1998 Cornershop: Brimful Of Asha

As I've mentioned before, I personally lost interest in what was at number one in the charts sometime during the late eighties. My tastes then were such that I knew whatever was there wasn't going to be to my liking so why should I care? Any interest or knowledge was in passing only when snippets of information broke through my firewall of disinterest to register with me.

Which is how I learned that Cornershop were at number one - a chanced glance at the top forty listing in a music paper. That snippet got through, and it got through like a chainsaw through jelly. 'They can't call themselves that' I thought, 'there's already a band called Cornershop doing the rounds'. I should know; I briefly dallied with them in the early nineties when their 'In The Days Of Ford Cortina' EP appeared on the same label (Wiiija) as Huggy Bear and their rough and ready sound and multi-racial line-up somehow got them lumped them in with the UK Riot Grrrl movement. Briefly anyway.

Rough and ready? I'll say - I saw that Cornershop 'play' live in 1993 where they delivered a thirty minute set of discord and noise that ended when the Asian guitarist walked off stage leaving his instrument propped up against an amplifier where it protested with the loudest and most unholy feedback racket I've ever heard. It was a fitting end to the show. Whereas punk made a virtue out of not being able to 'play' their instruments properly, they at least filled the gaps with imagination and having something to say. At that concert, Cornershop had neither, and so when I found out that 'this' Cornershop were the same band as 'that' one, I almost fell off my chair in surprise.

So what had changed? Well nothing really. And everything; boasting the same Anglo/Asian line-up and influences, 'Brimful Of Asha' is a joyous celebration of Bollywood and, in particular, the titular celluloid backing singer extraordinaire Asha Bhosie. Like 'MMMbop' before it, 'Brimful Of Asha' was originally released the year before its success (it got to number 60 in 1997) but which was then picked up and dusted down with a dancey makeover, in this case by Norman Cook. Which in itself could be a convenient 'explanation' for its success - all credit due to the remixer and nothing to do with those Cornershop boys after all. But that would be unfair and untrue; Cook can't claim all the credit here.

Although Cook's input is quite obviously using the same workout The Dust Brothers gave Hanson as its template, most of the raw materials that form the backbone were there to begin with. Tune, chunky guitar riff and the hook of the chorus - these were all Cornershop's and carry over from the original. Cook's main contribution is to paint a (wider) smile on the song's face by picking out the inner groove that lay just below the surface and uncoiling it. His remix greases the wheels to make the song slide across the dancefloor by tweaking the speed upwards to shake off the cobwebs and relegating the guitar line to a supporting part beneath a funky drummer rhythm and an in your face handclap beat; the quality of the underlying song is recognised and this baby isn't thrown out with the bathwater.

True, the 'message' of the original is partly lost in the conversion to dance (which also takes some of the bite out of the band's name), but I can live with that - Cook plies it with just enough drink to make it the tipsy life and soul rather than pouring it neat from the bottle until it's overpowered and/or dragged into generic caricature. And through his deft touch, 'Brimful Of Asha' becomes an early dose of midsummer street party wrapped in the sound of good times (though even after all this time, Cornershop at number one takes some getting used to - next entry, Crispy Ambulance. Perhaps not - that's being too silly.)