Musical Monday #19

With so many bands, it can be difficult to see where the lead singer ends and the band begins -- often one of the main creative forces in the band, and often used as an image or a hook for the "brand" of the band. It's often annoying if you're a fan, to see Hole confused with Courtney Love, to see Blondie confused with Debbie Harry. Sometimes, though -- like with the Eels, last week -- the band is just as often a vehicle for someone who one person, for one reason or another.
Either way, this week's Musical Monday is about Pulp -- and the eternal question; where does Pulp end and Jarvis Cocker begin?

Pulp had albums before the 90s made them popular. By all accounts, they had albums with influences as diverse as Leonard Cohen and Wham! These albums failed to chart and were pretty much ignored by the public at large, right up until the release of the album His n' hers which was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize, and the catchy single Do You Remember The First Time.

But it was their 1995 single Common People and subsequent album Different Class that really helped the controversial and quietly charismatic band become indie/britpop darlings of the 90's on the "Cool Britannia" wave.

The 90s threw up any number of pop/indie bands, from Suede, to Menswear, Sleeper, Blur, Oasis, Dodgy and even more that I don't want to remember. I don't recall Jarvis Cocker ever going to Downing Street to meet Tony Blair or Pulp ever playing their catchy but sordid songs of love at any of the prime minister's parties.

In 1996 Jarvis Cocker became more famous than the band when he invaded the stage during Michael Jackson's performance at the Brit Awards. Fed up of Michael Jackson pretending to be Jesus, Jarvis ran about on the stage, and waved his bum at the crowd. He was then arrested, accused of assaulting the child performers -- although he was released without charge, and the video footage of the incident doesn't show anything of the sort. He was largely hailed as a hero for the stunt, and the music paper Melody Maker suggested he should be given a Knighthood.

Like so many bands, when Pulp did hit the big time they found it wasn't what they wanted at all -- and it was several troubled years before they returned with This is Hardcore. For me, this album is the best work the band produced -- it was less commerical than Different Class, but the Britpop wave had broke and rolled back long before. ...Hardcore had themes not so dissimilar to earlier songs like I Spy and Underwear, but it had a darker undercurrent and seedier.

The album contains so many fantastic songs, I couldn't begin to do justice to the album without going through it track-by-track, which I certainly won't do. It's one of those albums that needs to be played as a whole for the full experience, but to my mind just one line sums up the album, from the title track This is Hardcore -- "what exactly do you do for an encore?".

Perhaps this question troubled the band for a while, since it seemed like a very long three years before they eventually came back with We Love Life. Completely different in style from Different Class and This Is Hardcore, the album reflected a perhaps lighter side of life with songs like Sunrise, Weeds and The Birds in Your Garden. For the record, the latter song is filthy and Weeds seems quite political. There's also more songs about love and break ups -- with Bad Cover Version of Love, which again includes one of my favourite lines "I heard an old girlfriend has turned to the church, she's trying to replace me but it'll never work".

Jarvis has predictably enough gone solo now the band are on hiatus, and the songs don't sound so vastly different to his work with Pulp, so you have to wonder if the band will ever return. As a personality, Jarvis continues to attract attention, criticism and praise for being his usual outspoken self. But it's not video Monday, it's Musical Monday -- and today's song was a very difficult choice. I have chosen Sorted For E's and Wizz, a haunting comment on the 90s rave culture ("I seem to have left an important part of brain...somewhere in a field in Hampshire").

Sorted For E's and Wizz