It Hasn't Been Just One Big Blur : Sure the band's success and feud with rival Oasis grabbed major headlines, but it's hard to ignore the ever-growing Pulp faction

By Dave Jennings

Jan. 7, 1996 12 AM PT

LONDON — Hallo, America! How have you been? Sorry we haven’t communicated much this year musically, but you probably understand. English pop fans just haven’t yet been able to make much use of the gifts that you’ve sent us recently--apart from the Foo Fighters. We’ll continue to give them a home in the upper reaches of our charts if you can’t find a similar place for them in yours.

But Hootie & the Blowfish? Quite frankly, the first syllable of the name still says it all for us. Alanis Morissette? A class act, no argument, but we haven’t really got round to listening to her yet.

One reason we haven’t had much time for American music is that we’ve been pretty busy listening to our own. Last year was an astonishing time for British music. What would have been considered alternative, even here, a couple of years ago now resides in the heart of the mainstream and the mass media.

During the summer, it became a media cliche in Britain to compare the increasingly bitter rivalry between Blur and Oasis to that between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the ‘60s.

They were, and are, that important here. In August, the two bands released singles on the same day, and thus demonstrated their dominance of the British music world by immediately occupying the top two positions in the national chart, with Blur’s “Country House” finishing ahead of Oasis’ “Roll With It.”

Everyone concerned knew, or guessed, that the simultaneous release was not altogether coincidental. Few, however, could have foreseen how genuinely ugly the ill feeling between the two bands would become in the aftermath of Blur’s victory.

Oasis’ guitarist-songwriter, Noel Gallagher, rightly attracted a barrage of hostile headlines when, in an interview with the Observer, he expressed the hope that Blur’s singer Damon Albarn and bassist Alex James would “catch AIDS and die.” Gallagher later put his name to a carefully worded written apology retracting that atrocious remark, yet still digging at Blur’s music.

Through it all, the popularity of both bands appeared to be virtually undamaged. In November, Oasis played the two biggest indoor live dates ever staged in Britain. Blur also became a stadium-sized attraction for Christmas, and the leading music weekly New Musical Express offered readers alternative versions of its Christmas issue. They could choose between a cover image of Albarn, with angel’s wings drawn in behind him, holding his hands together and gazing upward as if in prayer, and one of Oasis singer Liam Gallagher offering the reader a typically narrow-eyed, predatory gaze.

Meanwhile, one of the year’s most bizarre British hits stormed into second place in the U.K. singles chart in Christmas week--a version of Oasis’ most recent hit, “Wonderwall,” delivered in exaggeratedly kitschy, light-orchestral, bossa-nova style by previously unknown novelty act the Mike Flowers Pops.

All of which would tend to suggest that the two acts who slugged it out in summer are currently untouchable in Britain. Over the past six months, however, that has ceased to be the case, as a truly extraordinary third party has crept up on the rails to challenge the established pair. They just might be the first Britpop stars that you guys truly take to your hearts.

They are Pulp, a truly glorious six-piece band from Sheffield in South Yorkshire.

Pulp achieved enormous British and European success despite breaking so many rules that their chances should, by rights, have been obliterated. The band had been making its shiny, noisy post-punk pop music for more than a decade before it came close to a chart placing, and its success came with songs whose lyrics broke a succession of major taboos.

One early hit, “Razzmatazz,” dealt with incest. Another, “Do You Remember the First Time?,” tells of early sexual experience in distinctly unromantic terms--its title phrase being followed by the words: “I can’t remember a worse time!”

Then came their massive summer hit “Common People.” Over an exhilarating roller-coaster of a melody, singer Jarvis Cocker told a tale based on a real-life episode from his college days. He met a young woman from an outrageously wealthy family who insisted: “I want to live like common people do.”

The song goes on to explain how Jarvis is sufficiently attracted to her to ignore her patronizing attitude, taking her to a supermarket for their first date and encouraging her to play pool, smoke cigarettes and pretend to be ignorant. In the end, however, as the music finally speeds up into overdrive, the narrator’s patience snaps and he throws cold water on his privileged paramour’s escapade.

Pulp’s second big hit of the year paired a stirring outsiders’ anthem called “Misshapes” with a song that astonishingly attained considerable radio play and TV exposure despite having the slang terms for two illegal drugs in its title: “Sorted for E’s and Wizz” (Ecstasy and amphetamines, in case you’re unaware of such things).

The latter song, which prompted front-page tabloid hysteria in Britain, expresses a skeptical view of the grander claims made for rave culture: “Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel? / Or just 20,000 people standing in a field?” And its account of the drug experience is neither supportive nor censorious, describing both the pleasure of the midnight rush and the misery of the subsequent “comedown” with humor and candor.

There are other contenders for pop attention here, of course. Elastica and Radiohead, you know about. The Stone Roses’ star has fallen somewhat in their homeland in terms of media profile; they’re no longer new news. Many found their “Second Coming” album messy and indulgent. It won them few new fans.

Black Grape, the new band formed by ex-Happy Mondays men Shaun Ryder and Bez, was widely seen here as the best current incarnation of the spirit of old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll hedonism; but until U.S. authorities sort out the various drug violations and other crimes associated with Ryder and his band members, there will be no U.S. tour, so that may be that.

The Boo Radleys topped the album chart in April with the shameless Byrds/Beatles/Beach Boys retro-pop of their “Wake Up” album. Supergrass also offered breezy light relief, notably with their biggest hit “Alright,” arguably the greatest hymn to youthful exuberance and naivete since “The Monkees Theme.”

Such sunny visions were especially welcome as the letters pages of rock magazines here filled up with anguished outbursts from Manic Street Preachers fans traumatized by the disappearance of guitarist Richey James Edwards, who has been missing since leaving a London hotel on Feb. 1. The Manics returned to action as a trio toward the end of the year, but it remains to be seen whether they can ever escape from their missing comrade’s shadow.

Morrissey, meanwhile, continued to fade from view, pulling out of his support slot on a less-than-spectacularly successful tour with David Bowie in November. It was probably not entirely coincidental that two of the bands who achieved a degree of success during the year owed an obvious stylistic debut to The Smiths; a replacement for the original seemed to be required.

Echobelly enjoyed their second Top 10 album with “On,” despite a lukewarm critical reception. Gene also brought a Smithsian sensibility to the lower reaches of the national chart via their “Olympian” album.

However, none of the above really captured the collective imagination of the mainstream media the way that the Blur-Oasis-Pulp axis did. As the end-of-the year retrospectives of 1995 poured in, Jarvis Cocker’s name was mentioned again and again, and his angular face was seen on an increasing number of front covers.

The position of official ambassadors from us to you for 1996 would therefore seem to be sewn up. Pulp’s new album, fittingly titled “Different Class,” will be released by Island Records in the U.S. on Feb. 6. It is witty, wicked, touching and thrilling.