And so shortly before 7pm on Wednesday evening I fired up some Kula Shaker hippie shit and sat back to take in the eclipse. Where’s Bonnie when you need her?
Blink and you’ll miss it etc. What was that all about?
The Kula Shaker hippie shit takes me back to the 1999 eclipse. I think it was 1999, right? At the time I saw no sense of irony in cycling up to the top of Brockwell Park along with half of the rest of South London.
I lay back, bare feet, and let the grass spread some peace, love and understanding amongst my toes. The Coffe Ponce of SW8 will be triggered by this OCD complete breakdown if he ever gets to read this.
Twenty seven years ago I played the Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts album through a CF Walkman as we experienced a blackout at the top of Brockwell Park. It was pretty crap back in the day; it was half average this evening.
But anyway, about that Kula Shaker album. My musical tastes have since advanced to realise that there’s much more to prog than a Peasants, Peak and Astronauts. But blimey it’s an absolute tie dye banger.
Kula Shaker became something of a cartoon caricature of themselves after the huge success of their first album. They also had big money thrown at them by EMI at the time.
I interviewed them just as they were on the cusp of playing a headline gig at Brixton Academy. You could tell that they were scared as shit public school boys who had been caught in the headlights.
Insert your own eclipse joke here.
By the time the second album came around, and by the time of the first eclipse, something was missing from Kula Shaker. It might have been the drugs, which always lead to that second album syndrome. But now I think Peasants Pigs and Astronauts is something of a lost masterpiece.
Yer man Crispian turns up all the hippie shit to 11, but there are tracks on there, such as the simply delightful Shower Your Love. It’s the sound of a band breaking up but still showing plenty of brotherly love towards one another.
I pondered this briefly as we hit the eclipse blackout this evening. I then turned on telly and watched the shitty hundred whilst downing some more cheapo Lidl lager.
Chin chin.