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Post by ganews on Sept 5, 2022 19:55:32 GMT -5
Rainbow Rosa hasn't been around for a few days, and I'm back home, so I'm stepping into to flip a coin and break the poll tie. The coin came up with Cornershop, "When I Was Born for the 7th Time". I'm sure we'll get back to Dee-Lite at some point.
Discuss:
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Post by Djse (and a Sack of Cats) on Sept 6, 2022 1:17:53 GMT -5
Here's a Spotify link -
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Post by pantsgoblin on Sept 6, 2022 12:53:25 GMT -5
As former admin of the Anniversary Record Club, I would be remiss in not noting that this record is 25 years old this month. Another dispatch from that sometimes-glorious period of American rock radio, 1996-1998, when the major labels were freaking out about plummeting sales of grunge-inspired rock and were throwing all sorts of spaghetti (“electronica”, ska, swing) at the wall to see what stuck. Ultimately and sadly, nu-metal and weenie post-alt rock took over. At least in the states, “Brimful of Asha” always seemed an odd choice to become the megahit it was, as its atypical arrangement and repetition recall Faust-style Krautrock as much as anything. (Just FYI, that Youtube playlist is in jumbled order. Here’s the correct tracklisting.) While I predict many of the reviews here will be the “very much of its time” variety (not inaccurate), I think the music on the whole has stood the test of time. I’m curious just how many listeners in 1997 found the hip-hop beats jarring, because I suspect that even by 1997 derivations of “Funky Drummer” and “Amen Brother” had been just as absorbed into the culture as post-Beatles ragas. And, of course, cheapo synths would only increase in popularity in the 2000s. I liked the album just fine, intimate and good-natured. Its pulse never gets above mid-tempo; great for a backyard BBQ (ideally with that Indian tobacco) but I can’t imagine this band ever playing above a mid-sized club. The duet on “Good to Be…” is with Paula Frazer of the alt-country band Tarnation, whose two ‘90s albums, Gentle Creatures and Mirador, are overlooked yet wonderful. They unfortunately got screwed by the label (the production on Mirador is wretched) and Frazer’s toiled in obscurity since. |
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Post by Djse (and a Sack of Cats) on Sept 6, 2022 16:53:34 GMT -5
I liked the single a little better when I thought they were saying, "Grim voodoo basher on the 45".
I pretty much hated the rest of this album when it came out (I was the music director of a college radio station at the time), and it has not gotten better. Not for me.
*switches to Iron Butterfly*
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Post by ganews on Sept 7, 2022 14:18:04 GMT -5
I think I listened to this before when it was nominated here but didn't win. I like the single because it sounds like they're saying my name. Fun fact I saw when looking up who Asha is, the song only got big once it was remixed by Fatboy Slim.
The record is okay, but it's a shame there aren't more songs. Too many tracks here are just instrumental playing around. And I do like experimenting with sounds over a beat (some of this reminds me of pre-fame Beck) but you need more songs, guys. Apparently this was their third record, but the Fatboy Slim anecdote makes this sound all the more like the record was thrown together around a surprise hit.
I wonder what their attitude was when deciding to cover "Norwegian Wood" (one of the two most famous songs to use the sitar) and sing in Hindi.
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on Sept 9, 2022 0:20:33 GMT -5
“Brimful of Asha” sounds a lot like a Lou Reed song, right, like late Velvets-early solo material mixed with some earlier Velvets stuff, maybe some earlier stuff in the way that the strings are incorporated? That’s probably why people liked it more than anything else. There’s a bit of other Velvets in there with the strings and Mo Tucker-inspired drumming (grand-inspiration from motorik or direct inspiration which makes it sound like motorik?
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Dellarigg
AV Clubber 
This is a public service announcement - with guitars
Posts: 7,514 
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Post by Dellarigg on Sept 9, 2022 2:49:37 GMT -5
I wonder what their attitude was when deciding to cover "Norwegian Wood" (one of the two most famous songs to use the sitar) and sing in Hindi. I'm pretty sure it was a rebuke for what we'd call 'cultural appropriation' nowadays. They were very political, as I recall, one of the first to lambast Morrissey for the tendencies he's made very clear over the last decade. Also, I'm not sure how potently the name 'Cornershop' plays in the US - over here, it's a belittling stereotype to say 'Asians' all ran corner shops (selling newspapers, stamps, booze, basic foodstuffs, etc). As for this album, I had it taped - you had to have it in some way - but I don't think I ever got through the whole thing in one sitting. |
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Post by pantsgoblin on Sept 9, 2022 7:50:42 GMT -5
I wonder what their attitude was when deciding to cover "Norwegian Wood" (one of the two most famous songs to use the sitar) and sing in Hindi. I'm pretty sure it was a rebuke for what we'd call 'cultural appropriation' nowadays. They were very political, as I recall, one of the first to lambast Morrissey for the tendencies he's made very clear over the last decade. Also, I'm not sure how potently the name 'Cornershop' plays in the US - over here, it's a belittling stereotype to say 'Asians' all ran corner shops (selling newspapers, stamps, booze, basic foodstuffs, etc). As for this album, I had it taped - you had to have it in some way - but I don't think I ever got through the whole thing in one sitting. There's definitely a stereotype of Asians owning convenience stores among us Yanks--think Apu from The Simpsons--but it probably lands different here. |
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Post by ganews on Sept 9, 2022 8:52:58 GMT -5
Also, I'm not sure how potently the name 'Cornershop' plays in the US - over here, it's a belittling stereotype to say 'Asians' all ran corner shops (selling newspapers, stamps, booze, basic foodstuffs, etc). I recognized this from a French movie with Omar Sharif where the term is "the corner Arab". |
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repulsionist
TI Forumite
actively disinterested
Posts: 3,563
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Post by repulsionist on Sept 12, 2022 21:05:44 GMT -5
I remember "Brimful" getting airplay in late 1997 in the States - before Norman applied his Housemartins' stamp on the song. [This is a "too cool for school" reference to Norman Cook's crap twee pop outfit that precedes his meteoric rise as Fatboy Slim. I'm sure very few remember us covering off his Virginia Slims' record where I harangued and stamped my feet out of tune to the commercial success of his crab-eye touch.] I also remember reading about this band in NME and Melody Maker in 1995 - 1997. I never saw them then, nor could I remember if I had at this point. I really caught their buzz with Handcream for a Generation. That record got an incredible amount of play on Seattle's KEXP when it released. I dutifully bought said record and enjoy tracks from it occasionally. I think it's worth looking at the label this record first released on in UK. Wiiija provided a temporary home to Bis, Voodoo Queens, Brassy, Therapy?, Free Kitten, and Action Swingers. The label is an indie created by record store employees at Rough Trade. The point is: insular cool people liked cool stuff and tried to champion the insular cool things they liked by putting out records. "Sleep on the Left Hand Side" and "Brimful of Asha" show and say, respectively, their filmic roots pretty strongly in the YouTube videos. I, uh, don't much care for the other tracks I listened to, but that's more down to me than anything input and crafted into art by Tjinder and his band. Like Dellarigg, I also faintly recall Tjinder Singh taking Morrissey to task, or it at least being a point of reference during the various interviews and reviews of Handcream. |
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on Sept 21, 2022 19:08:19 GMT -5
I liked the album just fine, intimate and good-natured. Its pulse never gets above mid-tempo; great for a backyard BBQ (ideally with that Indian tobacco) but I can’t imagine this band ever playing above a mid-sized club. After listening through this a couple of times I’m really having trouble coming up with more of a description of this than mostly pleasant. I was surprised how pleasant I found it, though—the instrumental part helped for me—but it pretty much immediately faded into the background for me after “Asha” and could never really listen closely. |
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Post by Prole Hole on Sept 28, 2022 4:37:46 GMT -5
Late to my own party. How very Prole! So the album itself is pretty scattershot. When it works, it works but if you want to argue that it's unfocussed or clearly suffering from thrown-together-quickly syndrome then I'm certainly not going to be arguing the point with you. "Sleep On The Left Side" for me is that stand-out track, even beyond Brimful. I find it absolutely delightful and incredibly disarming and charming. Brimful itself I'm mildly split on - the album version is better overall, and clearly a better fit for the album, but there's no denying the kick and energy to the Norman Cook version that made it such a success in the singles chart. "Butter the Soul" carries on Side One well enough but it does very much lose focus after that. ("Funky Days Are Back Again" is a not-great song I remain absurdly fond of, but please don't ask me to justify that). The instrumentals definitely give off "we haven't for enough time for this" energy, but they do make the album go down surprisingly well. For the rest, King Charles’s Butterfly pretty much has it - it's very listenable, but it doesn't especially linger in the memory. Perfectly good music to have on if you're cooking and want to hum along while something simmers on the stove. Enjoyable, if not their finest work, and rather deceptively easy to just slip on at various times. That's not the most compelling argument in favour of an album, I realise, but at the same time it's definitely not the worst sin an album can commit either. And that "Norwegian Wood" cover. Honestly, I really like it. It's not really meant to be anything other than a reclaiming of a song covered in Indian music originally made by a bunch of white guys. I think it manages to do that, while at the same time not being too finger-wagging. It's affectionate, but also has a point, but also doesn't lean too hard on it. Not bad for two and a half minutes. |
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