As defined in the wiki page that I hope you haven’t been lazy enough not to click on, a Roast refers to the opportunity to make uninhibited fun and this is precisely what I am about to do. The entire idea to do a roast was brought about by a discussion I had with a certain Palash Mehrotra (who has incidentally been in the news along with the likes of Aravind Adiga, Tarun Tejpal and Nandan Nikelani – alliterative names all – for getting atrocious advance sums for the books they plan to write).
Now that the name dropping is out of the way, Palash and I were in conversation regarding whether the movie was good for the music scene in general or was it just trying to define a Bollywood-ish view of rock, in order to cash in on the latest trends. I presented him with my take on the movie, and I thought it would make for good material to blog about.
Let me start with the positives of the movie. It tries to break the stereotype associated with someone who is part of a rock band. The previous view that one would’ve had of only junkies / social misfits / psychopaths trying to use rock music as a release is now being questioned. As evinced in the movie, it is quite possible for an investment banker, a jeweler’s son and for people in other such respectable professions to get together and play in a band. Ladies, it is now (more) acceptable to take home to your folks someone who plays in a band, without your folks worrying about having to commit you to an institution.
While it is true that there are musicians who get wasted like nobody’s business, that is true even of people in all other professions that one can think of.
The movie does try to make rock music socially acceptable. Thanks to the movie, rock isn’t something that the kids listen to in order to headbang away, and even people in their mid 30s and beyond, as shown in the movie seem to be able to groove to such music. Those who have attended concerts in Bangalore would no doubt certify to this claim anyway, but now the additional facet of mass appeal attached would make such a claim even more believable.
The movie is slightly different from most of the standard issue Bollywood fare, and is able to differentiate itself with a certain amount of class. Full respect to Farhan Akhtar for having learnt to play the guitar and for singing all the songs himself, and Prachi Desai and Nicolette Bird are cutemax. Seriously.
Now that the praise is out of the way, I wish to begin the roast. The band, named ‘Magik’ does not have a bassist. I wouldn’t really have a problem with it, except for that I play the bass guitar for a band myself, and if the movie is to be believed, my instrument is redundant and someone with a keyboard can ‘program the basslines’ and be done with it. Yes, and the peon can double up to be a project manager on the side, should a company face a shortage of employees.
Arjun Rampal’s character is considered to be one of the best guitarists on the planet. So much so that he can, with one hand, play everything that Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson and Steve Vai need two hands to play on. His immense talent is lauded through the movie, and is highlighted by his incredible ability to play every song on screen using two hand positions that I have named the ‘Tiger Claw’ and ‘Fingering’. Imagine what a stud he must be if he can ‘play’ every song ever known to man by simply using two positions of his hand.
The band’s onstage performance looked more like the ‘Mock Rock’ performances that seems to be the rage in most VTU colleges, where people ‘play’ musical instruments to a previously recorded soundtrack. Magik would’ve become the undisputed mock rock champions of the world, had they deigned to participate in all these competitions.
Lastly, I am peeved with the lyrics of the songs in the movie. The songs sound like they had been written by the band in class three, and rediscovered by them fourty years later in a dusty attic. Despite that, they seem to have gone ahead and used the same content to ask questions like ‘Why isn’t two plus two equal to five?’ and ‘Sinbad the sailor’ and ‘I lost my lunchbox every day in the past seven days’. With all due respect to Javed Akhtar who has come up with stud lyrics, this isn’t the kind of stuff that most self-respecting rock bands would like to come up with.
Having said that, considering I play for a Hindi rock band, our songs aren’t too stellar by any stretch of imagination either. However a certain amount of self-realization, combined with some intense brain-washing might just aid us in making a better job out of what we intend to come out with.
Lastly, I think I’m just jealous of ‘Magik’, considering our band doesn’t even enjoy one billionth the popularity they seem to have achieved. Maybe that is why I did the roast in the first place. Oh whatever, to hell with it.
I had been waiting for this post on your blog from the moment I came out of the movie theatre.
@Kriti,
I’ll take that as a compliment!
“Ladies, it is now (more) acceptable to take home to your folks someone who plays in a band, without your folks worrying about having to commit you to an institution”
Are you trying to do a self appraisal?
and by the way, the movie is all hyped up!
@varunkr,
Movie hyped up, total agreement. Also, the statement isn’t as much a self appraisal thingy as something I wrote arbitly in my usual facetious way. Anyone wanting to interpret anything I write in my blog beyond face value is wasting time.
Ahh….a different point of view.
I liked the movie a lot, and as an aspiring guitarist (I have 3 months of hopelessly weeping at the sheer brilliance of Frusciante when RHCP played Slane Castle, and of course 4 semi-callused fingers to show for it), I think the movie was a small step for rockbands but a huge leap for Bollywood kind of thing.
I believe Farhan already was a someway decent guitarist(he knew most chords) before the movie. And Rampal while he learnt the chords, it was obvious he was lost in the solos, playing all the wrong notes. But hey this is Bollywood. They’re not giving Arjun Rampal the time they gave Russell Crowe (Master and Commander) to actually learn to play his instrument. And the music was composed in I think a week’s time. Maybe explains the lack of lyrical depth. But too much lyrical depth would have basically made the songs too complicated rather than the universal ringtones/caller tunes they are today.
So the defence would like to close the case, by stating ‘Rock On’ while no ‘That Thing you Do’ is still an excellent film considering the parameters imposed by the film factory that is Bollywood today.
@Abhijith Mohan,
The movie raises the bar with Farhan Akhtar playing proper chords and singing songs himself. It then makes expectations plummet when the other three can’t seem to play to save their lives. An obvious contradiction that was evident in an interview where all four were quizzed about the movie, after which Farhan Akhtar played and sang one of the songs from the movie, while the rest of them sat twiddling their thumbs.
While Bollywood seems to have done a new thing, and I completely and totally agree with that, I think the movie has portrayed rock music from a sold-out perspective, which is effectively every rock musician’s nightmare. They (rock musicians) want to be popular and loved, without getting mass popularity. It is quite paradoxical, and requires substantial thought and introspection to fathom.
Incidentally, I think Russel Crowe already knew to play – he plays for some ’30 odd foot of grunts’ or some such strangely named band.
@Hari,
Yeah…Russell does play for band, when he’s not minting millions. Just like Keanu Reeves for Dogstar. But for M and C he was required to play the violin. 12 frets are hard enough, imagine..no frets and being asked to follow wierd instructions like ‘one finger length down is the D# note’. . *shudder*
Oh it’s definitely a sold out perspective. If not it would have been ‘parallel cinema’. They need to sell those audio tapes of the soundtrack, and not just to us afficionados.
To the common man, anything with guitar riffs and drums is ‘Rock’..and the Hinglish songs provide an easy introduction.
@Abhijith Mohan,
But Mr.Reeves is a bassist. More points to him for that. I haven’t seen Master and Commander, and hence was unaware of the violin funda. Good stuff.
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