your favourites?

A future post explores the walk-out music of football teams...

Mar 5: Jarvis and Sheffield

Jarvis Cocker has a close connection with the city of Sheffield, as we discovered on the 1st of March.

He has talked and written at length about this connection.

Carl Lee will also share a blog on Jarvis and his Sheffield connections from his own perspective as someone who has lived in the city for a great deal longer than me.

Image: Alan Parkinson - Fat Cat, Kelham Island

An interesting tipoff from a Joanne Lee post.

This track starts with a list of familiar Sheffield locations:

Intake, Manor Park, The Wicker, Norton, Freshville Hackenthorpe, Shalesmoor, Wombwell, Catcliffe Brincliffe, Attercliffe, Ecclesall, Woodhouse, Wybourn, Pitsmoor, Badger, Wincobank, Crookes, Walkley Broomhill

Sheffield Sex City's lyrics continue, later on in the song, describing sitting on a hill overlooking the city:

And listen, I wandered the streets the whole night crying, trying to pick up your scent
Writing messages on walls and the puddles of rain reflected your face in my eyes.
We finally made it on a hill-top at four a.m.
The whole city is your jewellery-box; a million twinkling yellow street lights.

Here's the track in question:

More musical urbanism also comes from this story from a few years ago which has featured on LivingGeography.

Jarvis Cocker got a mention on the recent AQA 'A' level Geography exam.

When Jarvis Cocker wrote his lyrics for the Pulp song Wickerman, he was inspired by a real-life journey he undertook through the subterranean rivers in the middle of his home city of Sheffield.

And now the evocative verses’ local references – from mentions of Sheffield places The Wicker, Forge Dam, The Moor, Broomhall and The Leadmill to ‘Little Mesters coughing their lungs up’ and ‘the old Trebor factory that burned down in the early seventies’ – mean the composition has been deemed worthy of academic study.

Wickerman formed the basis of a question posed to students sitting exam board AQA’s Geography A-level Paper 2, on Human Geography.

Candidates were shown 13 lines from the song – an eight-minute, part-spoken word epic which featured on We Love Life, Pulp’s final studio album to date, released in 2001 – before being asked to compose a response to a specific brief.

Stacey Hill, head of curriculum for geography at AQA, said: 

“The question was on how external factors such as art can influence a person’s perception of a place, as opposed to how a local person – in this case someone from Sheffield – might feel about their surroundings. The reason we chose the Pulp lyrics was because they fit the purpose for this type of question very well.”

Mar 1: Cities and Music #1: Sheffield

"Sheffield's my city, it's where I grew up, and although I've moved away for now, I'd like to try and show you around. Sorry if we get lost, it changes every time I come here."

Jarvis Cocker

I'll have to start this set of posts on musical cities by looking at Sheffield, my home city - Rotherham being my home town. Both have some musical connections and bands who were born there or met there, or recorded their albums there... or a combination of those.

At the GA Conference in Sheffield some years ago, I made a Cultural Geography diagram using Mentimeter of Sheffield for a session I was presenting, and this was the outcome from the people who were at the session, suggesting some cultural connections with the city (not all of which were musical) and a really good range of bands.

Who are the people mentioned?

They include:

• Def Leppard
• Human League
• Richard Hawley
• Arctic Monkeys
• Heaven 17
• Jarvis Cocker / Pulp
• Cabaret Voltaire
• Everly Pregnant Brothers
• Joe Cocker
• ABC
• Self Esteem
• Bring me the Horizon

Wikipedia has a list of Sheffield musicians here.

And here are songs which mention Sheffield. - although the endless pop-ups make it unreadable.

Pulp played their first gig at Rotherham Arts Centre - somewhere I used to visit regularly as it was inside the Public Library (now sadly demolished to make way for a large Tesco...) to borrow records in the days before streaming and when I couldn't afford to buy LPs all the time.

There's an academic paper that you can read here which explores the origins of the musical styles in 'Steel City'...  It does a good job of delving into the musical heritage of the city and the influence of its location and steel-making heritage. The paper is accessible and readable and has lots of interest.

John Schofield & Ron Wright (2021): Sonic Heritage, Identity and Musicmaking in Sheffield, “Steel City”, Heritage & Society, DOI: 10.1080/2159032X.2021.1968227 

https://doi.org/10.1080/2159032X.2021.1968227

I'll be sharing more insights from this paper in other blog posts. I've previously talked about the importance of geographers reading out of field research to help inform their own work.

I'll be back in Sheffield at the GA Conference to share this blog too... perhaps see you there?

So how about my own musical experiences and memories of Sheffield?

There are a number of music venues which stand out.

One of them was the Leadmill which was closed in 2025, and all signs of it removed hastily. I wasn't one of those who saw Nirvana there sadly.

I did however see Davy Spillane and band there, which was excellent, and also Ivo Papasov and his Bulgarian Wedding Band... check them out.

I saw a lot of folk concerts at the Grapes, including Dick Gaughan - of which more elsewhere on the blog.

The City Hall was the venue I perhaps visited the most - seeing all sorts of classic bands there including rock bands, many of whom are no longer around.

My first concert was at the City Hall. More on that in an early post and with more to come.

There were also bands such as Tangerine Dream, Thin Lizzy, Tori Amos, Def Leppard, Clannad and many more.

The Octagon centre was a venue run by the University, and there were some other concerts in the University Union itself, including several with Roy Harper. 

On the edge of the city, close to the World Student Games stadium (where I saw U2 - of which more elsewhere on the blog) was the Sheffield Arena: a reasonable arena acoustically. I saw Peter Gabriel and Rush there on several tours, and also Riverdance.

More on all of those at some stage in the blog.

The city's library archive shared this useful summary:

Sheffield is the home of many well-known bands and musicians including a large number of synth pop and electronic groups such as the Human League, Heaven 17, ABC and Cabaret Voltaire. The pioneering independent record label Warp Records, founded in Sheffield in 1989, has become one of the UK’s most respected dance music labels. Artists such as Pulp, Def Leppard, Joe Cocker, Richard Hawley, Milburn, The Longpigs and Moloko along with many other popular and alternative musicians were born in Sheffield. More recently several indie bands, including Arctic Monkeys and The Long Blondes, have emerged from the city as part of the NME-coined phrase: the New Yorkshire Movement.

Here's Jarvis Cocker's "musical tour of Sheffield"

And here's the Everly Pregnant Brothers' 'You're Yorkshire'...

They also did an excellent song about the 69 bus between Rotherham and Sheffield.

The 69 to Rovvrum

I love the litany of place names near the start which charts the route of the bus.

Pond Street
Darnall
Attercliffe
Brightside
Tinsley
Templeborough
Canklow

This is a bus I used to catch frequently - to and from Sheffield for a night out. We generally headed for the Fat Cat, or the Frog and Parrot, or somewhere along West St. The alternative was the 287, which connected to Wickersley where I grew up.

There were also classic nightclubs like the 'Wap' (the Wapentake - the name for an early division of Yorkshire.

Via Wikipedia.

A wapentake, an Old Norse–derived term as common in Northern England, was the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon hundred in the northern Danelaw. In the Domesday Book the term is used instead of hundreds in Yorkshire, the Five Boroughs of Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford, and also sometimes in Northamptonshire. The laws in wapentakes were similar to those in hundreds with minor variations.

A recent band to come through to huge status is Bring me the Horizon. More on those in a future post as well.

Finally, I hope you've been following a whole sequence of guest blog posts from Carl Lee, many of which are firmly grounded in the geography of Sheffield. Check out his books 'Home' and 'So where are you from?'.

And we will finish with another quote from Jarvis Cocker on the difference between living in Sheffield and elsewhere

"I assumed the rest of the world was like Sheffield. The big moment for me came when I was on the bus going to college in London, it was a wet day and it was all steamed up. I noticed that people weren't wiping the windows to look outside. They were so insular and focused on making their way through the day that they didn't take an interest in what else was going on. In Sheffield they're wiping those windows like crazy..."

I've certainly spent a lot of journeys on the bus from Rotherham back to Wickersley wiping the windows on a dark evening. There was a house on the hill out towards Herringthorpe which had an upstairs room lined with books, and a desk with a lamp which I always coveted as a place to work... 

Further reading

Will Hodgkinson - 'The Ballad of Britain: How music captured the soul of a nation'

Jarvis Cocker - 'Good Pop, Bad Pop'