Nights At The Roundtable - Pulp - 1995
(Jarvis Cocker of Pulp - transformed taking the piss into high art)
I was reminded by a reader last night that, while I was mentioning Blur and Oasis, I neglected to mention one of the most influential bands of the mid-90s Britpop explosion, Pulp. Fronted by Jarvis Cocker, whose razor-sharp lyrics were/are a perfect companion to his stage persona, Pulp became one of the most enduring bands from the 90s. Probably something more of cult following here in the States than overseas, even though they've sold over 10 million copies of their albums worldwide. But nonetheless, one of the great bands to come out of that period. Sadly, they split in 2002.
This track, Common People, might be familiar - but I'm afraid it may be more familiar as the version done by William Shatner a couple of years back. I've gotta be honest, I hated that version - it was sacrilegious to me, because Shatner did it as a goof and the song is anything but - just my opinion. At any rate, it's off the 1995 album Different Class and it's one of a lot of great songs off that album.
If you're not familiar with them, I would really urge you to check them out. But if you are familiar - I'm just preaching to the choir.
Thanks Gordon. :)
I think part of what made Pulp so good was that they weren't just jumping on the Britpop bandwagon. They had actually been around since about 1983 but people finally started listening around 1994.
It meant they had honed their craft a lot more than, say, Menswear.
http://the-billablog.blogspot.com/
Yeah. I didn't know they'd been around so long until I saw a documentary on ths Sheffield scene. That was really interesting to see the transformation of the Human League and ABC (and maybe some others I'm forgetting) from experimental electronic bands to pop stars.
I think you're right on that one. I do think though, that there may have been a different understanding of the definition of Britpop over here than the UK. I know a lot of my friends instantly thought of Pulp, Oasis and Blur as Britpop and Menswear went into the category of Boy Bands and not even taken seriously. But truths to tell, anything with the word Pop in it made me doubt its validity from the get-go because Pop music over here conjures up images of lightweight, forgettable, mass-manufactured, devoid-of-personality . . .you get the picture. So when I heard the label Britpop being used to describe many of those bands I wondered if we were all on the same wavelength. It was very confusing because it would never occur to me in a million years to associate Pulp with the likes of say, Britney Spears.
I think we miss a lot of the social aspects when music crosses the ocean.
The word Britpop is also very vague to me. As an Asian American teen migrating in the UK at the height of Britpop, I always thought that anyone that appears on NME, Melody Maker, Mojo or Jools Holland and TFI Fridays are Britpop artists (that includes Portishead, Radiohead, Verve.) The sound associated with Britpop bands are said to be guitars but if you listen to most of Pulp's tracks, they're mostly synth based and guitars are just secondary, quite Roxy Music-ish. Apart from that, there were also sub-genres such as shoegaze, dance pop, and alt-rock that also prevailed during the time, which made it even more confusing as to which were considered Britpop. So, it's really debatable which bands actually joins Blur, Oasis, Suede and Elastica. It is also funny to note, that of all the britpop figures, it is Jarvis Cocker, whose band never made it to USA, and even with all the Michael Jackson love going on, is the most well-loved and well-known by my American friends. Wonder how'd that happen?
Regarding that song, I have to "grow up" to finally understand that. It's very British. Surely, no one calls regular folks back home "Common People". The topic of "slumming" was also strange. Condescension is an acceptable trait, that's what taught in most Catholic schools anyway. It's called "immersion". It was a famous dancey tune back in the day, which was weird because the song was filled with sarcasm until the song finally explodes into vitriolic madness. How can the Brits dance into that? Oh well, maybe because they have nothing else to do but dance and drink and screw.
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