The word swastika means, essentially, it is good, and in Eastern cultures the symbol has been revered for over two thousand years. Any collector of Kipling firsts will have a line of them decorating his bookshelf. Then, of course, the Nazis appropriated it and all bets were off. Crispian Mills, driving force of Kula Shaker, was misguided at best when he thought he could reverse the ill-feeling the symbol generated in the West and restore its original benign significance. But that's the worst you can say of him. The best is that he's fronted a startlingly good and unapologetically rock guitar band since 1995. That's over a decade, if my calculations are correct.
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Mills has been given a good kicking in the music press for coming from a posh family, as if this made him a dilettante incapable of making what is generally (and mistakenly) thought of as blue-collar music. Kids from well-off families can afford the gear and may have the confidence financial security brings, but from then on it's a democracy, and Mills discovered the negative aspects of a fortunate birth outweighed the positive. He must have wished his name was Kev, and his family broken up in poverty. Nothing middle-class rock writers love more than the story of how rock music frees the brave young rebel from humble beginnings, especially if he gets to - tragically - die young. Mills has the misfortune to still be alive and healthy (on a vegetarian diet, I imagine), never a popular career move, and still making music that has no relevance for the Neckbeard n' Nancy collectives, and is all the better for it.
Kula Shaker's latest (some say best) album snuck out in the summer of '22, bypassing me and the Elderly Lesbians entirely. Album O' Th' Eon.
Today's post manifested on this earthly plane thru sponsorship from Chuck Castaneda's Chakra Shack™, Tuber Falls, IA.
Loaddown will be epic, so do pop by at your earliest! Om Shanti!
ReplyDeleteIn the late 90s, my son turned me on to Kula Shaker.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on one of your better puns!
Babs, if you don't have the latest, rush out and buy it - think of it as my Yuletide Gift to you! No, don't thank me! It's the least I could do!
DeleteSuch a swell guy!
DeleteWith the schnitzengrüben, enough already!
DeleteLet's face it, everything below the waist is kaput!
DeleteI need some we...[takes a breath] ... est.
DeleteLoaddown # uno: Free Hugs https://workupload.com/file/rL6dhExPtDY
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed their debut album ("K" 1996) back in the day-o...
ReplyDeleteHere's loaddown numero bis, the rest -
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/d2vmPrxsLtQ
Newcastle Riverside (small basement club typical of what was called the toilet circuit) dateline September 1996, Kulashaker gig. Us two "oldies", well we were in our 40s /50s, down with the kids.
ReplyDeleteStood at the back next to this godalmighty brand new massive mixing desk that they must have really struggled with to get in and down the stairs.Talking to the sound engineer, who was boasting that this would be the last time we would see them in a place like this and they were all now geared up for playing the stadiums...and then..they just seemed to disappear.
Also halfway through the gig his mother, Hayley Mills, is suddenly standing next to us, having hotlegged it from the Theatre Royal where she was appearing in a play.
They were a good band, so looking forward to catching up with them after all this time, thanks Farq.
Here's an LA Times review, a few weeks after you saw them.
DeleteNEW YORK — It’s closing in on 1997, but you’d never know it from the scene unfolding in a Manhattan hotel room where two members of the British band Kula Shaker are ensconced.
Singer-guitarist-songwriter Crispian Mills and organist Jay Darlington, who are in their early 20s, are sporting mop-top hairdos and clothes that could have been lifted from a late-'60s film clip.
Mills, dressed in a tight-fitting sweater and striped, flared pants, could pass for a blond version of the young Mick Jagger, right down to his sly, insinuating wit.
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Combine that charisma with the driving, flavorful music that’s found on the band’s debut album, “K,” and you have the latest sensation from the rebounding British rock scene. Having made a splash at home, Kula Shaker is now trying to bring the buzz to the U.S. with a tour that includes a show at the Whisky on Friday.
Even when Mills turns serious and earnest, he does so in a way that invites comparisons to his flower power-espousing forebears.
“The reason that the world is so [expletive] is that people aren’t feeding their inner selves,” Mills opines, leaning forward on a couch. “We don’t really know what we are, why we’re here, what we’re supposed to do with our lives.”
Mills’ quest for answers to such questions led him, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones before him, to delve into Eastern philosophies and mysticism. A trip to India in 1993 had a profound effect on the singer: The name Kula Shaker is borrowed from an ancient Indian emperor, and two of the songs on “K,” which was released in the United States last month, are sung partially in Sanskrit.
The music on “K” is also awash in exotic flourishes. Funky beats and neo-psychedelic guitar and organ textures are spiced with healthy doses of tabla and sitar.
The album hit the top of the British charts shortly after its release there in September and remains in the Top 10. Perhaps even more impressive, the group has won the endorsement of Noel Gallagher, the outspoken guitarist and songwriter for Oasis, England’s most successful group in years. After catching Kula perform in London last summer, Gallagher contacted Kula Shaker--whose lineup also includes bassist Alonza Bevan and drummer Paul Winter-Hart--and asked them to support Oasis at the massive Knebworth Festival in August.
“Then Noel started saying lots of nice things about us--which is strange, really,” Mills muses, his wry smile returning. “Because we’re from different universes, us and Oasis. They’re really more about nihilism, everything not meaning anything--kind of an arrogant-lad culture. We’re a little more into spiritual things, romantic ideas, you know?
“We don’t like to criticize other bands in the press, though,” Mills adds quickly. “Thanks, Noel!”
[contd. below - Ed.]
[contd.] The seeds of Kula Shaker were planted at London’s Richmond College, where Mills, the son of actress Hayley Mills (of Walt Disney’s “The Parent Trap” fame), met Bevan in 1988. By the early ‘90s, they had recruited Darlington and Winter-Hart, who had played in other bands while socializing in the same circles.
DeleteAside from an interest in spirituality, which Mills and Darlington take pains to distinguish from organized religion--"I like Krishna and Buddha and Jesus, but I don’t like Christianity or Buddhism or Hare Krishna,” Mills states--the young men were united by a fascination with the sounds and styles of the ‘60s.
“We grew up in the ‘80s,” Darlington explains. “And if you were a kid who wanted to play in a band then, it wasn’t really happening.”
“You’d turn on the TV or read a magazine and see Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Boy George . . . and as a young kid, you swallow all that stuff,” Mills sniffs, apparently forgetting his rule about not insulting other artists for a moment. “Then somebody plays you the Kinks for the first time, and it’s like, yesss! That raw energy, idealism, youth--being in a band, that’s what it was all about.”
By 1995, record companies in England were courting Kula Shaker, and Columbia U.K. signed the act in September 1995. A deal with the American branch of Columbia followed soon after.
“I thought, ‘Big label, lots of power,’ ” Mills says. “We got laughed at right at the beginning: ‘You signed with Columbia? How uncool!’ But if you want to go global with your music, [it’s] a good [company]. We’ve got a huge company behind us, and we call the
shots. I don’t care if it’s a cliche. It’s working.”
John Leshey, senior vice president of artist development at Columbia, is particularly optimistic about Kula Shaker’s U.S. prospects. “There’s a pop sensibility and a true American feel to the music that Crispian writes,” Leshey says. “And their Eastern influence sets them apart from other bands that fall under the ‘Brit-pop’ label.”
But don’t expect a hard sell from a band that on its hit single promotes mellow introspection through such lyrics as, “The truth may come in strange disguises/send the message to your mind.”
“We’re just putting our message out there,” Mills says, shrugging. “Just playing music and sending out positive vibes to people.”
[It's a mystery why they didn't break through into the enormodrome circuit, and as big a mystery how they stayed together when they didn't. Perhaps the lack of a crowd-pleasing anthemic hit - expected from BritPop - stalled their momentum.
The aforementioned John Leshey seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet after this quote. Coincidence? Or evidence of strange forces from another dimension?
DeleteThe LA Times made a typo, it should have been Jon Leshey.
DeleteJon's LinkedIn page here.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=linkedin
A friend of mine was at school with Crispian & when they hit the big time, he noted how things could have been very different if he hadn’t leant Crispian a Deep Purple album. Timbar.
ReplyDeleteGood story. Was that "In Rock"?
DeleteA band I've enjoyed since the get go . Here's a few boots for those who might be interested in such things . https://www.guitars101.com/threads/kula-shaker-megapost.692289/#post-3281679
ReplyDeleteWow - thanks! Any recommendations?
DeleteReading '96 [full version further down the page] & Paradiso '99 are two that I probably listen to the most but don't take my word on it - dip into different years , I'm sure you'll find something you'll enjoy .
DeleteOne of those bands that in a decent world would be stadium fillers rather than struggling to make a comerback after a brief glimmer of success. Truely, stardom is arbitrary. In my universe, Andre Williams, Prefab Sprout, Kula Shaker, and Don Ellis would be sainted, not the halfwits and mediocrities ullulating and strumming to another million.
ReplyDeleteCrispian John David Boulting came from an acting background, Grandfather John Mills, a fantastic actor, Mother Hayley Mills, an actress and I think his father was related to the Boulting Bros, renowned film makers. Had he not chosen to use 'Mills' as his stage name I think he might have been taken a little more seriously because Kula Shaker were a cracking little band. I loved the great 60's feel to the first album. He was (of course) right about the swastika but, the press jumped on it to give the kid a good kicking. Thanks for reminding me how good the band were (are ?)
ReplyDeletePast tense is wrong.
DeleteReally enjoying the new album and what's more they are about to start a UK/US tour so am off to see my first gig in about 5 years on 23rd Jan only a couple of hundred yards from my front door. So thanks Mr T, for reminding me of a band I'd almost forgotten about.
ReplyDeleteFull tour details here :
https://www.kulashaker.co.uk/
Babs, they're playing New York if you're interested.
Good to know, thanks Nobby!
DeleteCount me in as a BIG fan of theirs. I have all their cds, & they've often been here on tour. Thanks for the read. - useo
ReplyDeleteThx! Thought I had this already but apparently, you'll be shocked to learn, I thought wrong
ReplyDeleteFrom before Pugwash and Beck, here is Jason:
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/zDEyBznxc65
dwclville