Day After Day #99: Brimful of Asha

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Brimful of Asha (1997)

Things were fairly laid back in the late '90s, at least on the surface. Sure, there was all that hubbub about Bill Clinton getting impeached, but for the most part, it seemed like life wasn't so bad. We were in for a surprise a few years later. But in 1997, the indie rock scene was getting interesting, with some different sounds emerging. One of those was the band Cornershop out of England.

Formed in 1991 by Tjinder Singh, the band combined indie rock with Indian music and electronic dance sounds. They caught the attention of David Byrne and signed to his Luaka Bop label, releasing their second album Woman's Gotta Have It in '95 and playing some dates on the Lollapalooza tour that year. 

But I was unaware of them until '97, when they released the album When I Was Born for the 7th Time and specifically the single "Brimful of Asha," which got a fair amount of play on WFNX locally. The song pays tribute to Asha Bhosle, a playback singer who sang more than 12,000 songs for Indian movies, which are chock full of song-and-dance numbers. Singh also shouts out Bhosle's older sister Lata Mangeskar and Mohammed Rafi, who were also well-known playback singers. 

"There's dancing behind movie scenes/Behind the movie scenes, Sadi Rani/She's the one that keeps the dream alive/From the morning, past the evening/To the end of the light/Brimful of Asha on the 45/Well, it's a brimful of Asha on the 45."

The album version is the one I'm most familiar with, and it's got a great, chill groove that just sets up in your brain and hangs around for a while.

"And singing, illuminate the main streets and the cinema aisles/We don't care about no government warnings/'Bout that promotion of the simple life/And the dams they're building." 

But the catchiest part is the refrain: "Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow/Everybody needs a bosom/Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow/Everybody needs a bosom/Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow/Everybody needs a bosom, mine's on the 45."

I picked up the CD and saw them play the Paradise and have enjoyed them on and off ever since, but I honestly had no idea until I was just doing some research for this post that Fatboy Slim's remix of "Brimful of Asha" was absolutely huge in the U.K., going to #1 on the singles chart there. Not totally surprising, given Fatboy Slim was massively popular at the time. The remix is quite different from the original, with tempo sped up and the song modulated to a higher key. I prefer the original, but apparently many people feel differently. 

The rest of the album definitely had that weed-heavy vibe, especially songs like "Good Shit" (which ended up in a Target commercial as "Good Ships"), "Sleep on the Left Side," "Good to Be on the Road Back Home" and a version of "Norwegian Wood" sung in Punjabi. 

Singh took a hiatus from the band for a few years, working on an electro side project called Clinton, and then returning for 2002's Handcream for a Generation. The album did well in the U.K. but didn't get much notice on this side of the pond. Cornershop has released five albums since then, the last one coming out a week before COVID shut everything down in March 2020.

I haven't really heard much of their post-'97 output but I want to check it out because I genuinely enjoy the band. I have revisited When I Was Born for the 7th Time and picked up a used copy of Woman's Gotta Have It, which is also excellent.