Peter Singh

Where to start when there's no beginning? Peter's just always been around - when I was a kid he was "the Indian with the clothes stall in the market who thinks he's Elvis Presley", I'd see him bantering and striking Elvis poses for the customers whilst I was being dragged through there on a hunt for cockles or something. As I was growing up he was "The Indian Elvis chef in the curry house opposite the Jobcentre".

He was on Pebble Mill about this time and I can clearly remember my bottom jaw hitting the living room floor as he minced around the studio in his turban and his Vegas Elvis gear. Why I was watching Pebble Mill in the first place??… hopefully I was mitching off school or something.

Peter Singh Fact
He once did a runner from some irate relatives in the back of a transit van. The only possession he grabbed from his house before he fled was a carton of frozen snake curry.

I think it was this appearance that not so much stamped so much as blu-tak'd his existence on an unwitting public consciousness. Doors opened for him - a successful tour of Africa, more TV, lucrative support slots (including The Clash, no shit) and he carved the niche of "undisputed Punjabi Elvis impersonator in the world".

Peter Singh Fact
He turned down the role of himself in the infamous film "Twin Town".

This was in a period up to the 1980s. I'm not sure what happened to him between then and the time we caught up with him in 2003 but he'd clearly had a change of luck. Our first real contact was his gig at the CRC (see the review). I bumped into him a couple of weeks later on the bus and one evening soon after he gave me a call. We talked about doing a record together, maybe a Christmas record, and he said he had some lyrics.

Peter Singh Fact
You can only contact Peter by phone by phoning a specified curry house at a certain time and they'll find him.

To cut a long story short, we crossed the Rubicon and produced the now legendary "C'mon it's Christmas" with him. The process was arduous, time consuming, bizarre, frightening and had major repercussions - all staple Taffpop fare.

Peter Singh Fact
The Christmas following the release of "C'mon it's Christmas", Peter celebrated by photocopying a load of covers and CDs and selling them independently - including in HMV Swansea! - See "A Xmas Tale" below.

One of the knock on effects of the Taffpop involvement for Peter was that, for the first time, he had a truly global audience via his pages on our website. Given that he had no phone, no proper address and no internet himself we ended up getting the enquiries direct and passing them on to him. The following people mailed us to ask him to….

" Headline a Punjabi festival in Canada - all expenses paid
" Perform in front of an exclusive invited crowd for an International Benefit concert in London.
" Fly to Hollywood and appear in a film, as himself as a cameo, starring Omar Sharif.
" Appear on an Elvis Impersonator edition of "The Weakest Link".

All this and more in a period of a couple of months. He didn't want any of it. In all fairness, all he wanted was to get a band together and "play 2 45's". As far as we know he still does. But the tragedy of Peter's situation (if you can call it that) is that he aspires to attain this imaginary thing when he's already doing it better than he's trying to?!?!? He just can't see it.

If it weren't for a couple of external circumstances and influences Peter would be a rich man indeed, living off the fat of the land. I wish he was.

Whatever you do, download the song, read the reviews and, if you bump into him, say hello.

Click to hear "C'Mon it's Christmas" MP3

"A Xmas Tale"

1994

"With a flash of Bransonesque entrepreneurial gusto, Peter Singh (aka.The Urban Turban, the Rocking Sikh) this week launched his very own record label. The details that have trickled down to us are somewhat vague, but this is what we know........It's called "Taffpop Records", the trademark / logo is a red star with gold type and Peter is taking care of production and distribution "in house". The first release on his label is called "C'mon it's Xmas" and it's got a smudged photocopied cover which is almost discernible as being based on an original idea by Taffpopaganda. The song itself bears an almost exact resemblance to another song called "C'mon it's Xmas", recorded last year by Jettisonhead and Peter (which incidentally remains available through The Taffpop shop for the measerly sum of £2.99; cat no J:H004). Strangely, (obviously an oversight) there aren't any credits on Peter's latest release..... We read about it first in The Daily Star (reproduced here for your delight) and Taffpop are delighted to see such blatant individual acts of anti capitalism. But could Peter be branching out into the fast food & soft drinks market also we wonder?, with working titles of "McDonalds", (a kind of beef burger) and "PEPSI", (a bubbly drink)? . Anyway we wish him all the best for the future.