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Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

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    Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

    Crap: the video link died as I typed... just listen to this one, and enjoy (ignore my bullshit, it was about the video)

    Been waiting for years to find this fucking thing.

    Class-a-rama... and turn the fucker up to 11. Brilliant.

    (Sorry about the swearing... it took me 4 listens to stop dancing around the room enough

    #2
    Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

    note to self: provide the link, you twat

    If you have 12, go for it...

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      #3
      Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

      I've got that on 12 inch, it's a girl from Grange Hill, isn't it? Love it.

      Oops, sorry, you wanted to be left alone.

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        #4
        Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

        Great, forgotten single from - egad! - thirty years ago?!?

        I found an MP3 of it via Limewire about ten years ago and have dined on that since. It was, indeed, Sheila Chandra, formerly of Grange Hill-fame. She made a fair few solo recordings thereafter...

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          #5
          Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

          I worship Sheila Chandra in a manner I usually wholeheartedly disapprove of, when I see others exhibiting such behaviour!

          Here is a small example of one of my many gushings (Oh, Sheila!) about Ms. Chandra on here from years past.

          I know I posted about her 'contracting' some weird syndrome that badly affected her sinuses and throat, a few years back, but I can't find that post now, for some reason! It threatened her ability to sing at all. Fortunately, she made a full recovery over a period of a couple of years and one of the world's great voices sings on ...albeit in considerably more experimental form, these days.

          (edit: I don't think it's updated, these days, but her website was a very nice one, when it was first launched - with a surprisingly personal touch sometimes.)

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            #6
            Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

            Thanks Ger, enjoyed that. Never knew she was from Grange Hill.

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              #7
              Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

              Fantastic record. I keep meaning to pick evilC's brains on what else by her I should get.

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                #8
                Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                Why at Last! wrote:
                Fantastic record. I keep meaning to pick evilC's brains on what else by her I should get.
                Tell you what - I think I've got a self-made compilation already made at home. When I can, I'll bung it up online for your listening pleasure, Wyatt (and all of OTF).

                There was a Realworld Records compilation released, but it was done against her wishes, so I don't really want to go ahead and recommend that. Plus I'll put some weirder stuff on my one too.

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                  #9
                  Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                  Ever So Lonely was a fantastic single. The follow up was called something like Shaktia and was decent enough. Never heard from them again after that.

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                    #10
                    Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                    'Shakti (The Meaning of Within)' - and it was indeed pretty good. But what the Radio One-fed record-buying public saw as a 'novelty' had worn off by then, unfortunately.

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                      #11
                      Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                      Nothing to add, except amazing single which I discovered out of the blue ten years ago. What a singular, strange and completely thrilling record.

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                        #12
                        Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                        Either Paul Morley or Ian Penman (or both) hated it at the time.

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                          #13
                          Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                          I revised my Sheila Chandra mixtape last night and will try to post it online this evening at some point.

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                            #14
                            Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                            I remember the lyrics for this being printed in Smash Hits at the time, and being a big Beatles fan, I always wanted to hear it.
                            And yet its taken 29 years and this thread to get round to it!

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                              #15
                              Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                              Okay - here it is:

                              Sheila Chandra

                              01 'Ever So Lonely/Eyes/Ocean' - from 'Weaving My Ancestors' Voices' (1992)
                              02 'Wings of Dawn (Prem Kavita)' (by Monsoon) - from 'Third Eye' (1983)
                              03 'Dhyana and Donalogue' - from 'Weaving My Ancestors' Voices' (1992)
                              04 'One' - from 'Roots And Wings' (1990)
                              05 'Is' - from 'This Sentence Is True' (2001)
                              06 'En Mireal del Penal' - from 'The Zen Kiss' (1994)
                              07 'Quiet 9' - from 'Quiet' (1984)
                              08 'Speaking in Tongues II' - from 'Weaving My Ancestors' Voices' (1992)
                              09 'Abbess Hildegard' - from 'The Zen Kiss' (1994)
                              10 'Blacksmith' - from 'Moonsung (A Real World Retrospective)' (1999)
                              11 'Mien' - from 'This Sentence Is True' (2001)
                              12 'Abonecronedrone 3' - from 'ABoneCroneDrone' (1996)
                              13 'Ever So Lonely (Hindi Version)' - from 'Monsoon' (by Monsoon - compilation released 1995)
                              14 'True' - from 'This Sentence Is True' (2001)
                              15 'Om Namaha Shiva' - from 'Weaving My Ancestors' Voices' (1992)

                              Download here. (Click on the central, green button on the screen that appears.) Let me know if you have any problems downloading or decompressing the .rar file.

                              I tried to keep this compilation short. It didn't work! (edit: It's 65 mins long.) Even so, not all her albums are represented here. See the Discogs.com link below for the full list.

                              Unlike most of my other uploads, I haven't bothered trying to normalise this, so the levels will be a bit all over the place when you listen to it. However, I thought it was better to do that than have some of the quiet tracks made forcibly loud and vice versa. Also unusually, I haven't bothered changing the album that the tracks are from in the tag data. This is just so that those who may want to follow up on this mixtape know which albums they might want to purchase.

                              Following up on what I'd previously mentioned in passing about Chandra developing some kind of syndrome with her sinuses that nearly ended her career, below is an extract from this interview from 2000 (recommended) where she explains what happened:

                              Anil Prasad: "You recently faced some severe vocal problems. What did you go through and what was the process of recovery?"

                              Sheila Chandra: "I did my first season of live concerts ever in ’92 because I finally wanted to tackle the live domain. I had a bunch of theories of what made a special performance. My first concert was me completely alone on stage. And I didn’t know it because I had never done live work, but really it kind of constituted running a marathon—to be onstage for an hour and a half with a break. If I wasn’t singing, nothing was happening. I didn’t talk at all between numbers, so it was me singing solidly and using some very challenging vocal techniques because I wanted to show the range of what I could do. And what happened was that my sinuses didn’t cooperate. At the end of ’92, I started to experience small problems like a small change in tone on my upper notes and a slight contraction of my range. I was feeling less comfortable with my throat and it got worse and worse and worse over a period of a couple of years. By the time I came to do AboneCroneDrone, it really, really hurt to sing. It really hurt.

                              All I could manage was an hour a day with very little warm-up. So, I would go into the studio for an hour and rush back home or rush ‘round the corner to a hotel and sleep and stay warm for the next 23 hours so I could do the next hour of the next day. I didn’t know what was wrong. I didn’t know why it was playing up. I went to see lots and lots of specialists and they couldn’t see what was wrong either. Eventually, I was diagnosed with chronic rhinitis and excess bone tissue that had grown up as my face was forming—that wasn’t helping either. So, I had surgery to remove excess tissue in my sinuses and also that extra bone. By that time, my muscles had fallen into bad habits and to some degree had atrophied because I hadn’t been doing much singing. So, after the surgery, my voice was only back 50 percent. It’s nearly back now. I still have a few stamina problems to overcome, but my range and tone are back and I’m pleased."

                              (edit: Oh, and it seems I was wrong about the Realworld retrospective being the one she disapproved of - it was actually another.)

                              Other links:
                              Homepage
                              Discogs page
                              Wikipedia page
                              Facebook page

                              -

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                                #16
                                Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                                Ah, brilliant evilC, thanks.

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                                  #17
                                  Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                                  Jah Womble wrote:
                                  'Shakti (The Meaning of Within)' - and it was indeed pretty good. But what the Radio One-fed record-buying public saw as a 'novelty' had worn off by then, unfortunately.
                                  The crowd at the club I used to DJ at were the same, I'm afraid. What had been a surefire floor-filler lost its appeal really quickly.

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                                    #18
                                    Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                                    EVER SO HAPPY, thanks evilC. I have a spare hour today, when its legal to play really loud music, and I will blast the shit out of this.

                                    *A N Other note to self: sometimes when your twatness is 'out loud', it works.

                                    ** and sexist remark: I will fall in love with anyone who has those big brown eyes. (Cocks help, but you know, meh.)

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                                      #19
                                      Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                                      Really slow download... only at 34Mb since last post.

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                                        #20
                                        Monsoon - 'Ever So Lonely'

                                        Hmmmm... how did you get on with the download in the end, Gero? I'm out of touch with which hosts are slow and which are fast, these days.

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