Considering my present location, and the fact that I’ve also been able to download so much fantastic old Bollywood music for free (with some of those files having been taken from the old vinyl records, which sometimes sound so much nicer to me than the reprocessed CDs), I didn’t think that I would be buying Indian music or Bollywood music in the Manhattan Virgin Records stores again. But the one on 14th Street has some good bargains sometimes (even if the regular CD prices are pretty high), it can be very relaxing to shop there (as long it’s not during prime time), and it is open until 1 am. So, this evening, while I was picking up a copy of Cheb i Sabbah’s Devotion (also decently priced for under $15, if I recall correctly), I found a marked-down $10 copy of the Rough Guide to Bollywood Gold. I’ve always found these Rough Guides to be very decent, even if they are supposed to be for world music dabbler-beginner types, and their bhangra compilations are among the best that I’ve found over the years. Plus, those bhangra comps happened to be put together by one DJ Ritu, the same woman who put together Bollywood Gold. So, altogether, it was hard to pass this one up.
Though I don’t think I can say that there’s anything particularly special about this compilation, just that it provides for a good listen – which, of course, was no surprise…
I already had a few of the songs that are on here, most of them with that original-vinyl sound that I like so much, thanks to Parties, Sarees and Melodies. (I’ve downloaded about six albums from that site so far, and I can easily see my collection expanding to at least a dozen. And most of the albums on that blog come from the “Golden” era that DJ Ritu also focuses on, between 1960 and 1980.) But I didn’t have at least half of these songs and I admit that I hadn’t even heard a few (though I’m not going to reveal which ones, lest I expose my western ignorance). Moreover, I still think it is good to get a new, nicely packaged CD comp once in a while, even if that might just be a sign of my age, etc. (Actually admitting that I listen to CDs might just be showing my age – though I listen to vinyl too, but DJs have helped to keep that as a “young” medium… Unfortunately, I’m a bit poor right now as well as being technologically lazy, so while I might be downloading a bunch of music (and then burning it), I’m not going to start messing with the new formats for portable playing anytime soon.) And (sorry about that awfully long tangent), the Rough Guides comp is probably as good as most (not that I have many others to go by, of course)…
If I have any complaint about this one, it’s maybe that I would not have had quite the same distribution among the featured singers. For instance, this has no less than four tracks featuring Kishore Kumar and only two with Mohammed Rafi, while I would probably have done the reverse. Additionally, I don’t find all the songs to be equally to my liking. (In fact, I kind of wonder if anybody can really enjoy listening to “Aaja Aaja Main Hoon Pyar Tera” or if this just has a lot of nostalgic appeal for those swingin’ 60s buffs. Unfortunately, that happens to be one of the only two Rafi songs (the other one being a song from Junglee that I like a bit more though it’s not one of my favorites either). If she wanted to do that sort of thing, I’m not sure why she didn’t include “Jaan Pehechaan Ho” aka “Ghostworld,” which is so much better, I think.) But then again, there are some very good songs here too: It was particularly nice to hear “Awaara Hoon” (sung by Mukesh) even if I’d already downloaded that one. And there is indeed some real gold – such as…
In closing, I’m going to post the song that is my favorite on this whole compilation… I might have even written this review partly for an excuse to post this – and it could very well be the song that makes the whole comp worth buying, even with all the above-mentioned considerations in mind:
P.S. I noticed last week that the accompanying Rough Guide book was going to be hitting an area Barnes & Noble on Feb. 1 or 2… Might be time for yet another chain store purchase. And by the way, there is no connection between their titles and the title to this blog, which was taken from a line in an M.I.A. song without any Rough Guides in mind. (Though the coincidence is kind of nice.)
P.P.S. [2/9] And, of course, none of this should be confused either with the legendary British post-punk label Rough Trade…which is exactly what I did at one point, until I finally caught it!