Sound Advice #3:
Cornershop – When I Was Born For The 7th Time (1997)
Let’s start at the beginning.
It’s a hot July afternoon in 1993 and my 13-year-old self
and a school chum have just walked through the gates of a free music festival
taking place in the grounds of a stately home in Nottingham. It’s my first
proper gig (I say ‘proper’ because my first gig was actually East 17 earlier that
same year, but I won’t tell if you won’t) and we’re looking forward to seeing a
‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’-era Blur later, even though they’re not deemed big
enough to headline (that honour goes to textbook crusties Back To The
Planet).
Walking past the stately home in question, we head down the
hill towards the deep, bass-heavy rumble emanating from the huge tent at the
bottom. I can’t yet make out the song being performed inside but as we get
closer I recognise the people on stage: Cornershop.
Just two EPs into their career at this point (the excellent
‘In The Days Of Ford Cortina’ and ‘Lock, Stock and Double-Barrel’), the band make
deliciously raw post-punk noise-pop reminiscent of The Jesus and Mary Chain. To
the side of the stage sits a sitar player, his delicately plucked notes piercing
through the dense wall of feedback and crashing drums, seemingly out of place
and yet also making perfect sense. It’s chaotic, it’s noisy… and obviously brilliant.
To a 13-year-old in a Nirvana T-shirt whose dad will be picking him up at the
end of the night, it’s nothing short of a revelation.
The kids down at the front in long-sleeved T-shirts are
going wild, naturally. Immediately in front of me, a middle-aged guy sporting a
trilby, leather jacket and rucksack leans casually on one of the tent poles,
arms folded, swinging his head from side to side in time to each alternate beat
as he surveys the swarming moshpit ahead of him – he’s been there, done that,
but he’s still having fun.
Looking back, though, one thing is clear: no one in that
tent, not even the band, would have predicted that five years later Cornershop
would be performing live on Top of the Pops, having scored a number one single.
From the very start, the band were unashamedly outspoken and direct in their
approach: the name ‘Cornershop’ referenced an all-too-familiar stereotype still
prevalent in Britain today, as did the fact they pressed their debut EP on ‘curry-coloured’
vinyl. Their first Melody Maker feature in late ’92 saw them burning a
Morrissey poster outside EMI’s offices (Moz’s label at the time) in disgust at
the singer’s disastrously ill-conceived flirtation with far-right imagery. They
were also notable for being the only all-male band to be embraced by the Riot
Grrrl movement. In short, they weren’t about to compromise their politics and principles
for anyone.
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| The original line-up burning the Morrissey poster in late 1992 |
Fast forward to 1997 – Cornershop now have two albums under
their belts in the shape of 1994’s ‘Hold On It Hurts’ and 1995’s ‘Woman’s Gotta
Have It’. Both great, but destined to remain cult classics – although the
latter did offer a tantalising glimpse of a more funk-tinged direction, as did
a handful of low-key 12” releases from side project Clinton, indicating that Cornershop
were starting to outgrow their earlier sound.
If ‘Woman’s Gotta Have It’ laid the foundations for a more
dance-orientated direction then ‘When I Was Born For The 7th Time’
represented the crystallisation of those ideas, achieving the simultaneous feat
of being both their most experimental and accessible work to date. It felt like
everything had now fallen into place: here was a band who had found their
niche.
‘Sleep On The Left Side’ still feels like a strong choice of
opening track, with its hip hop beats (one of several tracks co-produced by Dan
The Automator) and earworm melodies setting the scene for the next hour’s
musical journey. ‘Brimful Of Asha’ you already know, of course, but it’s
important to remember that this is the original, definitive version, with its
warm, reassuring, bluesy guitars building up to a truly gorgeous string-filled climax.
I always felt that the Norman Cook remix stripped away a lot of the original song’s
soul, but maybe that’s just me?
‘Butter The Soul’ is one of several (largely instrumental)
hip hop-influenced numbers peppered throughout the album, alongside ‘Chocolat’,
‘Coming Up’, ‘It’s Indian Tobacco My Friend’, ‘Candyman’ (featuring vocals from
Justin Warfield) and ‘State Troopers’, showing just how far the band’s music had
evolved in the two years since their previous album. It’s fair to say some of
these pieces wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Mo’Wax compilation, which
is certainly no bad thing.
‘We’re In Yr Corner’ feels like a logical progression from ‘6am
Jullandar Shere’ from ‘Woman’s Gotta Have It’, with Tjinder Singh’s Punjabi
vocals sounding like a rallying cry soaring over a sitar-drenched accompaniment.
‘Good Shit' (renamed 'Good Ships' for its single release) and ‘Funky Days Are Back Again’ show Cornershop at their most funky,
demonstrating that it’s possible to write decent songs for listeners AND
dancers.
‘What Is Happening?’ is an experimental sound collage,
layering snatches of spoken word samples (creating a ‘channel-surfing’ effect),
scratching and space-age sounds over hypnotic, bubbling dhol rhythms
interspersed with affirmative handclaps. ‘When The Light Appears Boy’,
meanwhile, features Allen Ginsberg (who died just five months before the album’s
release) reading one of his poems while what appears to be a street carnival
takes place outside (you half expect Ginsberg to stop reading and stick his
head out of the window to tell them to keep it down).
Country and folk influences are also present and correct in
the form of ‘Good To Be On The Road Back Home Again’ (featuring Paula Frazer)
and a quirky and genuinely wonderful Punjabi language cover of ‘Norwegian Wood’,
which closes the album.
Next year will mark two decades since ‘When I Was Born For
The 7th Time’ was released – the same age that ‘Never Mind The
Bollocks’, ‘Low’ and ‘Trans-Europe Express’ were in 1997.
Nearly 20 years later, ‘When I Was Born For The 7th
Time’ is still a record worth talking about and, more importantly, listening
to.
