"Cuckoo" & "After You" Pulp Rarities

It was late on Wednesday night when I discovered something amazing. Apparently, back in 1999 Jarvis and Co. had recorded their take on one of my favorite folk songs, "The Coo Coo Bird". I was watching a documentary about the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music called, "Old, Weird America" and interspersed between documentarian interviews and such with academics and contemporaries of Harry's, there was concert footage of tons of bands performing songs from the Anthology. Well, wouldn't you know it, about about an hour and half in, there was Jarvis sitting at a piano, singing a sweet number about the Cuckoo bird.

So anyway, after that, I had to find a recording of this one-off performance. I spent about an hour scouring the world wide intarwebs before discovering that this song, "Cuckoo" is apparently one of the most elusive Pulp songs on record. The only version I was able to track down is below, and unfortunately, it's a pretty poor live recording. There apparenly is a demo quality recording around, but I was clearly unable to find it. If anyone out there has a copy, could you please send it my way (thabombshelter at gmail)? I did however, find another song that I think is very good, "After You."

I was able to come across both of these songs on the Bar Italia forums, where I also came across a pretty poor attitude among the bootleg traders. There was one member who claimed to have the demo version of "Cuckoo" and even uploaded a 30 second sample to prove the viability of his claims. Unfortunately, he then asked, "What have you got to trade for it?"

This made me so mad. I mean, come on asshole, it's not like you're going to lose the demo if you email it to someone. You don't have to sit for hours copying the file to a tape and then mailing it off. One fucking click of a mouse and boom, sent. Get over yourself. He claimed that he had spent too much time and money to just send it off without some sort of exchange. I get it, you went through the effort to get it, but still, no need to be a dick about it. I would think that a fan would be more than happy to share these unreleased gems with as many people as possible. Which is why I'm sharing my finds with all of you. Please, download these tracks, share them with your friends. As one Pulp fan to many others, consider this my gift to the world of Pulp, and here's to hoping the get back together some day.

"Cuckoo" Pulp
"After You" Pulp
***BONUS MP3s***
"The Cuckoo" Hem (this was the first version of this song I ever heard, so fucking good)
"The Coo Coo Song" Clarence Ashley

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