The autographing was around the time I interviewed him for a cover story for RSJ, in April this year, which finally didn’t happen for reasons I’m not sure of.

I’ve also written a review for that album and sent it to the guys who’re supposed to launch the new version of gigpad, though I’m going to check with them if I can post album reviews on my site as well after addressing any potential cöpyright issues.

However, on 16th November 08, Sunday, I had been to the Landmarks bookstore in Swagath Garuda Mall, where I got a chance to see a live performance by him. I guess Facebook does wonders, and it was through an invite on it that I was even aware that such an event was taking place.

According to unconfirmed sources (me), apparently, for the first and only time in its existence, Swagath Garuda Mall finally had a sizeable number of footfalls, as people gathered en masse to see Raghu live, and mysteriously disappeared thereafter when the performance was over.

There’s something magical and nice about unplugged performances. They are quite intimate, and aren’t as high-adrenaline as the fully plugged ones. I’d witnessed TAAQ play their first ever ‘unplugged’ show at Alliance Français last year, and the unplugged accoustic jams that our band has, with my bass guitar being the only instrument that requires amplification (I am a cheap guy without an accoustic bass) are also a whole lot of fun.

Raghu Dixit was accompanied by Vijay Joseph on guitars, and while I wasn’t really sure whether Landmarks would be able to have enough space to cast aside for a performance along with a crowd, they did manage to have a good setup, and the sound quailty was impeccable, atleast where I was standing, which was right up front.

Junta turned up in hordes, for it was a free concert, and Raghu Dixit’s playful banter with the crowd, I am sure, won him some new fans.

He started off with a song (I still love you) that I’d last heard being performed on 5th May 2001, when I was standing in the first row at the Bryan Adams concert, and it brought back fond memories of that day when everyone in the front row got spat on by Bryan Adams when he was singing ‘back to (thoo) you’ and all that.

Aside from that, he played ‘Mysore se Aayi’, ‘Gudugudiya Sedi Nodu’, ‘Hey Bhagwan’ and one of my favourite songs by him titled ‘Ambar’. The last song’s rendition was, I felt, quite magical, as I closed my eyes and just immersed myself in the song.

Most unplugged songs tend to sound somewhat different from when the artists perform a fully plugged set, but in this case, Raghu’s powerful voice, combined with some masterful guitar work by Vijay Joseph made me not miss the other instruments, including, surprisingly, the bass guitar as well.

The crowd got quite noisy around the time when Raghu began performing songs from his movie ‘Psycho’, for everyone present there seemed to know the songs, and sang along uninhibitedly.

Most people were too busy taking videos to enjoy what was happening on stage, and this tendency to record or take photographs, in my opinion, kills the moment when one should rather be immersed in the music than be doing something to record it for later. Unless their memory sucks.

I was not able to bear the noise after a while, and decided to make a gracious exit around twenty past seven, when I knew Raghu would be almost finishing up.

Here’s hoping to see more of his performances in the days to come.

In any case, Iron Maiden is performing in Bangalore again on the 15th of February next year, and that has been confirmed. But just like the whole Def Leppard postponement-cancellation fiasco, one can never tell.

However, one can only hope and pray. The last time they were here in our city, they performed half their set from A Matter of Life and Death, and this time, I am sure it is going to be different.

However, this post is centered primarily around a petition that the Bangalore-based bands, Bhoomi and Kryptos have been circulating via email. If enough people sign it, they intend to forward it to DNA and to the other sponsors and thereby open for the Iron Maiden gig.

If you receive an email asking you to sign a petition which will be forwarded to DNA, go ahead and do it. However, you might want to be a bit careful about putting your email ID in case you have nightmares about your email ID being sold to people who want to email you about organ enlargement advertisements.

Lastly, sign the frigging petition, and let’s have Kryptos and Bhoomi on with Maiden on 15th of Feb. I only wish they had some wiki or some other better means of collecting signatures or names for a petition rather than forwarding a mail around.

My friend’s bike, which I am in possession of when he is in the US, has been extremely useful for me in order to undertake this long and perilious journey across this huge distance. Normally, thirty six kilometres isn’t really a big deal. But when all of it involves riding through Bangalore city, and through peak traffic on a weekday evening, you would be pardoned if you thought I was being masochistic. This, especially considering the ride is from the south west end of Bangalore till its north east end.

Riding at the speed I do (I rarely speed beyond 60, stick to the rules at all times, refrain from honking and never ever ever ever ride on the pavement), it takes me a considerable amount of time to cover that distance. Although, in my defence, even if I were to actually ride much faster, the net time spent on the road would still be the same.

I was initially contemplating going via Residency Road, getting onto Airport Road at Domlur and then heading straight along it till I could take a left and turn off towards the road that leads to CV Raman Nagar and DRDO, but with some genius having dug up parts of Residency Road, and Namma Metro rendering MG Road unusable for the next decade, only fools would rush in, where circumspect motorists fear to tread.

Nevertheless, I’ve devised a divide and conquer approach to ensure that I am able to complete that long and painful journey and still be fresh like a Lipton Taaza chaai ad model by the end of it all. This has ensured that I’ve divided the route into four logical sectors, each of thirty minutes duration.

Sector 1 – Global Village to Deve Gowda Petrol Bunk: usually tackled through the back route via Uttarahalli, and is mostly peaceful if navigated upon at the right time, with a small jam that invariably happens at the petrol bunk intersection due to work going on at the Kadirenahalli junction underpass, and the resulting traffic diversion thereafter.

Sector 2 – Deve Gowda Petrol Bunk to Hosur Road Forum Signal: This sector requires a bit of luck, some knowledge of the inside roads, and the willingness to go through Tilak Nagar in Jayanagar, which comprises of some of the craziest auto drivers ever known to mankind. The kinds that would swerve sideways when going along the road, just like F1 cars would in a warm-up lap just before the race starts. With some reasonable manoeuvering especially on after the Dairy Circle flyover, this entire section can also be covered optimistically in 30 minutes.

Sector 3 – Hosur Road Forum Signal to Indiranagar – Domlur flyover: Ideally, this section should be the fastest, but is also the one populated with most HTs, and as a result, even the most careful of motorists should, in a bid to save their lives and have as few near death experiences as possible, ride as if they’re in a battlefield. The good people of Koramangala seem not to care too much about major road intersections, and are virtually colour blind to traffic lights. Once you fear the worst is over, there’s the Inner Ring Road connecting Koramangala to Indiranagar.

This road, which is sheer joy to ride on before 7 AM and after 10 PM is just about unbearable at other times, particularly due to the lack of speed breakers, and also because anyone who has to go towards Indiranagar from EGL necessarily has to cut through the gap in the divider and take a U turn, causing a reasonably pathetic pile up.

However, due to the presence of Radio Indigo, and with the request hour on the evening show hosted by Rohit Barker, where sometimes, one is so lucky so as to get one’s request played, this horrible sector can be successfully navigated peacefully.

Sector 4 – Indiranagar Flyover to Drummer’s House: This is the last sector, and the closer one approaches the final destination, the greater the hunger pangs one feels. The feeling of hunger peaks near the BEML intersection at the end of New Thippasandra, and for another three kilometres thereafter, the ride is sheer torture. Until recently, this had some of the worst roads, and would make one’s teeth clatter in a manner that to me was fondly reminiscent of the noise the skeleton in our biology lab in school used to make since he had a defective spring connecting his skull to his jawbone.

Given I plan to undertake similar journeys via cycle on the weekends, albeit from my house in Banashankari 3rd stage, the whole comparision of both journeys should be quite interesting, in the very least.

Now is not the time, not especially with the worst cold I’ve ever had this month, running through tissue after tissue, sounding like a snorting elephant. However, sitting at my desk, sneezing away, typing this post, I am a tad gleeful at the fact that all those other ignoramus morons who’ve been putting their cellphones in loud mode will have to bear the brunt of my snorting and nose-blowing.

Regretfully, I am not very keen on having a life long cold to counter those often atrocious ring tones, and I will have to resort to other less damaging counter-measures to ward off this crisis.

Last evening, I decided to scoot off early from the office in order to take my bike for a spin. The Trek 3700 was just calling out for me everytime I laid my eyes on it, and I had to rush back home to take it out. Armed with a helmet, and with front and rear LED lights (that can be set to flashing mode), I set out of my house, intending to just cycle arbitly so as to build up stamina for longer rides towards the band practise sessions in far away C V Raman Nagar.

Barely had I reached the end of the lane I live in, when I met up with someone who asked about my bike and helmet. Thereafter, he proceeded to take his bike out as well (another Trek 3700) and he showed me some new hitherto unknown route which went almost all the way through to Uttarahalli through Ittamadu.

Cycling through the roads aimlessly brought back a whole bunch of memories of having cycled the last time I had done so, which was to put a 15 mile ride in order to get bootlegged beer in Oslo late on a friday evening when all the alcohol selling places had shut shop.

However, the way back from aforesaid random place near my house wasn’t quite the joyride I had expected it to be, since the steep upward incline made me stop and alight from the bike, despite having switched to first gear to ride it. My legs felt like they were made of lead, and I was short of breath after about six km of cycling. However, I am most certain that with some amount of further riding, I should have decent stamina once again so as to undertake journeys that are four times this distance.

Like someone once said, it just takes a little getting used to. Further adventures to be updated on my website in due time.

We’re looking at demo CD cover material, when we’re ready to come out with more songs that we’re totally comfortable with. In order to achieve this, we decided to get some interesting pictures at the railway station, as we stood stationary against a teeming sea of humanity.

What this was intended to achieve, I have no idea, honestly, but the image of the picture in my mind certainly looked really nice, as did the photo previews once Shrenik clicked a few and showed us on his DSLR.

There was a goods train which was parked at the station, and we wanted to get some shots in its vicinity, for which I approached the station master and took his permission. Initially, he mentioned something about having to get permission from some PR person in Bangalore city, and after a certain amount of convincing, which included flashing my press card, he finally relented.

Personally, I doubt we’d need special permission since there is no mention anywhere of photography being prohibited, and we only asked the station master for the sake of courtesy, so that he’d not get suspicious of our harmless activities and shoo us away.

In the midst of shooting photographs, however, a police constable appeared out of nowhere and asked us to stop taking pictures. I had to go and have a conversation with him again, and explain as to how we’d obtained permission from the station master and that it was all ok.

This cop then said we have to take permission from the Sub-Inspector at the neighbouring police station, and I told him to lead the way. I did not see why I had to get any additional permission, but I figured we’d have to ask whoever we had to.

Halfway to the station, this constable eventually said that he’d come back later on, and said I could go. On returning, we wrapped our work up soon, since it was getting hot in the afternoon, and I wasn’t particularly comfortable with the cop’s behaviour. As we made our way to the parking lot, this old codger, who seemed to be in his late 50s, came behind us and spoke to me, asking me what we’d done, and why these photos were necessary.

It was evident by now, if it hadn’t been already, that he was fishing for a bribe. However, he didn’t know that I wouldn’t pay a bribe ever. I was shocked at his blatant shamelessness in asking for money when, clearly, there was no reason for us to have paid him. We weren’t doing anything wrong, and even if we were, he had no business asking us for money on the side.

I politely told him that we’d be back in the evening and click more photographs, to avoid a full blown confrontation and we made our exit from there. Needless to say, I shall not be visiting the KR Puram railway station again for getting photos taken with the band.

I find it particularly sad that as free citizens of our country, we’d have to be fearful of doing something as innocent and innocuous as taking photographs at a railway station and be on our guard against unscrupulous elements who are unfortunately the ones who weild power and authority.

Firstly, hats off to Anbumani Ramadoss for his smoking rule. The two pubs I’ve been to since the ban came into effect at the start of this month have provided good experiences, because involuntary passive smokers needn’t do Neo-like manoeuvres to evade the cigarette smoke that most people would be unleashing in our direction.

Now, at Purple Haze in Mysore, on a sunday evening, there was one screen which was showing the Chelsea v/s Liverpool game, and that provided me with ample distraction while most others were watching a band named ‘TransitPoint’ play. Their lead singer, complete with dreadlocks and an American accent to boot was trying in vain to get the crowd up on their feet in order for them to mosh to the music, but despite him having asked them in no less than seven languages and in different accents and dialects, the crowd that was sitting down did not seem to want to get off its arse.

Meanwhile, in the second half of the game, I was totally praying for Ashley Cole to get red-carded, and was rooting for Liverpool since I like them more than I like Chelsea. The match ended with a Liverpool victory, and I am wondering why nobody has yet taken the initiative to have a sports pub in Bangalore. I hope someone reads this post of mine and has enough money to make this happen.

Band after band played, including one named ‘Corrode’ (or was it Korrode? One can’t really say how the Balaji Telefilms induced spelling rules might’ve influenced the general population), and one more named ‘Kashmora’, aside from the dreadlocks singer’s band, ‘TransitPoint’. One thing I liked about Kashmora was that they came up with a song for Vijender Singh, and dedicated it to him.

Considering how Abhinav Bindra is now in love with a massive television instead of falling for one of the million women wooing him, I guess it is only fair to shift focus towards Akhil Kumar and Vijender Singh, who haven’t yet started embarassing themselves by appearing in ads where they proclaim their love for underwear brands, or for Chyawanprash bottles, or God forbid, other products that you can’t possibly be in love with.

Now, all these aforementioned bands were asking the crowd to get up, come to the front, and groove. But their pleas fell on deaf ears. The crowd didn’t know their music, and while there were a few enthusiastic headbangers out there, their enthusiasm, I am certain can be attributed more to their blood alcohol content rather than their interest in the music being played.

Once these bands were through, on came this band named ‘Venator’. One of the things that makes this band stand apart from most other bands in Bangalore is the fact that they have a female vocalist and a female bassist. The female vocalist puts growling vocals. Yes, you read that right.

If you know Angela Gossow, then it isn’t really that hard to imagine someone else following up and performing in the same style, but I guess not many people in Mysore who were present at Purple Haze last evening had heard Arch Enemy.

So, when Venator started playing, and the vocalist began growling, word spread in the crowd like wildfire. ‘Machha, chick vocalist is growling.’ ‘Huh? WTF?’. People began surging forward in droves, crowding around the performance area, and as a result, the only band which didn’t want a crowd gathering up in front when they were performing, ended up having one. Or maybe they did, and didn’t particularly have to ask for it to happen.

However, they wanted the crowd to go back, and one could hear repeated growls from the vocalist, who was asking them to go back to their seats. However, there’s only so much of growling that anyone can make out in the absence of a lyrics sheet to boot, and consequently, the crowd stayed till the next band came on.

Watching a female vocalist growl can be a somewhat emasculating experience, personally. However, the crowd did seem to have a good time. So there.

In any case, if you’ve read everything till the end of this post, here’s wishing you a happy and prosperious Deepavali, with lots of cash spent, lots of sweets eaten and child labour-free fire crackers burst. Also, please clean up after you’re done with whatever celebration you’re planning to indulge in.

For those unaware – yes, Mysore has pubs. Shocking but true. Sadly, it is going the Bangalore way, and while the ban on live music in places serving alcohol continues unabated in Bangalore, Mysore seems to have been unaffected by it all. The branch of Purple Haze in Mysore is hosting a rock / metal fest showcasing eighteen bands over the weekend before Diwali.

I had been there last evening to check out a few of the bands, including Crucifix Guide, Today’s Special and Ston’d (about whom I’ve written in the upcoming issue of RSJ) and during the whole time I was watching them bands perform live, I could only think of how the guy behind the sound console was not mixing the sound properly into the PA (public address), as a result of which the volumes of individual instruments weren’t being balanced correctly.

In some cases, you couldn’t hear the vocalist who was being drowned out by the guitar tones. The bass guitar was not heard in a few instances. If a band had two guitarists, their volumes weren’t balanced properly.

The guy in charge of sound at the pub couldn’t entirely be blamed either. This is because he is not aware of their setup, and isn’t aware of how the instruments and vocals are interspersed in each song, and whether there needs to be any modifications in the sound levels done across different songs. It isn’t his business either. All he needs to do is to keep all instruments at certain preset levels to ensure a minimum sound output that each band can adjust to. Think of it as being akin to the common minimum program for bands.

If each band has a dedicated sound engineer who knows all their songs perfectly, he can either take charge of the sound console, or assist the main sound guy in adjusting levels, to negate the most obvious complaint that most bands have of how the sound sucked.

For sure, a sound engineer is way more important to a band than even a manager is. At least in the initial phases of its existence. Unless of course, the manager can also double up as a sound guy.

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.

This officially earmarks the longest voluntary relationship I have ever had in my life. Either party could’ve broken up at will, but both of us have weathered many storms together and have stuck on, for some reasons best known only to the both of us, while most other reasons for aforesaid situation remain significantly inexplicable.

This NaN is going to focus on the memories I have had of September 1st over the past five years, and for sure, it has been quite interesting in more ways than I could have previously imagined.

For the first ever time in my life, I fell asleep in something akin to a class, because the person who was giving us the corporate presentation could as well have been spraying valium through an atomizer four inches away from my nostrils. In addition to my acute somnolence, I had also been, as I had mentioned previously, unwell, and the medicine that I’d been prescribed had given me a light tremor in my right hand, and for one of the first ever times in my life, I was scared as hell about whether I’d ever benormal again.

The doctor’s reassurance about it being a reaction to some expectorant tablet did nothing to remedy the situation, and it was only after I got better and I was able to write properly did I heave a huge sigh of relief.

I had been to the office a fortnight prior to my joining date, on 18th August to hunt for accommodation that was close to where I had to work. Seeing the amount of dirt, dust, traffic and the accompanying madness and mayhem was too much of a shock for me, given that Mysore was diametrically opposite insofar as the state of affairs on the roads were concerned.

Three days after the entire rigmarole began, I had called my Mum up and told her that I wanted to quit and open a grocery store in Mysore, or teach in my college and I’ve had constantly recurring thoughts of quitting work ever since, but the idea has been mulled over so much that its now relegated to that part of me that tends to over-romanticize trivial situations and circumstances.

Its been four years, and, as is quite evident, I still haven’t quit.

Music, which was such an important part of my life, had also been relegated to oblivion.

In the last week of August 2005, I contracted bronchopneumonia, and as a consequence spent the first anniversary of my starting life as a working professional in bed with a fever of 104 F, getting more pale and gaunt by the minute, but sleeping like a baby and feeling happy about not having to work during that time.

Not the best of times, but not the worst of times either.

On the morning of September 1st, I saw two mails – one of them said I had my august salary credited to my account, and another one congratulated me for two years of work in my company. I said Meh to both, as I had said to some other formerly important stuff at the very start of the trip and continued to work, without those two mails bothering me much until a few days ago when I took a lazy stroll down memory lane.

In retrospect, that second trip changed my life for the better in more ways than I’d have imagined it would.

Nevertheless, this was quite a tame and incredibly lazy time for me, and this anniversary passed on without much ado either.

Even if I end up going home after work and just crashing after watching some arbit stuff on TV, I know that I’ll have had fun simlpy because I’ve reached a stage where I don’t give a damn about too many things, and am in a controlled free-fall mode.