Monday, August 3, 2009

Baby Gopal

Lately I've been posting a bunch of the 'harder' stuff that I enjoy. But that's far from all that I enjoy and listen to. One 'soft' band from the '90s that I really enjoy is Baby Gopal. Baby Gopal was a Krishna-conscious power-pop/indie-rock band centered around Australian-born Sri Kesava. Sri Kesava is, unfortunately, also known as the wife of Ray Cappo, and she also played guitar for Ray Cappo's band Shelter for some time. However, Baby Gopal was her thing, together with guitarist Graham Land, also a Krishna devotee who goes by the name Gayatri, she co-wrote a number of beautiful songs (granted, Ray Cappo co-wrote a couple). Baby Gopal, while rooted in Krishna consciousness, served as an outlet for Sri's feelings, emotions and thoughts rather than spreading the Krishna message, even if references were made regularly. With Sri's beautiful voice, personal lyrics and a definite melodic indie/poppy approach, even more so than Shelter, they took a more mainstream approach which normally puts me off, but with this band it totally worked for me. I was lucky enough to have seen Baby Gopal live, in Belgium, and I can assure you Sri's voice is just as beautiful live as on record.

Besides putting out a self-titled full-length (sometimes called 'Fearless') on Victory/Banda Bonnot in 1996, which is great and comes highly recommended, they didn't release a lot of records. They did 2 7"s on Get Go Records prior to the full-length, with all songs on these being re-recorded for the full-length. These 2 7"'s and the full-length are the only recordings they released, apart from possible demo's (which, if you have any, please let me know).

After Baby Gopal ended, Sri Kesava did a brief stint in Shelter and she also started a solo-career which spawned a full-length CD called 'Gravity Reminds Me' on Blue Boy Records and a mini-CD called 'Union Square' on Reflections Records. These sound pretty similar to Baby Gopal and she even re-recorded a couple of BG songs for the full-length, however I don't enjoy them nearly as much as I do Baby Gopal. She also starting focusing on other musical endeavors, she has released a couple of bhajan CD's where she plays all/most of the instruments and sings devotional hymns in Sanskrit and Hindi and such.

As mentioned, the other main member of Baby Gopal was Graham Land who co-wrote most of the music with Sri. Other bands he played in include Shelter, Worlds Collide, Better Than A Thousand and Battery. One of the Baby Gopal's drummers was Alex Garcia-Rivera who went on to drum for American Nightmare/Give Up The Ghost. I don't really have too much info on any of the other members tho apart from what's written up in a few articles, such as this one.

*** edit (August 2010): Here's the personal blog of Sri Keshava: Gurus, Rock Stars & the Men In Between ***

As a sidenote, here's the video they did for the full-length version of 'Shiva', they also did one for the full-length version of 'Lost Generation':


Baby Gopal - ...Shiva 7"
Baby Gopal - Boys Against Girls 7"
Sri Kesava's website

12 comments:

Rakeyan Dharma said...

Cool namaste

xtimmyx said...

Thanks for originally upping these! Would it be possible to reup them? I know i'm a few years late. :) Thanks!

XhcnoirX said...

Re-upped them.

xtimmyx said...

Thanks so much!

Anonymous said...

Any chance you could re-up these again?

XhcnoirX said...

Re-upped. Enjoy!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the re-up! I just got these in the mail last week, and I'm stoked to get digital copies.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your kind words. I loved Baby Gopal. It was truly my joy. So heartening to know others also liked it. Sri xo

Unknown said...

reup pls :(

XhcnoirX said...

Re-upped.

kirill645 said...

I wonder, why do you say "unfortunately" about her marriage with Ray?

XhcnoirX said...

Because at the time, at least over here, Baby Gopal/Sri was usually mentioned in one breath with 'the wife of...', as if that somehow was the only reason for Baby Gopal's existence. They were a great band in their own right, but too many people just couldn't or didn't want to see past that, and discredited them because of it.