Entertainment For Lively Minds
Rediscovery
Posted by Twangothan on 10 January 2010 - 9:41pm.
Over Christmas on impulse I played "K" by Kula Shaker - which I bought on impulse years ago....guess what, it's great! Played it quite a bit. All that bollocksy chanting etc, perfect for a pagan festival.
Thorts?
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Saw 'em live, back in 2006
Original line-up, with the exeption of keyboardist Jay Darlington, who was off playing with Oasis.
They were pretty good really. Crispian Mills hadn't aged a jot in ten years.
I loved Kula Shaker
I remember them doing "Hush" on TFI Friday, bloody brilliant. Off to Youtube, back in a mo!
Found it, 12 years ago phew!
You have to see this though...
Great as it is to see Kula Shaker playing Hush, the sight of Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord and the rest of Deep Purple 'grooving for the kids' at the behest of Hugh Hefner is priceless:
Mystical Machine Gun with Arthur Brown
From the same programme...
It might have been unfashionable, but I loved Kula Shaker. A band out of time in more ways than one.
Oooh Hooray!
I really liked them as well, but felt obliged to keep quiet about it for years.
I have a particularly soft spot for "Shower Your Love".
Sadly
they produced some of their best stuff (of which 'Shower Your Love' was one example, IMHO) just prior to splitting. I remember they had a fab website, too, back in the day...
Whisper it quietly but..
I always felt they had more than a hint of the Moody Blues circa early 70s to them (albeit slightly rockier). I mean that in a good way.
That said, I always thought that Ocean Colour Scene's "The Riverboat Song" was basically a Cream track.
Another fan here
Great live too.
The Prisoners
I like the tracks where they rip off The Prisoners (who even did a version of Hush).
The Prisoners were miles better though...
Kula Shaker
always lacked the serious attitude that Graham Day still hammers out today.
The Charlatans and Kula Shaker
nicked everything from The Prisoners to far better commercial success.
Graham Day should be up there with all the great British songwriters - I never knew why he and The Prisoners (and the Solarflares and the Gaolers) remain so obscure.
Quite fancy giving Kula Shaker a listen again now - I'm partial to a bit of sitar with my rock music.
and the Prisoners nicked it all from ...
The Small Faces, Crazy World Of Arthur Brown; "Rubble" comps and early Deep Purple, to name but a few.
Great live band, though, er until they jumped on/were pushed onto the Mod Revival bandwagon, that is.
As for why the Prisoners (and the various later re-jigged versions thereof) never made it past cult level, I'd guess inappropriate timing; lack of major company backing and management, for starters. Also I might have heard say that they were not the easiest people to deal with, which might not have helped. Pure rumour, of course.
Don't forget Barry Gray
I remember the Theme From Captain Scarlet being number 1 in Day's Top Ten as published by Chris Hunt's Shadows & Reflections fanzine. They also did a blistering version of Hendrix's Ain't No Tellin'.
Probably the best live band I ever saw
There's not a week goes by when I don't hit play on my Graham Day playlist.
Bloody hell, Shadows And Reflections, I've still got some copies of that floating around...
I've got K as well..
nice album, beaty, sixtiesish. They never did themselves many favours with the music press, though, seem to remember. And the follow-up was useless.
A little gem off the
A little gem off the otherwise rubbish third album is their "cover" of Prodigy's "Narayan" crossed with "Songs of Love", which is basically lyrics to the sound of that instrumental track off "Fat Of The Land" (Climbatise?). It's pretty brilliant and I recommend you spotify it!
I always liked Kula Shaker. Govinda is still a tremendous piece of wierdness. I may have to drop "K" onto my iPhone later on...
Another case of a band being disowned...
... by the virtue that Crispian Mills has a famous/wealthy/non-working class upbringing?
Anyway, not listened to them for an awfully long time - got missed in the transistion from tape to CD methinks.
Like many bands
Their popularity declined as their material got worse.
I really don't believe that's the case.
If non-working class music was dismissed, then the average record collection would shrink significantly. A huge amount of English rock & pop is not of a working class origin.
They suffered from coming in at the arse end of a guitar band revival scene.
Peasants Pigs and Astronauts
Was, for me anyway (weird little beast that I am) more enjoyable than "K".
I still hold a soft spot for the above featured "Mystical Machine Gun" and the other main single off the album, "Sound Of Drums".
Interesting!
I was expecting little response or a few trolls....clearly I am not alone! Anyone suggest any post -"K" tracks which are worth downloading?
2 Eps and an album
I can't vouch for the 3rd album, because I haven't heard it, but the 2nd album is really good. You can probably get it ridiculously cheaply to just buy it off Amazon marketplace (looked, £1.88 is cheapest, plus P&P - about £4. Definitely worth it)
Also, there are two Eps that you'd probably like to check out. "Summer Sun" released in 1997 is a load of out-takes from "K" which would probably interest you, being that its sonically very similar. And the "Revenge of the King" EP is a bit more garage rock, but is still worth checking out as well.
Top
Thanks Badger
The Jeevas
were alright, barely...but had a couple of OK songs including a powerful cover of the Undertones "You Got My Number".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jeevas
Saw them live touring 'K'
and they were fantastic. For an hour and a half I was utterly convinced they were going to be huge, with that great beefed up guitar sound and a more genuine feel for the HJH legacy than Oasis.
They were definitely perceived as upper-class trust-funds boy slumming it in the working-class end of the town we call 'rock'. (See also The Kooks).
That and widely quoted and mis-quoted swastika comments obviously.
If they had produced fey keyboard-based pastoral noodlings I suspect neither point would have raised an eyebrow.
"Kula Shaker are Nazis" - what was that all about?
I remember the NME always slagging them off - but does anyone know why the band got in hot water?
As I remember
...the lead singer talked about how the Swastika, a commonly used symbol in Hinduism, had been adopted by Hitler and had its meaning changed. I suspect somewhere along the way he managed to say that he loved swastikas, or something similar, and this ended up being taken entirely out of context.
The NME at the time was obsessed with pointing the Finger of Righteous Anger at anyone who didn't conform to their world-view (kind of like a trendy lefty version of the Daily Mail) and so went for the throat.
Yes
he said it was a very powerful symbol or something. So the NME proved him right by going postal about it. Indeed, just like Bryan Ferry!
I see, thanks.
Kind of like Bryan Ferry being called a Hitlerite because he said that the Nazis had good uniforms and presentation skills then?
Pigs Peasants and Astronauts...
...was a great album. A 2cd deluxe version is available from the bands website, with the tracklisting restored as to how they originally planned. They were a great live band too - very unfairly done down by the music press, who championed some real shite during the Britpop years. Glad they're still around.