Sananda Maitreya: "Do You Love Me Like You Say?"

14 April 1993

"A fantastic and vibrant record — if it doesn't get to number 1, so help me I'll eat Ian Beale's socks."

— Tim Southwell

Apologies for the deadnaming but Terence Trent D'Arby is known to millions while Sananda Maitreya is seldom-remembered. No doubt there are those out there with well-worn copies of Introducing the Hardline... who aren't even aware that the artist behind this successful and influential album changed his name way back in 2001. As someone who has known about it I would nevertheless have struggled to tell you what it is.

(NB: I have subsequently decided to reverse this position. The excuse above is a weak one. If some of us aren't aware of the singer's real name then it behooves us to learn it. With the exception of the above, I have replaced his former name with the one he prefers to go by. The same goes for every other piece in this space written about him)

That out of the way, let's get to the tale of the genius from the late eighties who was big for a year or so then faded away and everyone forgot all about him. Except that someone didn't get the memo, while the UK still wasn't done with him (at least for the time being).

Tom Breihan's column on the 1988 American number one hit "Wishing Well" (a Top 5 smash about a year earlier in Britain) relates the story of the singer getting rejected by a series of UK record labels because they supposedly didn't want another Michael Jackson or Prince. The pop critic is skeptical and with good reason: who wouldn't have wanted another fabulously talented and charismatic singer with oodles of crossover appeal? But I'm a little doubtful that this was even what happened. More likely is that the likes of BMG, EMI, Polygram and Virgin took a pass on him because he refused to be just like the superstars of the day.

In a previous mini review of "Wishing Well", I took issue with reviewer Vicky McDonald's comparison of Maitreya to Prince but I think the similarities grew as the younger singer's career progressed. By refusing to be just like his supposed idol, he became more resolute, more independent, more single-minded and, thus, more like Prince. Still, if I'm going to take others to task, I might as well do the same for myself. For some reason, I chose to assert that "Wishing Well" was something that the "future Sananda Maitreya would have difficulty topping". All I can say is I didn't have his overlooked output from 1993 on my mind back then. Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby was his lone blockbuster album but he didn't begin to come into his own until third L.P. Symphony or Damn* (*Exploring the Tension Inside the Sweetness). (Though Tom Breihan remarks that no one did audacious album titles like Maitreya, he didn't even bother to bring up this one)

Having made a second album that derailed his superstar status so spectacularly that it arguably undermined just how massive he had been (Introducing the Hardline... managed to top the British album charts for nine weeks, an astonishing total for anyone much less an artist with their debut release; such was its obscurity that Simon Reynolds didn't bother including sophomore release Neither Fish not Flesh in his list of 'Career Killing Albums'), everyone would've forgiven Maitreya for retreating back to tried and tested slow song territory. So for him to re-emerge with the rock and funk attack of "Do You Love Me Like You Say?" was an especially bold move.

"Talent borrows, genius steals" (though wouldn't the truly talented genius come up with something less cliched?): taking every element of "Do You Love Me..." apart there's nothing especially original going on. There's a percussionist in the accompanying promo and he sure did a bang up job nicking the that "Funky Drummer" part. The rhythm guitar playing is, yes, decidedly Princian. The backing vocalists chirp away like in an old school soul record. And, of course, there's Sananda Maitreya at the centre of it with a throat-shredding performance that nods to his gospel roots. As I say, nothing new to see here but for the fact that they've seldom been sewn together so seamlessly. "She Drives Me Crazy" had been a huge global hit back in 1989 for Fine Young Cannibals but the way they pieced together all its disparate elements seemed jarring; in these more capable hands, however, they merge so well that you'd think they'd always been together.

Even though it had been a return to form and then some, Symphony or Damn couldn't match the sales and chart lifespan of Introducing the Hardline... It would debut at number four but would quickly end up drifting around the lower reaches of the albums chart for the remainder of its run.Yet, its singles all did respectable business with each one nabbing a Top 20 spot in the UK. It's as if everyone found a Sananda Maitreya song they liked and loyally stuck by it at the expense of his other releases, even the sleeper album released at the same time. The Sananda that rocks out, the Sananda that croons soulfully, the Sananda that dabbles, the Sananda that trips on acid rock and post-punk: at most, you may have one Sananda Maitreya but I'll take 'em all.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

R.E.M.: "Everybody Hurts"

I was going to nix my plan to write about every single from Automatic for the People and go with Trash Can Sinatras instead but I couldn't be arsed. Why write about people who want to be R.E.M. when you can have the real thing instead? There are bots out there on social media who claim that this and U2's "One" are lousy; I know they're bots because no human being with a soul would say such things. Quite why Warner Brothers chose to sit on "Everybody Hurts" as long as they did is a mystery — had they put it out as the second single from the album it might have given them that US and/or UK number one that they never had. And that video! I had resisted them for long enough and it was at this point that I started to crack. While it's depressing that it frequently takes a moving slow song to get the public to shell out for a worthy group, at least R.E.M. were getting the giant hit they deserved. If only they'd been so kind towards the future Sananda Maitreya.

Pulp: "Babies"

14 October 1992

"Ahh...Pulp could well become the band of all our tomorrows. A most joyous noise has been created."

— Tim Southwell

When I first came to South Korea I started to develop an interest in local films. From the clever rom-com 엽기적인 그녀 (My Sassy Girl) to the absurd drunken low-budget road movie 낮술 (Daytime Drinking), I found that was I able to learn a great deal about Korean culture while also enjoying some excellent pictures led by an outstanding generation of actors, including Sol Kyung-gu, Jeon Do-yeon, Moon So-ri, Song Kang-ho, Kim Hye-su and Hwang Jung-min.

But I didn't care for every picture I saw. Films which depicted massacres committed by Korea's authoritarian regime (화려한 휴가, aka May 18) and fictional accounts of natural disasters (해운대, aka Tidal Wave) ended up being undermined by unnecessary and  insulting comic relief characters. 미녀는 괴로워 (aka 200 Pounds Beauty) couldn't have been clumsier in taking on body positivity. 실미도 (Silmido, they couldn't be bothered coming up with a pointless English title of its own) told the fascinating tale of convicts who had secretly been trained to invade North Korea in the early-seventies but the film suffered due to a manipulative ending in which viewers were expected to cry over the deaths of a bunch of vile thugs and rapists.

Many Koreans I have spoken to about appreciating their films have been impressed that I've seen so many of their pictures. They don't take my criticisms very well though. A common response to me knocking Silmido or Tidal Wave is that "[I] don't understand Korean culture". (Strangely this ignorance has never prevented me from enjoying their many good films but this point is never acknowledged for some reason) Apparently, cracking jokes in the midst of a tragedy or feeling that I ought to get emotional over despicable turds being killed are things I'll never understand because I am an outsider. Well, good.

Which brings me to the subject of today's blog post, Pulp. I used to be quite the Anglophile back in my teen years and considering what this space is all about perhaps I still am. British pop, British comedy, British chocolate, British girls, British towns: sign me up! But this doesn't mean I can appreciate it all. I've always been fond of Coronation Street (something that I must get from my mum, a longtime Corrie fan) but I've never thought much of other English soaps. Bands like The Who and The Police have never done much for me, barring the odd moment here and there, And don't get me started on blackcurrent juice!

Dislike of Pulp appears to be a bridge too far, however. Jarvis Cocker is a national treasure for being stick insect thin while still somehow being considered sexy and he's good in interviews and on panel shows. Plus, that whole thing with Michael Jackson. Who wouldn't love this guy? He even has resilience going for him since his band had been active since 1978 but wouldn't hit it big for sixteen long years. I understand the love he gets, I just don't think much of him as a singer even if I can totally see what everyone sees in him as a frontperson for his band. As a singer, he's like a louche Nick Cave without the range or a country and western singer attempting to send up a series of corny old numbers with an eyebrow knowingly raised to the crowd. As subtle as stubbing your toe on the edge of the bed. If that's not bad enough, there's his highly irritating habit of talking in the middle of their songs. ("Common People" may well be one of the greatest singles of all time but it's ruined by that dreadful "Are you sure...?")

The group's famously long gestation period could be seen as the UK not being ready for them but instead it was Pulp not being ready for stardom. 1991 and '92 is about where Cocker and mates Russell Senior, Candida Doyle, the late Steve McKay and Nick Banks start to look and sound like pop stars even if hardly anyone was listening. They had gone through many changes in lineup and style (in the early days they were said to have been a mix of "ABBA and The Fall") which leads me to wonder if some of Cocker's real passions had to be weeded out in order for them to belatedly break through. Leonard Cohen, for one, is frequently acknowledged as an influence on their early work but you'd never know it by the time the nineties rolled around.

Even at their best ("Do You Remember the First Time?", "Disco 2000"...I'm struggling to think of a third), it's hard to escape the feeling that a little Pulp goes a long way. Getting through an entire album is no easy task. It isn't so much that they're a bad group because they clearly have a lot going for them; rather, they're pretentious and they're over-studied in their presentation. In the promo for "Babies" Russell Senior glances at the camera as though he's Ron Mael giving viewers the evil eye. There's nothing original about these people. If they didn't exist, we wouldn't need to invent Pulp though it would be really easy to do so.

Nothing original about these people. Fans of Pulp tend to focus on Cocker and those of us who are not as impressed are no better but I think the band as a whole deserves to be knocked while we're at it. Doyle's keyboard flourishes bring to my sunshine indie pop like the Lightning Seeds without the delight. Senior's playing fails to wow the listener the way the likes of Johnny Marr, John Squire, Graham Coxon and Bernard Butler managed to do so effortlessly. Their ensemble playing is tight — just as it bloody well ought to have been considering how long they'd been around — but it isn't enough to save "Babies" from being bland indie fare that couldn't hope for a sniff of the Top 40 (until the finally hit it big a couple years' later).

Pulp will be coming up in this space at least two more times before long. Until then, I had better find more to say on the matter of trashing perhaps the most overrated British band of all time. I don't want to blow my load. But I imagine I'll find a way of continuing pick from the low hanging fruit of a group that ought to have been great but for all the ways they managed to balls it up. And if you don't care for my thoughts on Pulp then remember: I'm not British and I couldn't possibly understand them anyway.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Orb: "Assassin"

While Enigma and Deep Forest got lumped in with yuppie new age music, The Orb remained cool (this never prevented them all from appearing together on the excellent Pure Moods compilation). Honestly, you can have them. I like my blissed out music to be high on pop hooks the way those annoyingly earnest Euro acts did so effortlessly. The Orb never quite managed to do so, although it's quite possible they weren't striving for it in the first place. Brian Eno, Codona, Moby: there's plenty of great new age music out there that doesn't have to be tuned out every time its put on. "Assassin" isn't one of them: it's probably for the best that you focus on washing the dishes or reading a pop mag or doing your biology revisions or whatever while it's on; there's not much to be gained from listening to the damn thing.

Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine: "Do Re Mi, So Far So Good"

24 June 1992

"Rock that funky punk machine, dudes!"

— Tim Southwell

Top pop-jazz-rock critic Andrew Male recently Tweeted a passage from a bio or memoir or some sort of music retrospective which argued that Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine (note to all who may be interested: I have never liked referring to them as either 'Carter' or, worse yet, 'Carter USM', I like their name in full) were "written out of history" because they fell through the cracks between acid house (presumably this anonymous writer is including offshoot scene Madchester in with it) and Britpop. "Yes", Male commented wryly, "that's why [they] were written out of history".

I like Male and I understand disliking a band like this one but there is some truth to this assertion. While Britpop no doubt has its critics, there wasn't a major genre or subgenre that was looked down upon as consistently as grebo, the unruly Birmingham-area scene that gave rise to the likes of The Wonder Stuff, Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, as well as groups like Jesus Jones, Kingmaker and EMF, found a home along with all those longhairs who all seemed to hail from some town called Stourbridge. A lot of them used samples, weren't averse to dance grooves but were also comfortable thrashing about on their "pop music guitars". Over in North America, it was easy to confuse them with Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses but for the lack of a druggy vibe and a distinct lack of cool.

Since they weren't tripping on a daily basis at the Hacienda Club in Manchester, some of these groups had a tougher, angrier sound. When The Wonder Stuff's Miles Hunt pointedly placed "Astley in a Noose" as the B side to their first Top 40 hit "It's Yer Money I'm After Baby" he was serving notice that this manufactured pop rubbish wouldn't do. Not everyone followed suit but Ned's Atomic Dustbin would eventually deliver the punky "Kill Your Television" and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine would write and record a protest song of their own in "Do Re Mi, So Far So Good".

It isn't a terribly well-remembered hit for Jim-Bob and Fruitbat. Ask a Brit who happened to be a mopey, spotty youth in the early nineties and they'll likely tell you that they only remember one or some of the following: "Sheriff Fatman", "After the Watershed" and "The Only Living Boy in New Cross". While not quite their three biggest hits (the forgettable "Rubbish" actually outperformed "Sheriff Fatman" on the charts), they were the standouts then and they remain their signature tunes to this day. Yet, "Do Re Mi" represents both their sole Single of the Fortnight Best New Single in Smash Hits and, of greater significance, the only Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine single to appear on a Now That's What I Call Music compilation. Not bad for a song few remember and not a whole lot of people seemed to like even then. (Fun fact: it only spent two weeks in the Top 40; hit singles having chart "runs" of a fortnight or less would become common in the nineties)

Being on a Now is also ironic given the song's subject matter. If you happened to own Now 22 (as I did), you may have come for Take That and — yikes! — Nick Berry but you would've also been exposed to a trio of angsty indie-rock from Shakespears Sister (with "I Don't Care", a sentiment that ought to have appealed to teenagers or was I the only one?), Ugly Kid Joe ("Everything About You": again, hating everything is what teens do) and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine laying waste to the throwaway pop scene that surrounded them.

The only problem was, the message didn't connect the way the efforts of both Shakespears Sister and Ugly Kid Joe did. Jim-Bob (or was it Fruitbat? I only just realised I have no idea who did what in ver Machine) had that thick accent which muffled an awful lot of the words. There's also the racket. And even then, did the lyrics do a decent job communicating this distaste for nineties' pop? Much as I would love for their to be a football club called Antarctic Thistle, I don't know what purpose their big match is meant to serve in this song. Billy Bragg had a way of making silly rhymes work but in the hands of the Unstoppables it just seems like the sort of verse I would have churned out at fourteen or fifteen, convinced of it's worthiness as a masterpiece.

A hint of where Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine went a bit wrong was their ages. Q Magazine praised their number one LP 1992: The Love Album but admitted that it was "undignified" that thirtysomethings would go by the handles of Jim-Bob and Fruitbat. More to the point, they were attempting to do something to attract the attention of teenage good-for-nothings such as myself but couldn't really pull it off because they hadn't been teens since Jim Callaghan's Winter of Discontent.

"Sheriff Fatman" had been about low income renters dealing with a slumlord. "After the Watershed" was about youngsters discovering sex on the telly. "The Only Living Boy in New Cross" was about the AIDS epidemic. All of these touched people in one way or another. "Do Re Mi, So Far So Good" may have been good fun and a nice reminder of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine as heirs to the rock 'n' roll bombast of Meat Loaf and the trashy rock-synth of ZZ Top and Billy Idol but what it represented meant next to nothing to ver kids. And isn't that's what matters when you've spurned pop in favour of using your place in music to be a good influence? And if not, why not?

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Roy Orbison: "I Drove All Night"

With all due respect to Jim-Bob and Fruitbat, the rightful Single of the Fortnight Best New Single is from the late, great Roy Orbison. Originally a hit in the spring of 1989 for Cyndi Lauper, the Big O recorded this Billy Steinberg-Tom Kelly classic but it wasn't released until nearly four years after his untimely death. Both versions are good but there's no competing with Orbison's voice even if you're Lauper. (They're both miles better than Celine Dion's lifeless reading a decade later) It was a big deal at the time that TV star Jason Priestley appeared in its video but as a hormone-fuelled teen I was focused on Jennifer Connelly. She still looks great but now I'm all about Roy Orbison. Who else could sing so well despite seeming like he was putting in the minimal effort to do so?