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