Graduating from Euro-house and Cliff Richard (don't ask), I took my rightful place as a dedicated follower of the golden age of Brit Pop. I could even name a couple of the K-related figures on the sleeve (King Kong and Ken Dodd if I'm being truthful, or, if I'm not, then also JFK, der Kaiser, Martin Luther King and Boris Karloff).
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| A thing of rare beauty, is it not? |
I can still recall making the purchase. There I was in WHSmith (at the corner of McDonald's and MVC in the Monument entrance to Eldon Square; you know, where New Look was until recently), wasting another Saturday with the cool elite of 9R: Andrew Beveridge, Frank Casey, and probably somebody else too. Beveridge, the pillock, was picking up Moseley Shoals by Ocean Colour Scene; an album that managed only a pathetic number two in the charts and, more importantly, paled into bucket-hatted insignificance next to K's sitar-touched tour de force.
Even now K invokes vivid memories. The first ten seconds of Hey Dude are all I need to bring to mind my mini hi-fi and the funny squiggly noise the CD drive made, my collection of SNES games (Aladdin, Space Ace, ISS) and the very smell of Christmas 1996. Yeah, so its first lines are utter gibberish until the bit where it goes, "Honey, gold, jewels, money, women, wine, cars that shine" - but so what? Warhammer 40,000, WWF, football and videogames aside, Crispian Mills was talking my language. (It probably helped that I never saw the video: PlayUK was a few years off and I rarely sat through an entire episode of ITV's The Chart Show)
It was an album that epitomised the "all filler, no killer" philosophy Sum41 would later spout but fail to ascribe to, and ticking off the hits reads like a Jamie Redknapp album review: "Govinda, bang. Smart Dogs, bang. Into The Deep, bang. Tattva, bang-bang. 303, bang. Start All Over, bang-bang-bang. Goal." Seriously, come and have a look at this:
Thereafter, of course, somebody put pesticide in the Jesus Juice and Kula Shaker's fortunes took a turn for the worse. Still, they managed to put out second album Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts, also one of the all-time great LPs (am I being serious?) and leave behind them a trail of singles that were, like The Matrix, "better than good, better than anything": Hush (a cover, admittedly), Sound Of Drums, Mystical Machine Gun, Shower Your Love (at least check out Mystical Machine Gun - it's from TFI Friday and features the batshit-crazy Arthur Brown).
And so, when the band reformed almost 10 years later (minus keyboardist Jay Darlington, who joined Oasis) and I had the opportunity to see them at Sunderland University's God-forsaken Manor Quay venue, I... didn't bother going: 2007's comeback album Strangefolk had held my attention for all of half-an-hour before I realised that I didn't want my rose-tinted memories shattered by such a half-baked return. The end.
(Or so I thought, because in 2010 the band, unbeknownst to me, released their fourth album Pilgrims Progress. Against all expectations, it was well received - not least by everybody's favourite website ever, musicOMH - so it may just be time, some two years on, to again attempt to rekindle my Kula romance. I just don't want to be hurt again...)
Thereafter, of course, somebody put pesticide in the Jesus Juice and Kula Shaker's fortunes took a turn for the worse. Still, they managed to put out second album Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts, also one of the all-time great LPs (am I being serious?) and leave behind them a trail of singles that were, like The Matrix, "better than good, better than anything": Hush (a cover, admittedly), Sound Of Drums, Mystical Machine Gun, Shower Your Love (at least check out Mystical Machine Gun - it's from TFI Friday and features the batshit-crazy Arthur Brown).
And so, when the band reformed almost 10 years later (minus keyboardist Jay Darlington, who joined Oasis) and I had the opportunity to see them at Sunderland University's God-forsaken Manor Quay venue, I... didn't bother going: 2007's comeback album Strangefolk had held my attention for all of half-an-hour before I realised that I didn't want my rose-tinted memories shattered by such a half-baked return. The end.
(Or so I thought, because in 2010 the band, unbeknownst to me, released their fourth album Pilgrims Progress. Against all expectations, it was well received - not least by everybody's favourite website ever, musicOMH - so it may just be time, some two years on, to again attempt to rekindle my Kula romance. I just don't want to be hurt again...)
