Cornershop - 'When I Was Born For the 7th Time'

I like this album, but it really groans to support the weight of the opening two tracks. 'Brimful of Asha' was a big chart hit, and although the original version seems a tad languid compared to the Fatboy Slim remix that took it to the top of the charts, it's still a great pop song.

However what totally ruins this album for me is the the first four bars of 'Sleep on the Left Side' were used as a backing track for the talkie introduction to their daytime Radio 1 show by DJs Marc Riley and Mark Radcliffe. So every time I play this, I'm instantly taken back to a halcyon period where Radio 1 had two hilarious (but largely inappropriate to the demographic) chaps at the helm of their lunchtime show. They were dry, sardonic, intelligent and totally at odds with the rest of the DJ roster. It was as though the controllers of the station thought that their listeners gained 20 IQ points for a couple of hours at lunchtime.

The PRS alone for that snippet of backing track must have made Cornershop a fortune.

Cat No: WIJLP 1065

Tracks: Sleep on the Left Side. Brimful of Asha. Butter the Soul. Chocolat. We're in Yr Corner. Funky Days are Back Again. What is Happening. When the Light Appears Boy. Coming Up. Good Shit. Good to be one the Road Back Home Again. It's Indian Tobacco My Friend. Candyman. State Troopers. Norwegian Wood.

Cornershop - '6am Jullander Shere'

Man, this is a huge record. Not production wise, because it's pretty ordinary - low-fi even, on the album mix. But for me, culturally, this is a very significant record. For me, it's about visiting mates in Leeds, about early samplers, about techno-ethno fusion, Megadog, excitement and possibility.

The album mix is a beautifully simple chant (I remember being told it was based on a morning prayer chant) in one of the languages of the Indian continent (I'll guess Punjabi) over drones of string instruments and clunky percussion. I remember listening to it at Brudenell Road (where I would end up living 5 or so years later) and wanting to play it again and again. It's just such a joyful and exuberant piece of music, almost childish in its simplicity, and so almost timeless and placeless.

So many memories: Choque of Black Star Liner covering his car in leopard print (on the outside): buying warm samosas at Maumoniats: the gritty post-industrial feeling of Leeds, finding its feet and making sense of its place in the world at the end of the 20th century. Happy, mad,exciting times when anything felt possible.

I loved this track so much. I dropped the whole of it into a home studio-produced DJ mix, over a beat looped from the Prodigy's 'Poison', and it led out into Cypress Hill's 'Ain't Goin' Out Like That'. Most people I played the mix to had never heard '6am Jallander Shere' before, which to me was baffling, but I guess just underlines what this whole blog is about - personal connection to music.

Catalogue Number: WIJ48L

Tracklist: Jeh Jeh Vocal Mix. All Fetters Loose Mix. Album Mix.