PULP PIECE FOR BIG ISSUE (WHICH THEY DIDN'T USE BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE HAD BAGSIED THEM ALREADY, NAMING NO NAMES, GORDON BURN)

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The charts are full of crap. Even the target audience (teenies) realize this. For me, this doesn't make all that much difference. I have a decent record collection to hunker down with until things improve again. But there is a particular segment of the pop-population for whom I feel terribly sorry. These are the fourteen-year-old miserablists, the indie-kids stuck out in some thug-infested village, with only their taped-off-the-radio cassette collection, the local lending library and John Peel to help get them through.

When I was in this sorry state, I was lucky enough to have The Smiths. To misquote Morrissey, they said something to me about my life. Not only that, they gave me an ethic. A way of coping with life. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have money, and that what I did have I spent on Smiths 12" singles. The costume, props and locations I required to identify myself as a Smiths' fan were the cheapest and easiest available: Oxfam granddad shirts, Save the Children beads; The Complete Writings of Oscar Wilde (£3.99, if I remember rightly); some gladioli; a dander down to the local cemetery.

Casting around for a group that might get the fourteen-year-old me though the pre-university years in 2,000, I find the arena fairly empty. Radiohead have the miserable angle covered but don't really show the way as far as dress code goes. Plus, they sing mostly about the miseries of international rock stardom. Nice to daydream about, but not really all that direct a point of contact. There's Blur, who, most of the time, are too London-centric to speak to the rainy provinces. There’s what I like to think of as the shittiest single generation of bands ever (Skunk Anansie, Kula Shaker, Cast). These may have waylaid some poor souls who happened to have their birthdays the week these gits released their albums.

No, as far as I can see, only one band could have got through to me and got me through: Pulp.

The ultimate outsiders (at least they were). Pulp realize how, for some people, a band can be a life-support system. Morrissey used the image of a rubber ring. Something to stop one sinking, drowning. Different Class is basically a concept album about outsiderdom. It's also primer on how to survive being different.

If I were trudging round my local Arndale Centre, searching for kindred spirits, and saw a Jarvis clone, I'd know I'd found someone who was prepared to admit to reading books, enjoyed watching films with subtitles, and had difficulties with girls.

Plus, to identify myself as a Jarvis clone, I'd merely have to trog myself along to the aforementioned Oxfam and Save the Children. A '70s wallpaper pattern shirt, a corduroy jacket, some bri-Nylon slacks, a pair of brown-glass Wayfarers - and I'd be away.

Now, however, Jarvis has moved on to a more solipsistic vibe. This is Hardcore, while a greater record than Different Class, is in essence another rock-star fuck-up album (see also The Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street, Lou Reed Street Hassle, Neil Young Tonight's the Night).

Although they may yet return to their people, Pulp have followed the prime directive of pop art: cancel and move on.

The fact they are still active, and are making their back catalogue cheaply available, is enough.

The imaginary fourteen-year-old miserablist me is more grateful to Pulp than he could possibly say.