‘When I Was Born for the 7th Time’ – a personal review by Greg Neate

Cornershop – When I Was Born for the 7th Time (1997) – a personal review by Greg Neate.

In the early 1990’s, Cornershop were an incendiary, rough-edged indie band from Leicester, an historic city in the English Midlands with a significant medieval past and a more modern history of migrant families from the British Commonwealth. This was where I first met and photographed them during their early abrasive gigs and as they progressed from releasing statements of intent singles to stretching their ideas out into full albums.

To say the reactions they evoked were mixed, would be an understatement as although I quickly enthused about them, much a disparaging word – sometimes rightly – was also said. However their third album, 1997’s When I Was Born for the 7th Time was neither a riposte to their detractors nor a rebirth, but an unexpected transformation into a multifaceted and globally aware phenomenon. Even among their supporters, I wasn’t alone in failing to imagine that they could have created an album that continues to startle in its originality, ambition, breadth and delivery.

Some context for this sudden leap forward comes from how the album was midwifed by their original independent UK record label, Wiiija, with international backing from David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label and part co-produced by rising hip-hop producer, Dan the Automator. However, that doesn’t take anything away from the album’s cohesion and diversity that continues to sound timeless, contemporary and even anticipatory; while the amusing song-sketch, Funky Days Are Back Again took inspiration from the Tories downfall, its vision of dungarees and worker’s strikes backed by a primitive casiotone soundtrack might now be more suited to post-Brexit Britain.

Like the band themselves, When I Was Bornhas been somewhat overshadowed by the success of its second single, Brimful of Asha; Cornershop’s tribute to vinyl culture that references their genre mixing and globetrotting musical influences. In a post-modern twist, the song became a catalyst to itself, courtesy of a Big Beat remix by Norman Cook and an astonishing international hit. On the album though it’s preceded by the strangely hypnotic, sloping album opener, Sleep on the Left Side, which acts as a perfect foil before giving way to the deceptively simple, Richman-esque riff that announces Brimful’s joyous arrival.

From there the vinyls double-album fifteen tracks dovetail naturally into each other, including a number of instrumentals featuring looped samples and sitar breaks. There’s even room for some rather special guests but before that, Cornershop have some star turns of their own, particularly Were In Your Corner, which features the Punjabi vocals of the band’s main figure Tjinder Singh backed by Anthony Saffery’s sitar and Ben Ayrestamboura before Nick Simms and Peter Bengry’s percussive accompaniment bursts into full flight. Later on the album’s closer, Singh will return to his mother tongue during an otherwise faithful cover of The BeatlesNorwegian Wood.

In between more multilingual voices appear as Lourdes Belart counts in Spanish from uno to quatro on Good Shit, followed by a duet with American country singer, Paula Frazer, on Good To Be On The Road Back Home. While the former extolls the joy of the journey as Singh describes “feeling good behind the wheel”, the latter lists an increasingly number of dislocated places: from Tokyo to London, Chattanooga to New York City. According to the album’s credits, such references nearly match the number of locations where When I Was Born was written and/or recorded in, including Singh’s bedroom on London‘s Holloway Road. And if that wasn’t enough global locations for you, when Good Shit was released as the album’s first single (with its title appropriated for public consumption as Good Ships), its cover featured an African-American astronaut with an afro enjoying a space walk above Earth.  

Two American poets of rather different kinds complete the album. On Candyman, Justin Warfield provides a hip-hop delivery over a looped Larry Coryell guitar riff alongside Singh’s declaration as the song’s protagonist, to create a track so fresh that a decade later it was dropped untouched into global marketing campaign to sell footwear. Meanwhile in one of Allen Ginsberg’s final recordings, the original beat-poet provides a reading on When the Light Appears Boy as a carnival band parades past several floors down on the street below.

Over twenty years on and in a world that’s become increasingly compressed, the album continues to anticipate the experience of global citizens who have lived in multiple places but may be dislocated from feeling at home. It might even be that wherever you are, the sound you now hear outside your window is like When I Was Born for the 7th Time.

 

Burning Morrissey Posters – Staging the Plaguing of the Raised Platform


Cornershop formed whilst me and Benedict were studying at Lancashire Polytechnic, & living in the same house. My brother Avtar and David (HB) C joined us.

Around September 1992, we were were compelled to burn posters of Morrissey at our gigs and also outside his EMI record label to stage against Morrissey’s flamboyant racist overtones. He himself was a fully formed 33 years of age, so we were surprised and disappointed at his quick succession of far right volleys – such as using Richard Allen skinhead imagery to being draped in a Union Jack, at a time when far right sentiment was on the rise & Blacks and Asians were being attacked and murdered.  He was such an influential artist that we needed to try and stamp it out, and it was further compounded because he never responded to discussion about far right wingism as he does today.

Our demonstrations were seen as quaint, people noted the points we were making, but most seemed happier that he was getting a backlash than anything akin to propagating racial hatred. Others simply carried on with their worshipping, slipping away over the years as his rhetoric got worse. It is good that we get more recognition for this anti-Morrissey stance now than we did last century.

We realise now more clearly, especially with the plethora of articles about this bolted horse that the term white privilege has allowed many to oversee such matters until one has a book or article to do.  Why else would such extreme expression have been tolerated for nearly 3 decades?

But times have moved on.  Morrissey has found favour with other twisted fruits like Farage, and Robinson & today the struggle is a general rise in international right-wingedness.  Austerity has broken the resolve of many an industry, times are more difficult for those that work hard and overall we have not had the time to puncture the illusion that Europe is to blame. Europe has really blessed the UK with funds, working standards, general protections and peace.  Without such guidelines the UK will be a tax haven for the few and enslavement for the many, and a great helipad for the US and Russia.  As we said in Staging the Plaguing of the Raised Platform: “The Presidents that you are against, & consequence that it may all go wrong Ananda.” We have it all to fight for and realise our own collective folly before it’s too late.

  

Photo by Pav Modelski.

 

Cornershop X Bloomsbury Festival

Two Cornershop events at Bloomsbury Festival next month this October 2017 if you can get to London.

‘What Did The Hippie Have in His Bag?’ Family Workshop

A family workshop with our friend Peter the Librarian and Tjinder Singh based on the Cornershop song and picture book ‘What Did the Hippie Have in His Bag?’

A session involving crafts, poetry, music and meditation. Come and find out what the Hippie has in his bag, in a session that entertains all ages.

11am Sunday 22 October Bloomsbury London Tickets & details here
The essential 7″ VINYL BOOK can be purchased here via our label Ample Play Records

 

URBAN TURBAN – A WALK THROUGH AN ALBUM
Tjinder has had this ‘Walk Through an Album’ idea for a long time. The album being the much cherished Urban Turban, an album of multiple musical and visual collaborations, which lends itself to becoming a physical experience. Bloomsbury Festival listened to the idea and walked it.

Do come and walk with us 18th October until 4th November.
CRUSH HALL, SENATE HOUSE – FREE ENTRY – Details here


 

The ‘Walk Through an Album’ is produced by Ample Play Records, commissioned by Bloomsbury Festival and supported by Arts Council England.

When I Was Born People Tried Their Damnedest To Kill Me

As time goes by the trade off between being known for one song to the detriment of the rest of our catalogue seems like a fake news item that started afore this century, and being called “the most underrated group in Britain” suddenly takes on some charm.  Then articles like this one in The Guardian appear, and all is rosey again.  Radiohead fans that deny When I Was Born was ever Spin Magazines number 1 in 1997 can do one, and a little balance and truth is back again, many thanks Guy Smith.

 

Tim Kaine’s Musical Obsessions in Rolling Stone: Cornershop

A couple of days ago we got a surprise in Rolling Stone Magazine.

If someone had said at the start of our duty in Rough Trade Shop in Portobello where we would be in 1996 as a band we would not believe it.  Then again, if someone had said that come 2016 we would still be labelled as they UK’s most underrated band, as charming as the label can be, it does much to keep us in our place and sidelined.  It is a very sad tale, a very long Mowgli walk, were it not for those that have supported us continually, and those that had seen fit to promote us, that put a Cornershop cassette album in hands of Soko claiming it would be of comfort in years to come, that named their goldfish Ben & Tjinder, or Tjinder & Ben I forget which, that with family and friends at a Paris gig, were so elated that years later used our music in their one of their film releases, that even when passed away asked for Jullandar Shere to be part of such passing.

The points are that they did such acts of their own volition.  And so now to the Tim Kaine piece which spans the groups whole ground.  It mentions not the B word, the word that also serves to keep us in our place, that takes into account that we work only on our own account mainly through our website, that reminds us that America got us in album form before the UK ever could.  Most importantly, that other people can always express us better than we can:

“I was reading a Rolling Stone in 1997 and they had a review of their album When I Was Born For the 7th Time [by Neva Chonin]. I bought it and then have just proceeded to buy virtually everything they produce. They’re kind of odd. They’ll go years without producing anything. They don’t really tour very much. I’ve never seen them. I’d love to see them, but the number of live shows they do is very small. I don’t know what you’d call their music. It’s a mixture of Indian music and hip-hop and kind of funk music. They’re a very unique band and I really like Tjinder [Singh], the main guy.

I will go on their website on occasion just to see if they are coming over here to perform, but they do so few live shows. They’re kind of perfectionists. They’re really focused. They do what they want when they want it, but they’re working on their own plan and their own time schedule.

The first time I heard that song “Wog” off Woman’s Gotta Have It, I just thought, “These guys are just doing something I have not heard anybody else do.” They do some interesting covers. They’ve done a great cover of a wonderful Kinks song “Waterloo Sunset.” They did a cover of “Norwegian Wood” that’s spectacular – very true to [the original] except that it’s sung in Punjabi. They’ve done some great covers, but their original is always something surprising, always something you haven’t heard before.” Senator Tim Kaine, Democratic candidate for Vice President.

 

rolling-stone-tim-kaine-full-piece-edited

The story of a Cornershop video: ‘The Roll Off Characteristics’

The Roll Off Characteristics (of History in the Making)‘ is a track from Cornershop‘s Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast album. When American film-maker Prashant Bhargava got in touch with us, he had used our track Topknot featuring Bubbley Kaur as the promo video for his film Patang. Looking at the footage we were impressed by the techniques – bright Fuji Color, blur outs, uneven and downright abstract & thought it a love marriage with the music. The footage also became the official video for the song, and Prashant went on to release the film to critical acclaim in 2012.

When the parents of such a love marriage talked to each other we got on so well that we asked if he had any unused footage from the film to do a video for ‘The Roll Off Characteristics of History in the Making.’ He provided wedding day footage of an actual wedding with Sgt Sardar’s Hearts Club Street Band. We consider the song to be a reflection of how the world has gone in terms of such events as middle-eastern wars being a ‘technical plip-plop’ and ‘honeycomb we are breaking’ being a referendum vote to exit from Europe.

This video used to be up on YouTube but somehow got corrupted – we blame no one, but are sure glad to have it up and running again.

On a very sad note, as we have written about before, Prashant suddenly passed away whilst working in New York. Even more a reason to celebrate the marriage.

You can read about Prashant here, find out about his Patang film here and order yourself a copy of ‘Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast‘ on vinyl, on CD, or listen to it on Spotify.

 

Europe Endless A European Playlist. Ample Play Records.

Back in June before the European Referendum, we published this playlist on our Facebook page, saying “EU citizens: they are on your building sites, they pick your fruit, they are your new sister-in-law or your hairdresser, people seem to like bashing them these days – to celebrate their contribution to the UK here’s a little playlist for you: UK bands with members from other EU countries and European bands we like.” Even more needed now. Includes The Hanging Stars, The Raincoats, Stereolab, The Microgirls, Robert Rotifer, Soko, Whyte Horses, Bed Rugs, Savages and more.