TAPE Me Back To The Future — MADE For Tape # 12: Neneh Cherry, “Raw Like Sushi” (1989)
An occasional series here that celebrates the cassette-tape format in all its glory. Wobbles and all…
Neneh Cherry, Raw Like Sushi (1989)
In the early 1990s, the first couple of Neneh Cherry albums were everywhere. And they weren’t quite rap, and they weren’t quite soul, and they weren’t pop albums. What were they? They were brilliant. Darker R’n’B ballads than what you might hear on the pop side of that genre. And hip-hop elements certainly. But they felt like their own thing entirely. No exact precedent. It was hard to categorise. And back then, brand new to being a teenager, we were not used to music that you could not categorise. Everything was a rock or rap or metal or punk or jazz album..
I never owned any of the Neneh Cherry albums back in the day. But I heard them. A lot. And loved them. Especially Raw Like Sushi, especially its lead tracks, Buffalo Stance and Manchild. I mean how could you not?
Listening to Buffalo Stance on a playlist just recently, I remarked — probably just to myself as much as anything — that it was all at once of its era and yet totally fresh still. Yes, you could hear, from its production, the time that it was rooted in. As you can with most music. But it had transcended that also, so as to not seem cheesy at all, merely nostalgic if anything.
And this is a column about nostalgia. Always.
When I saw Raw Like Sushi on cassette tape I had to have it. It was like that. A visceral pull. As visceral as the punch of much of the music contained within it. I saw the cover, and thought immediately about playing basketball in James Wakefield’s driveway, in Havelock North in the early 1990s.
And I mention this because I have a heap of Neneh Cherry memories I could draw on beyond that. I have a personally signed record for starters. But wait before, that, hold up. I pulled over late at night on my way home, just a few minutes from my house and interviewed Cherry on the phone. I was on my way back from a Bill Burr comedy gig, and I wasn’t going to make the time deadline. So I parked up outside a fried chicken joint and had the most amazing conversation, incongruous setting but also perfect, about 7 Seconds and Raw Like Sushi, and making music in and around motherhood, and her startling return-to-from-from-nowhere ‘comeback’ album (The Blank Project). I would later get to see her live. (And get that record signed). And though she focussed on the new album, the encore of Buffalo Stance seemed to get as close to recreating that slice of 1989 magic as you could in 2014. No mean feat.
Um, you wanna talk Neneh Cherry memories? Here is a picture, albeit very blurry, of Neneh bonding with my then three-year-old son!
We had been invited to the soundcheck because Oscar was such a fan of her album, probably his first big musical experience around true connection outside of The Wiggles (and maybe The Beatles) — and the kindly promoter thought it might be cool for Neneh to meet her youngest ever fan. I thought it was a bit cheesy, as I’m not one to front to soundchecks or try to get backstage, but I also like to be a good dad, and why not, right? What a chance. We had to take it. She was incredible. She took the assignment as it was presented, no detachment, no cynicism, no boredome — she was sincere and lovely. She ran upstairs to get a banana and blueberries (from her backstage rider!) to give to Oscar because it was that ‘terror time’ of the day and there could have been a meltdown. She wanted a pic with him, she had a big dance with him, she told him she was jealous of his shoes. She signed a CD for him. It was unreal really…
And she spoke to me then and there about the joys of being a mother, and a grandmother. (Then of course she rocked the fucking house later that night).
So, you know, those are memories that should instantly arrive with any mention of her name. Vicarious ones too: I’ve given Oscar his own Neneh Cherry memories, in that he was too young to fully grasp it, but it was formative. And he had an incredible moment more recently when someone at his school told him that they liked the music of Neneh Cherry, no doubt informed by their parent/s — and they were probably trying to be obscure and out there in today’s musical climate. To test their mates for knowledge, expecting nothing but a blank stare. “Oh yeah, I’ve met her”, Oscar was able to say with a mix of pride and nonchalance. Deadly!
But, yeah, when I saw this tape, I was drawn to my intermediate and high school daze — to the first two Neneh albums, but Raw Like Sushi in particular.
As I say up above in that Vinyl Countdown link, I did eventually own the album on CD, and then vinyl — but never tape. So I had to collect it on that format, and listening to it now on this format feels fresh and, I can’t explain it beyond saying it this way, correct.
So, yeah, I’m very happy to have Raw Like Sushi on cassette tape — finally. It only took 35 years.
