We signed Cornershop in 1993 I believe. They were two guys really, Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayers and were recommended to us by Warner Bros A&R man Tim Carr, who probably thought - it has a sitar, I'll suggest it to Luaka Bop. It took Kat Egan (who worked at Luaka Bop then) and I months to convince David we should sign them. David probably figured, I didn't start a label to sign English language rock bands (even if they have a sitar).

Tim Carr had recommended that I meet Gary Walker who owned Wiiija Records at the time. It was he who signed Cornershop. Gary had worked at Rough Trade Records SHOP whose UK zip code was w11 1ja (west 11 1 JA) so when the shop decided to start a label with Gary they called it Wiiija. (Rough Trade Records, the label, was inactive then. Later on Martin Mills, who will reappear later in this story, bought Wiiija and with it Cornershop's contract.)

One rainy night we all went to Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ. to see Cornershop's first U.S. gig. Everybody seemed pretty pleased with them after that. I was the only one who had seen them up until that point as I had a attended a show in London at the Rat & Fink, or Puke & Ale or some such oddly named British pub that no one thinks twice about over there. The band played sitting down! In a pub situation with almost no stage, if you weren't in the front row you saw nothing. I mentioned that this might not be the way to go when they played in the States. Someone else mentioned that when UK bands got on the plane at Heathrow they were musicians - when they got off the plane at Kennedy they were expected to be entertainers.

Anyway, many of you know how successful the band became. It was released soon after Geggy Tah's "Whoever You Are" which was also a big success. After that, Warner Bros starting looking at us as a label that was doing more than just weird world music. In fact, for Cornershop's first L.A. gig after "Brimful of Asha" came out, almost the whole Warner record company, from the chairman on down, had a pre-concert party across the street from the venue. As a tribute to the band j's were passed around and everyone got high!


Tjinder and Ben have just put out a new album which they are selling directly. I was reading some reviews in the UK press and this one in the Guardian prompted me to write this post in the first place:

Those marvelling this week at the Horrors' journey from music press joke to Mercury prize nominees have a point: six months ago, it would have seemed hilarious and terrifying, like giving the Richard Dimbleby Award for Outstanding Personal Contribution to Factual Television to Vernon Kaye for All Star Family Fortunes. But the Horrors' career curve comes with a kind of precedent, in the shape of Cornershop.

They began life as a sort of race-relations wing of the riot grrrl movement, publicly burning posters of Morrissey and releasing records on curry-coloured vinyl. Despite the political stance, there were suggestions that something rang false: for some reason, the music press decided that frontman Tjinder Singh was lying about guitarist Avtar Singh being his brother, which possibly tells you less about Cornershop than it does about the paucity of real news in the music press circa 1992.

The situation was compounded by their live performances, which evinced a kind of aggressive incompetence. You were inexorably reminded of punks talking about seeing the Slits or the young Siouxsie and the Banshees, boggling at the fact that a band who apparently couldn't play at all had dared get up on stage: it wasn't so much the feeling that Cornershop were in a grand amateur tradition, more the sneaking suspicion that compared to the racket Singh and co made on a rough night, the Slits and the young Banshees probably sounded like the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

And yet, a couple of years later, Cornershop were nominated for the Mercury prize for When I Was Born for the 7th Time: they were not the only people in the late 90s to try melding indie rock, hip-hop, electronica and Indian music, but they were the only ones who made it sound like fun. Then they became pop stars by mistake – courtesy of Norman Cook's chart-topping remix of Brimful of Asha – a state of affairs Tjinder Singh seemed to welcome with the enthusiasm people normally reserve for unexpectedly large tax demands. They eventually went into semi-retirement: Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast is the first Cornershop album in more than seven years.

Damn I wish I could write like that. This particular comment, "a state of affairs Tjinder Singh seemed to welcome with the enthusiasm people normally reserve for unexpectedly large tax demands." made me recall how difficult Tjindar was. One day he called me up from what I thought was a hotel room which he seemed to be trashing as he was yelling at me. I put it on speaker phone so David's assitent, Sarah Caplan, who was the only one in the office at the time could share this. As it turned out Tjinder was at home and smashing a pot on top of the counter for emphasis, as he told me later.

Tjinder is a super intelligent and talented person. And when you are with him he is amazingly charming and fun to be with. However, he has rages that make you question why you got into working with music in the first place. In fact this current album was supposed to come out on the wonderful Domino label. But Lawrence, who owns Domino, has a monthly dinner with Martin Mills, (himself a right difficult person) and is the owner of a ton of indie labels: Beggars Banquet, XL, 4AD, Too Pure, Matador, Wiija and a few others.

At one of those monthly dinners, Lawrence mentioned that he was going to release the new Cornershop album. Martin told him that Tjinder had provided him with the most difficult experience he ever had in the record business. When Lawrence told Tjinder that comment, Tjinder said, "I was really doing my job then wasn't I." Needless to say, Lawrence passed. Ben worked at Rough Trade Records (the now restarted label) and so it looked like the guys were going to bring the band there. And then Rough Trade was sold to...guess to who? That's right! Martin Mills!

Cornershop had a hit, not only in the UK but here as well with a song about an Indian film music star, sung by someone with Indian parentage and with a sitar to boot. That was ground breaking then and stands as a testament to Tjinder's genius. We do miss working with him, though not the pot smashing part of course.

Let me leave you with another new song: