Pulp, formed in Sheffield in 1978 by 15-year old schoolboy Jarvis Cocker, are little known outside the UK, with the exception of gangly Cocker’s unscheduled walk-on part in the Brits (for which he was held overnight by the police on suspicion of assaulting child performers), which does not altogether surprise me. Their sharp and incisive lyrics and choice of, shall we say, esoteric subject matter appeal rather more to Anglophiles. I Spy (FF 1995 #8), to take just one example, is positively sinister in its celebration of voyeurism coupled with the suggestion of a private detective on a stake-out, and this is cleverly underlined by its sonic build-up over Cocker’s knowing, sneering half-sung, half-whispered ‘I spy for a living and I specialise in revenge/On taking the things I know will cause you pain’. It’s the aural equivalent of arsenic in your PG Tips, and was a gambit he would deploy again.
That track came from Different Class, the album that propelled the band to Mercury award, Britpop stardom. The lead track and single of the same LP, Common People (FF 1995 #1 and All-Time FF 2000 #12), is their best-known song (which also reached number 2 in the UK charts), and deservedly so. Over 5 minutes, Candida Doyle’s synthesiser line provides the song’s momentum, but it is a perfect marriage of form and content. Cocker based the lyrics on a meeting with a Greek art student who wanted to indulge in ‘class tourism’ with ‘common people’, but he astutely skewers her with her own pretension by telling her that she could never be like them and would not want to (‘You will never understand how it feels…with no meaning or control and with no place left to go/You are amazed that they exist’).
The video naturally features the 7 inch version:
Common People performed a very rare feat, that of reaching the Festive Fifty with the same track on more than one occasion. From 1982 onwards, JP restricted his FF to records that had been released only during that year, thus making it nigh on impossible to get the same track in the chart more than once. However, Pulp’s Peel session of 9 September 1994 featured Common People (in addition to Underwear and Pencil Skirt) the year before it was re-recorded for Different Class, and this session version made the 1994 chart at #21. It comes from the recently released Peel Session box.
Teenage Kicks 
Happy New Year, Steve. Surprised there are no comments on this one. Here’s my memory of it…
By 1995 I had long given up watching TOTP but but I happened to catch Pulp performing Common People (which I had never heard before) one week and I was instantly hooked. Different Class is easily the best of my four Britpop CDs (gives you an idea of what a big spender I was in the 90s).
a legendary band, song, album and time.
My favourite song of the year. I was in the crowd for their headlining appearance at Glastonbury that year, where they filled in for the Stones Roses and were absolutely amazing. the live version appeared on the CD single of Misshapes, the next single, and it encapsulates the whole time.
It was a wonderful weekend. On the Monday I went home, passed my driving test on the Tuesday and left school for good at the end of the week. The world was at my feet (!)
Pulp were a phenomenal band, and Peel always had a fondness for them. The first time I ever heard Pulp was on Peel (they weren’t a daytime radio kind of band in those days, something that would change in the following years) with Razzamatazz. But he would still play stuff off this Is Hardcore, a difficult album, but worth persevering with. And I saw them live twice in 1998, including their Finsbury Park all-dayer.
Ah, happy days…
Ed
Mick: Happy New One to you too, Michael. Glad my piece brought happy memories (by the way, what were the other Britpop CDs you had? Parklife? What’s The Story Morning Glory?? could run a competition on that one…
Ed: HNY to you too, obviously Pulp mean a lot to you also! I can only remember thinking how impossible it was that anybody could be that thin, and the brilliant piss-take on Brass Eye: ‘Pogo on that you twat’ (sounds like a line that dick van dyke would have come up with ;-))
it’s easy to forget that they’ve been going forever – we busked ‘my lighthouse’ off of their first lp when i first went to paris a million years ago – and have been fabulous throughout
x
Actually I’ve got five: Different Class by Pulp, two by the Lightning Seeds (I only remember buying one, the other must have been a gift), All Change by Cast (two brilliant singles and not much else) and White On Blonde by Texas (one good single). Those last two are actually my wife’s, not mine. I’ve also got a couple of Shine type compilations, Blurs Greatest Hits and Stanley Road if that counts. The nineties were hell for me: I couldn’t stand the baggy scene, grunge or hip hop. Meanwhile some of my old favourites (eg Bowie, Bill Nelson, Paul Weller and Prefab Sprout) forgot how to make decent albums. Britpop at least produced some good singles.
God, reading that back I sound like a grumpy old man, which I’m really not. I should stress I really loved some Britpop singles.
I must be the only one who doesn’t care for ‘Different Class’ all that much, it’s OK but I much prefer ‘His n’ Hers’ and (especially) their last album ‘We Love Life’