Jarvis Cocker
We’re delighted to welcome musician, commentator and British cultural icon Jarvis Cocker to the festival this year, where he’ll be broadcasting his award-winning 6Music show The Sunday Service live and open-air from the Port Eliot Estate on the Sunday afternoon.
Jarvis is often viewed as a maverick in the music world, fearlessly making strong personal statements – such as his now infamous stage invasion of Michael Jackson’s performance at the Brit Awards in 1996. But he’s also been hailed as “the next John Peel” (the Guardian), guest-edited the Observer Music Monthly, created a countryside album for the National Trust, curated the Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival, performed with The Gossip’s Beth Ditto for the NME Awards, appeared as a panellist on Question Time and starred in puppet form in Wes Anderson’s cult hit Fantastic Mr Fox – amongst many other pursuits.
Jarvis has been making music for two-thirds of his life. The early years were spent in Pulp, a group with whom he experienced most of the highs and lows you can have as the singer in a band. Feted by John Peel and then ignored during the long ‘Dole Years’, the group eventually became the country’s slowest overnight sensation when ‘Common People’ become an anthem at Glastonbury in 1995.
After Pulp, Jarvis moved to Paris and into semi-retirement, making occasional media appearances to talk about Outsider Art, Scott Walker or other personal crusades, and sometimes writing songs for others (Marianne Faithfull, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nancy Sinatra and Air). Eventually, he began writing and singing songs again with the appearance of his debut solo album Jarvis at the end of 2006, which received rave reviews.
In 2008, he premiered his lecturing skills with ‘Saying The Unsayable’, a talk about lyrics at the Brighton Festival that he repeated at In The City later that year. He also celebrated Rough Trade Records’ 30th anniversary with the ‘Looking Rough at 30′ tour and guest-edited BBC Radio 4’s prestigious Today programme before releasing his follow-up album, Further Complications in 2009.
Over time Jarvis has gone from being the quintessential outsider to being one of the most recognised and cherished cultural figures in Britain. His bookish wit cuts an original dash in a rock’n’roll world dominated by reductive cliché.
www..jarviscocker.net
The Sunday Service web page (BBC 6Music)
www.myspace.com/jarvspace
Jarvis Cocker Facebook page
“In 6 Music, Cocker has found the perfect benefactor. Despite his celebrity, it’s hard to imagine many other mainstream stations allowing him such musical free rein – from obscure psych pop to Shirley Bassey – not to mention such liberal use of the echo effect button.”
The Guardian
Links:
- Jarvis Cocker article in the Independent
- Interview in Pitchfork magazine
Video:
Watch the video to Jarvis Cocker’s ‘Angela’:
