Hey, hey, hey! Its a double feature. “What’s the occasion?” you might ask. “What makes us so special?” that you might also ask. Well the truth is I was busy and couldn’t get around to a post last week so I am doubling up this week to make up for lost time. As much as I’d love to spend all my time writing for this blog, I am still a student and I believe in the The Fonz.
Seriously how I feel right now.
But I digress, let’s take a look at Pulp shall we.
First of all, I would like to point out that while this is called “Best Bands You Don’t Know About,” Pulp is not anonymous. Quite the opposite if we go across the Atlantic because in England they are one of the most successful bands to come around in the mid-1990s Brit-Pop movement. The problem was most of those bands were so ridiculously British that they never really caught on beyond the U.K. besides Blur and Oasis. Even Blur is stretching it because all they had here that generated success in America was that “woohoo” song (not this “woohoo” song. I hate when a great song is sampled for a terrible one).
The truth is, every decade the British have contributed so much to us Americans except for the 90s. Yeah, we got Oasis for a few years thats true and that’s fine because those were also the good Oasis years, but I believe that America cheated all of the wonderfully talented British bands to surface during that era and though I could talk about several of them I’m going to focus on, in my opinion, the most interesting of them.
If Oasis and Blur were the gold and silver of the UK pop-charts in the 90s, then Pulp was most certainly the bronze. Their success was quite peculiar, though. Most bands either hit it big immediately and then fade or gather success through a following over time. Pulp in a way did both. Pulp was formed in 1978 by lead singer and head hip swinger Jarvis Cocker and I don’t know why, but I think that is the best name for a front man ever. Since then Pulp has gone through many incarnations with Cocker always at the front. After dabbing in electronica and post-punk and going through many ill-fated gigs resulting in things such as Cocker falling off a building trying to a Spiderman impression and riots, Pulp finally found their signature sound and success almost immediately after their 1994 album “His and Hers” was released and then later with the 1996 British smash “A Different Class.” And so after a decade and a half of working the grind the next thing they knew they were topping the UK charts. After a couple more successful albums, Pulp abruptly called it a day in 2002 and kept it that way only until last year for a UK, Europe, and US festival run.
While Pulp wasn’t the most popular of the Brit-bands, they were certainly one of the most unique. Their music rode between electronic pop and punk while Cocker’s stage presence resembled something of a “Saturday Night Fever” meets a clean shaved Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Their lyrics, however, are another story. The lyrics found in some Pulp songs aren’t too out there like “Something Changed” which is a quaint love song that asks the question “if any moment was different would everything be different between me and you?” Then there is “Common People,” Pulp’s signature hit that pokes fun at rich people trying fit in among the normal folk. But, Pulp’s true
ZOIKS! A crowd! Let's get out of here Scoob!
strength is in their cleverly innocent sounding but sometimes perverted or forlorn love songs. When I first heard the line “ So you bought a toy that could reach the places he never goes,” in the otherwise passionate ballad “Do You Remember The First Time” I had to rewind my IPod a little bit to make sure I heard Cocker right. Later on at the chorus’s end he gets to the point by saying ” I don’t care if you screw him, just as long as you save piece for me.” I came to realize that either this dude has done some dirty deeds or has thought up some dirty fantasies. It has its charm though; again this comes back to the innocence. Cocker seems to know exactly how to pierce the hearts of every guy who grew up being the awkward school kid who had that wishful thinking of having the presence and courage to ask that girl you always wanted ask out and be successful. Disco 2000’s fun and dance inducing grooves hold an underlying theme of the broken hearted chum who just wanted to be with the childhood friend who looked at him just as such, a friend. Come on guys, we’ve all been there. Then sometimes, old Cocker just comes on a bit strong like in “Babies” talking about hiding out in wardrobes and sleeping with her friend’s older sister out of revenge for not sleeping with him.
In a way, their song writing is quirky and goofy which is a far cry away from the previous decade of British bands that dominated the radio waves like the melancholic sounds of The Smiths and The Cure. In a way I’m sure it was refreshing because while Pulp was not without their sad songs, their humorous take on their own melancholy almost makes them like Prozac. It’s still depressing but you are fooled into thinking its happy.
So lets do some paraphrasing! When it comes to Pulp, expect quirkey songs with odd, often perverted lyrics that have an innocent charm whose singer dances like if Shaggy was Tony Manero from “Saturday Night Fever.” ZOIKS! Like, STAYINNNNN ALIIIIIIIIVE!