Pulp

Pulp are somewhat of an anomaly in modern pop music - it took them a very long time, over 15 years, to really break through and become successful as a band. Having gone through many lineup changes since starting as a university project from frontman Jarvis Cocker in 1978, it was only in the early to mid-1990s that the band finally hit huge commercial success as part of the vanguard of the Britpop movement.

Initially the band started as a project from a 15-year-old Cocker and his friend Peter Dalton, and the name Pulp (taken from a Michael Caine film of the same name) was originally shot down for being too short. At first the band were known as Arabicus - a deliberate misspelling of the Arabicas coffee beans, which Cocker found listed in the Financial Times commodity index. Eventually the name evolved to Arabicus Pulp, then simply Pulp as the name initially dismissed as being too short eventually stuck.

In the early days, the band started out sounding, according to a local fanzine, "Like a cross between ABBA and The Fall." During the first decade or so of the band's existence, the musical style shifted dramatically at various times, for several reasons - mostly due to the band's ever-evolving lineup with members leaving to go to university and returning, and a constant chasing of success. In October 1981 when they were granted their first Peel Session, they were described as a typical Sheffield post-punk band, sounding much like the Human League and Comsat Angels. By their next album It, the musical style shifted to Leonard Cohen-esque ballads, which also didn't find success. It was only in the late 1980s when Steve Mackey joined on bass that the sound really started to become what we know as the signature Pulp sound, as Cocker's disparate influences were mixed with Mackey's love of acid house and taking Cocker to raves.