It’s raining concerts in Bangalore!
Without sounding overtly condescending, I must say that even the NCR is having an epic, out-of-this-world setup in place for the NH7 weekender with Megadeth headlining the show at the Bacardi Black Rock Arena. After what happened in Gurgaon last year, the venue has been shifted to Greater Noida which used to be the back of beyond just two years ago.
I regret missing the opportunity to watch Megadeth yet again, but the stellar line-up of artists that is gracing Bangalore is more than enough to make up for that feeling of loss.
So without further ado, I give to you, the most recent list of artists / shows that Bangalore will witness over the next three months.
1. The Great Indian October Fest – With Children of Bodom headlining the show, the already stunning line-up got that much sweeter. I was looking forward to seeing Indian Ocean, DJ Vachan, The Raghu Dixit Project, Thermal and a Quarter, Live Banned, Shankar Tucker, Lou Majaw, Allegro Fudge, Soulmate, Shaair + Func and rubbing my hands with glee. Now I can hardly wait for the show.
Dates: October 12, 13 and 14 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday)
Venue: Jayamahal Palace, Jayamahal Road.
2. Slayer at Rock in India – Megadeth – check. Metallica – check. Slayer had to come visit us. It was not a matter of if as much as a matter of when.
Date: October 20th (Saturday)
Venue: Bharatiya City, Thanisandra Road.
3. Santana at Rock in India – Carlos Santana is also visiting us. What strikes me as utterly strange is that the promoters of the concert are holding another show at the same venue exactly six days later. Granted, the audience for both Slayer and Santana will be quite different, but it is those that are part of the intersection of these two that will suffer both in terms of having to shell out good money but also as far as traveling to the back of beyond where only techies fear to tread.
Date: October 26th (Friday)
Venue: Bharatiya City, Thanisandra Road.
4. The Indian Music Conference featuring Behemoth – Polish extreme metal band Behemoth are scheduled to headline this year’s IMC. However, there’s a plethora of problems that took place at last year’s IMC that was to be held in Goa. Last minute cancellations, many things going awry, bands and fans unhappy and general disarray. Read the What’s the Scene review on Facebook to get an idea of what went down.
Date: November 2nd and 3rd (Friday, Saturday)
Venue: Clark’s Exotica.
5. NH7 Weekender Bangalore – If the line-ups for NCR and Pune are any indication, this is going to be one epic party. Perfect chilly Bangalore weather, Periphery playing and a whole other host of stellar artists – what more can one ask for? The full line-up is yet to be announced, but the weekend of December 15th and 16th will be quite hectic and mental.
Date: December 15 and 16 (Saturday, Sunday)
Venue: Embassy International Riding School.
6. Gojira at the Indian Metal Fest – Clashing with the NH7 Bangalore weekender is the Indian Metal Fest featuring Gojira. Clarity regarding the venue, line-up and other details will emerge closer to the date.
Date: December 15 (Saturday)
Venue: Clark’s Exotica.
When it rains, it pours. From a situation where the paucity of gigs was an issue, we’re now having to choose between two epic international acts on the same day. The fiasco related to Bangalore’s Palace Grounds no longer being the preferred venue thanks to government intervention has also been circumvented. This move has come about with some discomfort, but it is certainly better than not having any live shows in Bangalore.
I am sure we will have some concerts cancelled / rescheduled. Watch this space for more.
Google’s Bacon number search works like a charm!!!
Simply type in Bacon Number “name” and you will get stunning results.
I decided to run it on some of my favourite cinema idols – Mimoh Chakraborty, Kamaal Rashid Khan sir, A K Hangal and Malashri and Google’s Bacon search did not disappoint.
See the screen captures below.
Do you have a Bacon Number too? Leave a comment!
Deconstructing the Good Guy Gautam meme
A few of my friends were having a conversation about pleasant surprises and instances of general nicety that they encountered in an otherwise wild world and a parallel was drawn to Good Guy Greg, a meme that now has a life of its own. It represents instances of how a regular person can be a good person, with the face of a smiling, chilled out chap being representative of the “good guy” attitude.
To keep the alliteration going and adapt it to the Indian context, there were a few names that my friends could think of, including, but not limited to “Gaurav”, “Gautam”, “Ghanshyam” and “Gopal”. They chose “Gautam” and inadvertently, picked this particular image that has now become the meme.
After it was unleashed onto the world, it has become popular and is the source of much good banter centered around the individual whose image has been used.
However, those who have come up with memes have failed to realize that this is about general good behaviour and not about the person in question. Therefore, it is not necessary to limit oneself to only extolling the virtues of the individual, but to use it to represent being a good person in general. Otherwise, this will not become a meme in the true sense and will just end up being a circlejerk (defn: pompous discussion where little or no progress is made).
The creators of the meme therefore implore you all to abstract the individual in question and just put in all documented instances of good guy behaviour using this image.
God knows with all the shit going on that we need to be reminded of the good things that people do around us.
Apple stuns the world – releases iPhone6
In a press release made available to the guy who runs this blog, a leading member of the marketing team at Apple said, “I know, I know. We have stunned the world yet again.” *stifles a yawn* “It is something that we aspire to do all the time with our stunning array of products. Though we are Job-less now, we still are aware of how to stay on top of our game.”
“Our engineering team knows what our fans want. They want the iPhone6. What they want, we provide. That is why we are Apple!”, he said, as he munched on a bagel and downed a sip of coffee.
The head of engineering had this to say, “The new iPhone6 is a generation ahead of its time. We are currently developing the iPhone12, but we want people to buy our products every year and give our competitors a chance to catch up with and match up to our patented sleek rounded corners and swipe-to-unlock features.”
At the Apple store in Bangalore, there was mass hysteria as people reacted to the revolutionary move by Apple. Many people, all with characteristic white Apple ear-buds were seen giving each other hugs and hi-fives as people with Androids, Blackberry phones and Nokia phones walked past, bewildered but grateful at not having to take a day off to wait in line and buy their new phones.
Reacting to the news of the iPhone6, an Apple fan-boy from Bangalore with snot running down his nose, mixed with tears of joy said, “I knew, I knew it from the moment I set foot outside the iStore with my new iPhone5 that I’d be itching to know what the iPhone6 would have and how I could stand in line before all my buddies to buy it before everyone else! And these f***ing geniuses are so ahead of their time, they’ve even gone ahead and given me the iPhone6! God, I love Apple more than I love Apple, if that makes sense!”
Meanwhile, outside the premises of Foxconn in Taipei, Taiwan, reporters examined a pile of rubbish to find an unnaturally large number of stencils with the number ’6′ in varied sizes along with thousands of used permanent black-ink markers.
In other news, Apple fanboys are trying desperately to make friends with the Apple engineering team to lay their hands on the new defunct iPhone5, because, as one of them from the village of Bevinahally remarked, “I feel like a part of me is missing if I can’t get my hands on all the models in the series. It’s more than just about the phone you know, it is a part of me. Its more than a feeling.”
The plot thickens….
An open letter to the Indian traveller
The open letter madness has taken over the country, ever since the mythical “Delhi boy” got one in the mail. Everyone has been writing open letters left, right and center.
Can’t stand cocky new recruits joining the ranks in your company? Write them an open letter.
Can’t stand condescending recruiters calling you douchebags? Write them an open letter.
Can’t stand people writing open letters and need an innovative way of asking them to shut up? Write them an open letter, wellofcourse!
Yes, I recently realized that the phrase “open letter” means a letter whose contents are open for everyone to see, as opposed to a closed letter, which is meant for the recipient’s eyes only.
What is about to follow is based on my recent travel experiences and should be read by anyone who is on a bus, a train or a flight from point A to point B.
Dear Indian traveller,
You are a mysterious creature that never fails to astound me. I am a person who loves to travel like my life depends on it, but what you have done has effectively reduced my enthusiasm to a point where I’d rather look at all the places I want to visit through filtered DSLR camera pictures, instead of getting off my ass and actually going there.
Here are a few observations about you that make you a complete idiot. It is ok to be unaware of it, but I hope you can remedy this after reading what I have written.
- Queue up: Remember school? You went to one, didn’t you? What was the first thing you did when you entered and the last thing you did when you left school? You were asked to make neat lines and stick to them to maintain order.It is ok for you to not remember IUPAC names for hydrocarbons or remember the Moment of Inertia for different shapes.But for the love of God, can you learn to stand in line? As an example, when entering / exiting a bus or a train, it is common logic to wait for passengers that de-board, before boarding yourself.Suburban commuter trains / unreserved compartments might be notable exceptions.
When you have a reserved ticket and a comfortable seat with your name on it and the train / bus leaves 20 minutes later, why do you have to crowd around the door? To make matters worse, stern requests from sensible individuals asking people to make way are often met with derisive retorts.
- Wash up: If this one needs to be elaborated further, only God can help you.[Pertinent digression]
In B-scho0l, we used to have classes at 8 AM. With most people’s circadian cycles having gone for a toss, some would show up straight out of bed without taking a bath.
Some others would show up for classes later in the day after hitting the gym and not washing up properly, or not changing clothes to account for the olfactory assault their actions (or the lack thereof) caused on the hapless people around them.
To protest this, someone sent out a mail to the student body that spoke of personal hygiene and a 101 guide to the same. The funniest thing was a reply to the mail thread debunking deodorant usage with the line – “if you put flower petals on a pile of crap, it will still smell of crap” or something to that effect.
[End of pertinent digression]On average, women are supposed to be more sensitive to smell than men are, but when someone’s BO is strong enough to make a guy want to throw up, that’s when they should look towards Mr.Soap for help.
Dear fellow travellers, if you’re in an air conditioned vehicle, make all of us breathe easier, please?
- Wait up: Ever been on an aircraft where passengers are given explicit instructions to wait until the plane comes to a complete standstill before unbuckling their seat belts? Ever been in a situation on a domestic flight where that has actually happened, except for during a hijack?It is astounding that well educated, smartly dressed individuals of supposed high standing are on their feet with their cabin bags in hand just as the aircraft’s wheels have barely grazed terra firma. Somehow, the fact that they can only get out of the doors in 10 minutes after the plane has parked doesn’t matter to them.
- Clean up: Enough ranting has been done about how our people treat the country as a dustbin. Some have defended themselves to the core by talking of how littering as an action can help generate employment for the people that clean up and that by using dustbins, we are depriving someone of gainful employment.Some places in the country have a littering fine, on paper. Imagine the kind of revenue the government can makes on fines for littering if we are only able to enforce it properly and punish those guilty.
In April, I was on a short holiday in Uttaranchal where I saw a family in a DL registration Maruti Suzuki Alto stop to throw a neatly bundled packet of trash into a stream. What surprised me was that they were able to bundle it neatly, but not wait till the nearest town to put it in a dustbin.
Our country is beautiful and we can only get better if we treat our land with respect. This is not for how outsiders look at our country, but for us to have more places in India within our top 100 places to see before we die.
Blogger’s Block
I do have bookmarks and I am able to catch up with what a few friends have written, but that’s about it.
Ever since the last Metallica concert, which was a damp squib, many things have happened and its hard to keep track of them all to make fun of them.
Travel outside Bangalore had almost come to a standstill, with two NCR trips and a detour to a remote village in Uttaranchal being the two highlights of my peregrination since I returned to Bangalore. Returning to Gurgaon/NCR is fun, but only because of the fact that there’s enough people I know thanks to my sixteen months there.
Writing has resumed in spurts, though there’s hardly anything to write home about. After Amit Saigal’s untimely demise (and may he be happy and content wherever he is), I have started writing for RSJ yet again. Consequently, there was another conversation I had with Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth and watched them perform live in Palace Grounds.
I’m scheduled to interview Lamb of God and cover their performance at Nokia Alive this weekend and I am looking forward to that, though the prospect of watching Skyharbor live is as enticing if not more.
This blog has languished for close to seven months in what has been its largest inactive period. While I don’t feel I have the discipline (and more importantly, interesting content) to keep churning out posts once in three days, I am certain there will be enough material to keep it from flat-lining out the way it did recently.
Watch this space!
Life in Bangalore – of Chai, writerly pursuits and concerts galore
That is because a lot has been happening over Chai, at the new firm I am working at.Do check us out on Facebook and be a fan already!
A six day week at work has made life hectic and intense, but immensely fun at the same time. The Bangalore love that I was displaying to bore the living daylights out of anyone that cared to listen still exists, lousy traffic and some weird encounters notwithstanding.
The weather is still wonderful and I get to work on my laptop on a comfortable bus with my data card while in transit. Pick up a Volvo pass – the darn thing costs INR 1500 and is worth its weight in gold.
The expression on the faces of people that speak to me in Hindi only to be asked if they don’t know Kannada in turn is also as priceless as ever. While travel has taken a backseat, a Gurgaon trip is on the cards to reacquaint myself with the awesome North Indian winter and with good friends that were the reason that Gurgaon seemed like a crazy fun ride when it lasted.
Next up was representation in the mountains and beaches special issue in Mint Lounge, where my piece on Dharamsala / McLeodganj was published. My second article in Mint and a big thanks to Aadisht for helping out with that.
Another awesomely thrilling moment came by when my piece on Jerusalem’s Museum on the Seam was published in the Sunday Guardian.
Very little blogging, but the writing adventures continue unabated. Unparalleled joy with the strong hope that more such opportunities will come my way with greater frequency and that I will have the time to do justice to it all.
On a particularly rainy Sunday afternoon, I made my way to ITC Gardenia where the “F1 rocks” event was introduced to a few members of the press and we were informed, amid copious plugs of Vladivar vodka about the impending visit of Metallica at the end of October.
A little redundant, considering how every metal fan that had supposedly outgrown the band is now suddenly jizzing his pants and mondegreening “For whom the bell tolls” with “For whom the benchod” and saying how nothing else matters.
October promises to end with a bang and here’s hoping that it all passes by smoothly. I am writing two posts (currently in draft mode) about surviving concerts and about handling Bangalore autos and I’d like them to see the light of day as soon as possible. Wish me luck and watch this space!
