Post by Kam Gill on Apr 23, 2011 10:09:11 GMT
(Kam) If we look at your early albums, ‘Souled Out’ and ‘Another Sell’ out were quite similar. With 100% Proof you went Desi with Singers like Manak and Sadiq. We saw your music evolve with your next release ‘Grass Roots.’ That was the first time you went to India to record the vocals wasn’t it?
(PMC) Yeah it was. It was actually my friend Ikbal Suri who said to me “Look, you have done 100% Proof, why don’t you go and record these guys?” I asked him “Are they still singing?” He said “Yeah, Manak was down recording with Bally Sagoo last year.” So I asked him what had happened to those tracks and he said that Bally said they were no good. So I thought, ‘Okay, forget Manak then’ Ha - ha! I asked him who else was still singing. I remember him telling me Shinda was still killing it. So it was 1995 and I found myself packing my bags to go to India to meet Manak and Shinda. Everyone knew I was going, people like Dj Stin, Tony aka DJ D-zire. Tony said to me Shinda is like Gabar Singh, and people were telling me these guys are on horses and from the ghetto, proper gangsters! I remember people telling me not to go see Sidiq, “Don’t go there" they were saying. So I got to India and found out in actual fact they were not on horses, they had offices...They were just.....well...singers!
(Kam) Can you explain what the experince was like?
(PMC) I was a bit starstruck when I first met them to be honest with you. You know you hear these people singing on albums your parents are listening to...or your mates, for some reason, are still listening to because obviously they got no style..Ha ha! The first person I recorded was Shinda.We got a invite to Shinda’s daughter’s birthday party. We felt like V.I.P’s! We were loving it! We ended up in Shinda’s office, getting drunk and freestyling. So Shinda was first. Obviously the man is a legend, but I was not used to a guy not rehearsing a song. The first track I recorded was ‘Mirza’. He was like, where’s the lyrics? Where’s the melody? Okay lets start singing, press record....and he belted out the song from start to finish just like that. At the time, I had trained myself to play cords that had more of a western vibe to them. It was the early part of my career and I had not worked out my way of interpreting eastern scales back then. So he was killing it with these eastern scales but I thought he was dropping kind of a bum note. I love those bum notes now. It is my style. Shinda taught me that style. But back then I didn’t know it. So I spoke to his keyboard player, who was his apprentice, his boy, and told him I wanted Shinda to change the note to make it more western. He understood what I wanted and started asking Shinda to make it more western...but Shinda just gave him a back hand Slap from nowhere which sent him across the room and Shinda said to him “ Hun Das, kee?” Then Shinda turned to me and said “Retake Karna?” I just said “Nai, Nai, Teek-a, teek-a.” Ha- ha!
But to tell you the truth Kam, I wasn’t happy with it. It was the first time I had heard Shinda accapela and I was hearing flaws. But the thing is, Kam, when I got home and I put the chords down on that track, it’s only then I realized what I was hearing was not flaws, they were intricate little changes that he had done with skill. That is talent. Incidentally, in those days, 95' they never had any clip tracks, all they had was eight track analog machines in Punjab.They were not as advanced as they are now. But I remember at that time, I had to record a tap dripping onto my Dictaphone and record that drip onto their tape and we were pitching that drip up and down for each track just to get the tempo for the singers. So Mirza was sang on a tap drip. In fact most of ‘Grass Roots’ was recorded using that drip.
(Kam) You also had ‘Jind Mahi’ on that album. That was a unique concept, having four top singers on the track together wasn’t it? You never had the four singers in the studio at the same time did you?
(PMC) Yeah, I guess so. For me, Jind Mahi is one of the best Punjabi songs ever made. Almost everyone has done a version of it. I wanted to take it back to a trad vibe. It was actually my friend’s idea who suggested that I get whoever comes into the studio to sing a Tappa of the song and release it as one track. It was his idea to change the scales of each verse as well. Originally I wanted Manak, Shinda, Sidiq on there but I didn’t want Janjua on there. I just thought who has heard of Janjua? I wanted legends on there. But when Janjua walked into the studio and started singing Jind Mahi, I was like..what the ....this guy is unbelievable! Janjua singing Jind Mahi is the best Janjua I have ever heard. I had never heard anyone sing Punjabi vocals so crisp before. So he had to go Verse one, bring in the track. He took out Manak, Shinda and Mani on that track. Mani, was quite famous at the time so I thought fair enough I will have him on there too. But after you have heard Janjua’s verse the rest of the track flowed quite well.
(Kam) On the inlay of ‘Grass Roots’ you had a advert for ‘Steel Bangle’ which at the time was supposed to be a Hip Hop album. What is the story behind that?
(PMC) Well, to be honest with you Kam, that was part of the Moviebox runnings. In 2002 I gave them an album called ‘Switchin’ 2‘ At that time they knew I wanted to do ‘Steel Bangle.’ In 2000 I had started work on a Hip hop album which was ‘Steel Bangle’ but I wanted to get the Moviebox thing out the way. They knew I wanted to do ‘Switchin’ 2 for them then do ‘Steel Bangle.’ The first Switchin’ was on a house vibe and I was going to bring it back to Bhangra on Switchin'’ 2. You know, 2 step was gone by then. We were celebrating the finish of the 2 step with the Desi. That was what ‘Switchin’ 2 was about. So I gave then a selection of songs but they said they didn’t like them and told me that there were certain tracks they couldn’t clear. But that wasn’t even true. I was gullible. When people get shrewd I don’t get what angle they are coming from because sometimes you just don't. They told me they were cover versions. So I thought maybe the singer has done one on me or maybe the writer has done me over or whatever and they can’t clear some songs.
In the end I gave them some more tracks. But they just wanted more songs and that was a shrewd way of getting them. They then put all the songs together, re named the album ‘Steel Bangle’ and released it. They also signed it up to a German label as a follow up album to the Backe album and signed it up to a hundred thousand Pound deal. They got the advance and were happy. So while I was trying to fight them in court for releasing it they had already signed it up to a deal. That is how ‘Steel Bangle’ came about in a Bhangra form. ‘56 Districts’ is the same album that ‘Steel Bangle’ was supposed to be but it’s going to be much bigger. Steel Bangle is a sikh symbol, but Punjab is 56 Districts. People call it five rivers but you can call it 56 districts as well. To me, that is going to be the album that ‘Steel Bangle’ should have been.
(Kam) Before we talk about ‘Backe’.On ‘Grass Roots’ you had Mirza, then on ‘Legalised’ you had Mirza Part 2. You also had Challa part 2 on Legalised......but where is Challa part 1?
(PMC) You know what? No one has ever asked me that. There is a Challa part 1. It is a drum and bass / Jungle mix that I did back in the day.....
(Kam) And you didn’t release it because.....?
(PMC) Well, the story behind that is .....one of the first things I ever recorded was the Rap on Mirza Part 2. I recorded that when I was 16. Then in 1996 I did Mirza Part 2. At around that time I dug up some old accapelas of mine and one of them was that Rap. So I thought I’d see how that went with it. I didn’t re vocal it or anything. So you are hearing PMC at 16 on that track. No one knows that. It turned out roughly the same tempo....actually I think it was almost exactly the same tempo, because in those days there was not that much time stretch, as Mirza. When I recorded Mirza for ‘Grass Roots’, Shinda dropped eight or nine tappe, but I had only used four on ‘Grass Roots.’ Then whilst I was working on Mirza Part 2, it just came to me that the Rap I had dug up from my teens will sound sick with Mirza, it was just one of those moments.
So I bounced it down on the Mirza track which only had the drum beat on it at that time. Then I put together what I would call the fugees mix. It was the Killing me softly version of Mirza. That is the sort of beat I used. After that I put down the chords, changed the drums and came up with the version that is out now. And that was how Mirza was born. From a Rap that I recorded when I was 16. If I had realized it a couple of years earlier it would have been Mirza Part 1 on ‘Grass Roots.’ So basically, when I did Mirza on ‘Grass Roots’ I had already done a Drum and Bass mix of ‘Challa’ from back in the day. That was one of my original Desi Mixes. But then I was thinking what shall I do with Challa because Jungle was out then, Jungle music had gone. But I had already spent seven weeks timing up Challa. Because the original version of Challa starts ten BPM’s slower than it ends, so it speeds up ten BPM’s throughout the song. I had already spent about 7 weeks on my sampler timing little bits, looping, fixing little bits. So all I had to do was take the Jungle out and put something else together as I didn't have to spend another 7 weeks timing it and I didn't want to waste those seven weeks. So that’s when I decided to take it down the Mirza road and called it ‘Challa Part 2.’
(Kam) We are now approaching the ‘Bachke’ explosion. Talk me through that..
(PMC) Kam, you know what? When Bachke’ was released in the mainstream, it wasn’t done in the right way. The video and all that....you know, you could have had Hasselhoff in the video or something like that! Alot of things could have been done differently. The story of Bachke’ is one day I put on MTV and I saw ‘Bachke’ on there with some Malaysian guys, dancing and hanging around Kuala Lumpar. At that time the internet was gathering pace, You Tube wasn’t even out then. I thought ‘Someone’s took my song.’ Because no one had heard of Bachke’ It was a big underground track but no one had really heard it on that level so it was the perfect track for someone from the internet to nick. So I phoned up Ninder, of Nachural records who released it and said “ By the way, we got a little runnings to deal with. Someone has nicked Bachke’ and released it and it’s gone MTV.” He said “Yeah, it was me.” I asked him what he meant. He said “ It was me who released it, it’s got nothing to do with you no more, it’s not your track.”
To be honest with you, Kam, I had fincianced this track. I was the one who went to India, got Janjua, put the whole thing togther, virtaully put it all together on my computer, you know what I mean? And all of a sudden I’ve got no deal with Ninder, I’ve done a licensing runnings on a Brother - Brother thing and he has worked it all out, been to the solicitors, released the song, signed it to European labels and been making dough on it for the last four years. So I told him I need to see him and we needed to talk about this. So he met me in a very public place, his favorite one, The Moat hotel in West Brom. We went in there and talked. After a while he said to me “You might as well go home now and if you are lucky you will make more money out of this than me.” I asked him what he meant. He said ‘Gigs.’ I Said ‘Listen, you taking the P***?”
(Kam) How were you feeling at that time?
(PMC) You don’t know how you are going to react until something like that happens to you. I was angry, frustrated. You learn alot about yourself as a person when something like that happens to you. On a personal note it was good that I could go to that level and realize I could still hold it down. You know, next man might even have gone to jail...But I was cool. I walked out there and waited for a couple of hours and thought I’d do him outside ...but he never came out! Ha - ha! But joking aside, it was a difficult time I went through. After a few days, Ninder rang me because apparently everyone already knew it was a Panjabi MC Song. They know it’s not anyone else’s song. They know it’s not Ninder’s song....they dont even know Ninder..
So all the German labels, the Italian labels, the Spanish labels, Brazil, Mexico, they all turned the deal down because they were thinking ‘Where’s Panjabi MC?’ So now he is asking me what deal do I want. At the same time he is telling me that the money I paid him to clear the break back in 1998, which was in the thousands, he kept in his pocket. So I’m thinking, ‘Okay, you haven’t cleared the Knightrider break..’ they took 90% of the publishing anyway so...I was there thinking what kind of deal we going to do. In the end we negotiated a deal and I managed to get back on the scene, but at the same time I was still signed to Moviebox and I was in court with them for two years so I couldn't release anything new either. I was stuck in court and I could only release what was with Ninder. So the Panjabi MC album had to be remixes of my old stuff.
End Of Part 2
[glow=red,2,300]Coming up in Part 3[/glow] ...... (PMC) ... “all of a sudden one of your artist’s goes Mainstream.....why stop there? I just couldn’t understand it. ...It’s just PMC’s luck that the man is not interested..”
[glow=red,2,300]Interview By Kam Gill[/glow]
Check out Part 1
(PMC) Yeah it was. It was actually my friend Ikbal Suri who said to me “Look, you have done 100% Proof, why don’t you go and record these guys?” I asked him “Are they still singing?” He said “Yeah, Manak was down recording with Bally Sagoo last year.” So I asked him what had happened to those tracks and he said that Bally said they were no good. So I thought, ‘Okay, forget Manak then’ Ha - ha! I asked him who else was still singing. I remember him telling me Shinda was still killing it. So it was 1995 and I found myself packing my bags to go to India to meet Manak and Shinda. Everyone knew I was going, people like Dj Stin, Tony aka DJ D-zire. Tony said to me Shinda is like Gabar Singh, and people were telling me these guys are on horses and from the ghetto, proper gangsters! I remember people telling me not to go see Sidiq, “Don’t go there" they were saying. So I got to India and found out in actual fact they were not on horses, they had offices...They were just.....well...singers!
(Kam) Can you explain what the experince was like?
(PMC) I was a bit starstruck when I first met them to be honest with you. You know you hear these people singing on albums your parents are listening to...or your mates, for some reason, are still listening to because obviously they got no style..Ha ha! The first person I recorded was Shinda.We got a invite to Shinda’s daughter’s birthday party. We felt like V.I.P’s! We were loving it! We ended up in Shinda’s office, getting drunk and freestyling. So Shinda was first. Obviously the man is a legend, but I was not used to a guy not rehearsing a song. The first track I recorded was ‘Mirza’. He was like, where’s the lyrics? Where’s the melody? Okay lets start singing, press record....and he belted out the song from start to finish just like that. At the time, I had trained myself to play cords that had more of a western vibe to them. It was the early part of my career and I had not worked out my way of interpreting eastern scales back then. So he was killing it with these eastern scales but I thought he was dropping kind of a bum note. I love those bum notes now. It is my style. Shinda taught me that style. But back then I didn’t know it. So I spoke to his keyboard player, who was his apprentice, his boy, and told him I wanted Shinda to change the note to make it more western. He understood what I wanted and started asking Shinda to make it more western...but Shinda just gave him a back hand Slap from nowhere which sent him across the room and Shinda said to him “ Hun Das, kee?” Then Shinda turned to me and said “Retake Karna?” I just said “Nai, Nai, Teek-a, teek-a.” Ha- ha!
But to tell you the truth Kam, I wasn’t happy with it. It was the first time I had heard Shinda accapela and I was hearing flaws. But the thing is, Kam, when I got home and I put the chords down on that track, it’s only then I realized what I was hearing was not flaws, they were intricate little changes that he had done with skill. That is talent. Incidentally, in those days, 95' they never had any clip tracks, all they had was eight track analog machines in Punjab.They were not as advanced as they are now. But I remember at that time, I had to record a tap dripping onto my Dictaphone and record that drip onto their tape and we were pitching that drip up and down for each track just to get the tempo for the singers. So Mirza was sang on a tap drip. In fact most of ‘Grass Roots’ was recorded using that drip.
(Kam) You also had ‘Jind Mahi’ on that album. That was a unique concept, having four top singers on the track together wasn’t it? You never had the four singers in the studio at the same time did you?
(PMC) Yeah, I guess so. For me, Jind Mahi is one of the best Punjabi songs ever made. Almost everyone has done a version of it. I wanted to take it back to a trad vibe. It was actually my friend’s idea who suggested that I get whoever comes into the studio to sing a Tappa of the song and release it as one track. It was his idea to change the scales of each verse as well. Originally I wanted Manak, Shinda, Sidiq on there but I didn’t want Janjua on there. I just thought who has heard of Janjua? I wanted legends on there. But when Janjua walked into the studio and started singing Jind Mahi, I was like..what the ....this guy is unbelievable! Janjua singing Jind Mahi is the best Janjua I have ever heard. I had never heard anyone sing Punjabi vocals so crisp before. So he had to go Verse one, bring in the track. He took out Manak, Shinda and Mani on that track. Mani, was quite famous at the time so I thought fair enough I will have him on there too. But after you have heard Janjua’s verse the rest of the track flowed quite well.
(Kam) On the inlay of ‘Grass Roots’ you had a advert for ‘Steel Bangle’ which at the time was supposed to be a Hip Hop album. What is the story behind that?
(PMC) Well, to be honest with you Kam, that was part of the Moviebox runnings. In 2002 I gave them an album called ‘Switchin’ 2‘ At that time they knew I wanted to do ‘Steel Bangle.’ In 2000 I had started work on a Hip hop album which was ‘Steel Bangle’ but I wanted to get the Moviebox thing out the way. They knew I wanted to do ‘Switchin’ 2 for them then do ‘Steel Bangle.’ The first Switchin’ was on a house vibe and I was going to bring it back to Bhangra on Switchin'’ 2. You know, 2 step was gone by then. We were celebrating the finish of the 2 step with the Desi. That was what ‘Switchin’ 2 was about. So I gave then a selection of songs but they said they didn’t like them and told me that there were certain tracks they couldn’t clear. But that wasn’t even true. I was gullible. When people get shrewd I don’t get what angle they are coming from because sometimes you just don't. They told me they were cover versions. So I thought maybe the singer has done one on me or maybe the writer has done me over or whatever and they can’t clear some songs.
In the end I gave them some more tracks. But they just wanted more songs and that was a shrewd way of getting them. They then put all the songs together, re named the album ‘Steel Bangle’ and released it. They also signed it up to a German label as a follow up album to the Backe album and signed it up to a hundred thousand Pound deal. They got the advance and were happy. So while I was trying to fight them in court for releasing it they had already signed it up to a deal. That is how ‘Steel Bangle’ came about in a Bhangra form. ‘56 Districts’ is the same album that ‘Steel Bangle’ was supposed to be but it’s going to be much bigger. Steel Bangle is a sikh symbol, but Punjab is 56 Districts. People call it five rivers but you can call it 56 districts as well. To me, that is going to be the album that ‘Steel Bangle’ should have been.
(Kam) Before we talk about ‘Backe’.On ‘Grass Roots’ you had Mirza, then on ‘Legalised’ you had Mirza Part 2. You also had Challa part 2 on Legalised......but where is Challa part 1?
(PMC) You know what? No one has ever asked me that. There is a Challa part 1. It is a drum and bass / Jungle mix that I did back in the day.....
(Kam) And you didn’t release it because.....?
(PMC) Well, the story behind that is .....one of the first things I ever recorded was the Rap on Mirza Part 2. I recorded that when I was 16. Then in 1996 I did Mirza Part 2. At around that time I dug up some old accapelas of mine and one of them was that Rap. So I thought I’d see how that went with it. I didn’t re vocal it or anything. So you are hearing PMC at 16 on that track. No one knows that. It turned out roughly the same tempo....actually I think it was almost exactly the same tempo, because in those days there was not that much time stretch, as Mirza. When I recorded Mirza for ‘Grass Roots’, Shinda dropped eight or nine tappe, but I had only used four on ‘Grass Roots.’ Then whilst I was working on Mirza Part 2, it just came to me that the Rap I had dug up from my teens will sound sick with Mirza, it was just one of those moments.
So I bounced it down on the Mirza track which only had the drum beat on it at that time. Then I put together what I would call the fugees mix. It was the Killing me softly version of Mirza. That is the sort of beat I used. After that I put down the chords, changed the drums and came up with the version that is out now. And that was how Mirza was born. From a Rap that I recorded when I was 16. If I had realized it a couple of years earlier it would have been Mirza Part 1 on ‘Grass Roots.’ So basically, when I did Mirza on ‘Grass Roots’ I had already done a Drum and Bass mix of ‘Challa’ from back in the day. That was one of my original Desi Mixes. But then I was thinking what shall I do with Challa because Jungle was out then, Jungle music had gone. But I had already spent seven weeks timing up Challa. Because the original version of Challa starts ten BPM’s slower than it ends, so it speeds up ten BPM’s throughout the song. I had already spent about 7 weeks on my sampler timing little bits, looping, fixing little bits. So all I had to do was take the Jungle out and put something else together as I didn't have to spend another 7 weeks timing it and I didn't want to waste those seven weeks. So that’s when I decided to take it down the Mirza road and called it ‘Challa Part 2.’
(Kam) We are now approaching the ‘Bachke’ explosion. Talk me through that..
(PMC) Kam, you know what? When Bachke’ was released in the mainstream, it wasn’t done in the right way. The video and all that....you know, you could have had Hasselhoff in the video or something like that! Alot of things could have been done differently. The story of Bachke’ is one day I put on MTV and I saw ‘Bachke’ on there with some Malaysian guys, dancing and hanging around Kuala Lumpar. At that time the internet was gathering pace, You Tube wasn’t even out then. I thought ‘Someone’s took my song.’ Because no one had heard of Bachke’ It was a big underground track but no one had really heard it on that level so it was the perfect track for someone from the internet to nick. So I phoned up Ninder, of Nachural records who released it and said “ By the way, we got a little runnings to deal with. Someone has nicked Bachke’ and released it and it’s gone MTV.” He said “Yeah, it was me.” I asked him what he meant. He said “ It was me who released it, it’s got nothing to do with you no more, it’s not your track.”
To be honest with you, Kam, I had fincianced this track. I was the one who went to India, got Janjua, put the whole thing togther, virtaully put it all together on my computer, you know what I mean? And all of a sudden I’ve got no deal with Ninder, I’ve done a licensing runnings on a Brother - Brother thing and he has worked it all out, been to the solicitors, released the song, signed it to European labels and been making dough on it for the last four years. So I told him I need to see him and we needed to talk about this. So he met me in a very public place, his favorite one, The Moat hotel in West Brom. We went in there and talked. After a while he said to me “You might as well go home now and if you are lucky you will make more money out of this than me.” I asked him what he meant. He said ‘Gigs.’ I Said ‘Listen, you taking the P***?”
(Kam) How were you feeling at that time?
(PMC) You don’t know how you are going to react until something like that happens to you. I was angry, frustrated. You learn alot about yourself as a person when something like that happens to you. On a personal note it was good that I could go to that level and realize I could still hold it down. You know, next man might even have gone to jail...But I was cool. I walked out there and waited for a couple of hours and thought I’d do him outside ...but he never came out! Ha - ha! But joking aside, it was a difficult time I went through. After a few days, Ninder rang me because apparently everyone already knew it was a Panjabi MC Song. They know it’s not anyone else’s song. They know it’s not Ninder’s song....they dont even know Ninder..
So all the German labels, the Italian labels, the Spanish labels, Brazil, Mexico, they all turned the deal down because they were thinking ‘Where’s Panjabi MC?’ So now he is asking me what deal do I want. At the same time he is telling me that the money I paid him to clear the break back in 1998, which was in the thousands, he kept in his pocket. So I’m thinking, ‘Okay, you haven’t cleared the Knightrider break..’ they took 90% of the publishing anyway so...I was there thinking what kind of deal we going to do. In the end we negotiated a deal and I managed to get back on the scene, but at the same time I was still signed to Moviebox and I was in court with them for two years so I couldn't release anything new either. I was stuck in court and I could only release what was with Ninder. So the Panjabi MC album had to be remixes of my old stuff.
End Of Part 2
[glow=red,2,300]Coming up in Part 3[/glow] ...... (PMC) ... “all of a sudden one of your artist’s goes Mainstream.....why stop there? I just couldn’t understand it. ...It’s just PMC’s luck that the man is not interested..”
[glow=red,2,300]Interview By Kam Gill[/glow]
Check out Part 1