Jarvis Cocker launches Eurostar Culture Connect

Jarvis Cocker was announcing his new role as Cultural Ambassador for Eurostar‘s Culture Connect this friday and a handful of bloggers and myself got the chance to exchange a few words with him.

Although our time with him was limited we managed to touch on a few topics and he was definately a likable and, as expected, well spoken character. In summary:

Jarvis does not believe that online music magazine and blogs are acting as a substitute to real life. People may want an engineered experience (“such as in Avatar“) or retouch photos but that personally he enjoys the accidental nature of stumbling across thing while moving from A to B. “Personally I like to get side tracked“.
Outside of the big museums involved in the Culture Connect promotion he recommended the smaller galleries London has on offer as well as the ICA. “Me, I’m in London‘s trendy Hoxton area… just go look at haircuts. There’s many interesting ones round there, they’re a culture all to themselves“
He explained how he became the Cultural Ambassador for Eurostar because for the past 7 years he has divided his time between London and Paris so he feels he is in a reasonable position to thin about the differences between the 2 cities. “Paris is like a very pretty woman, but you are never going to get off with her“.
He discussed the green credentials of travelling by train versus travelling by plane and admitted he likes the idea of travelling on the Eurostar because it allows him to wander around and observe people.
He joked that ‘there are no good French and Belgian bands” before adding that the French stuff he finds interesting at the moment leans towards the electro stuff by the Ed Banger label as well as Dirty Sound System.
He joked about his Sony Radio Academy Award nomination saying that ” at the age of 46 to be nominated as a rising star is quite weird“.
Finally he stated he was not giving up on 6Music yet and encouraged people to contact the BBC trust to register their displeasure. “It doesn’t really make sense to me….It seems it is doing what the BBC is supposed to do which is provide something that you wouldn’t get otherwise. There is no way that a commercial station would play alternative music all day because there is no money in it. But i don’t think its a forgone conclusion and i think its something worth fighting about”.