Cornershop
When I Was Born for the 7th Time
(Luaka Bop/Warner Bros., 1997)

Sometime in 2002, following the release of the curiously titled Handcream for a Generation, Cornershop came through Los Angeles, played a gig, and followed it the next day with an appearance on a local morning radio show. This is not an extraordinary sequence of events—bands do it all the time (or used to anyway), the order of operations varying by degrees. But there was something unusual about the exchange between the radio DJ and bandleader Tjinder Singh. Something told me to grab a cassette, pop it into the boombox, and press record as I listened to them talk about the new album, Singh’s side project named Clinton, and the previous Cornershop album, When I Was Born for the 7th Time.

DJ: Did you feel a lot of pressure after that record?
Singh: No, actually, none at all, we carried on in the usual fashion…
DJ: Was the music you did with Clinton a precursor to the new Cornershop record?
Singh: Not really, no.
DJ: Can you tell us about the new album, then, when you set out to make the new record?
Singh: This one?
DJ: Yeah.
Singh: There’s not much to talk about, really. We just tried to make it as hot as possible and as undeniable as possible.
DJ: Tell me about some of the influences on this record. It’s not unfair to talk about a soul influence on this record.
Singh:  Isn’t it?…

I was glad to be taping: Not only did I have to play it back a few times to double-check whether the hostility I detected in the conversation was for real, but the cassette was my last connection to the band for the next seven years as Cornershop’s stateside franchise slowly shut down then faded away. Whether the breach in their recording career was by design, coincidence, or something more sinister, I don’t know. But unlike his contemporaries in Oasis and Pulp, whose stars have shone in the face of their naughty behavior, Singh has noticeably never been rewarded for his mischievousness (and keeps what seems to be an intentionally low profile). Sad to say, was it not for the fact that I’d learned Cornershop self-released Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast just this past July, the band’s first album since 2002, I may’ve forgotten about them altogether. Though I haven’t yet determined where the new one will end up in my stack against the exciting Woman’s Gotta Have It (starring “6 A.M. Jullandar Shere”) and the aforementioned stoner’s ball Handcream, I know that When I Was Born for the 7th Time remains the one that’s certifiably undeniable, to use Singh’s word of high praise.

“Sleep on the Left Side”, with its wonky hip-hop beat, and “Brimful of Asha”—five minutes of song I don’t feel ashamed at all to call “pop nirvana”—both set the tone for the multi-genre and multi-cultural joyride ahead. A tribute to Bollywood diva Asha Bhosle, Singh’s Indian heritage, and the comforts of home, there was a point in 1997 when you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing “Asha”, thanks in part to a jacked-up Fatboy Slim remix of it. “Is that… ‘Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow?’” asked Crawdaddy! editor Jocelyn when I jogged her memory of it. “That song kinda ruled.” Yes, it did, even though it didn’t contain a note of the band’s trademark: A Hindi-pop sound supplied by sitar, harmonium, and tamboura added to the standard rock mix. There’s raga-rock super jam “We’re in Yr Corner”, and the self-explanatory space jam “It’s Indian Tobacco My Friend.” “Candyman”, produced by the Automator, sounds like a Beastie Boys assemblage jam with its sample from a Larry Coryell record and rapping by Justin Warfield. If it all sounds like a little too much jam, well, maybe it is…

Recording was done at Allen Ginsberg’s house for “When the Light Appears Boy”, which ends up with a little too much track and not enough Ginsberg, but it’s a change from the jam groove and you have to hand it to them for at least trying to enlighten listeners (Ginsberg died the year the album was released). There’s also the beautifully rendered “Good to Be on the Road Back Home”, a duet with Paula Frazer (Tarnation) featuring Ray “from Moonshake & Skree” Dickaty on flute. Not being super fond of duets or flutes in rock, I’m still wondering how it is that this is the song that from now on I will return to on When I Was Born for the 7th Time, again and again. Punjabi language is sprinkled throughout the mostly English language record, though an entirely Punjabi version of “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” performed on sitar closes the show.

Friends of Beck and the Beastie Boys are natural appreciators of Cornershop’s cut-and-paste genius, but so might be fans of Johnny Rotten’s punk attitude. Singh combines rock ‘n’ roll and class-consciousness artfully—at times undetectably, though undeniably and unmistakably. Even the name Cornershop is a reclamation of the English stereotype that Pakistanis and Indians are the most likely keepers of the corner store. Since his band’s founding in 1991, Singh’s lived through at least one Asian-pop movement and lived to resent it; it’s likely he’ll survive another. But his combination of Indian music and imagery, hip-hop, Beat poetry, and the Beatles is the right stuff for right now in these unprecedented moments of Far East and Sub-Continental rising. It’s time that who or whatever put the clampdown on Singh and Cornershop take it off, and allow him to resolve his band’s karma and live another life (or seven, whichever the case may be) in peace. Perhaps less dramatically, 12 years after stowing it away, When I Was Born for the 7th Time once again sounds right on the 45 to me.

Listen: “Brimful of Asha” [at youtube.com]