At 31, Norah Jones is no-questions-asked sublime. Ten Grammys (and seven nominations) make her a formidable presence commercially. Also critically – even that curmudgeon Robert Christgau acquiesced: “What’s not to like?” Her versatility makes her a coveted collaborator to artists, genre no bar. And so, as we listened to album after album that Jones has served up since her not-quite-jazz-but-getting-there-in-a-hurry début Come Away With Me, which swept eight Grammys in 2003, we may have overlooked her off-road excursions. …Featuring fixes that jig-saw bit back in place. . . . → Read More: Norah Jones sang that?
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“MONSOON IN Bangalore” is how Keith Richards recalls his first gig in India, where the Rolling Stones wrung out a cloudburst. That was April 2003 and those were mango showers. But for such libertine insouciance with facts, the memoir of the world’s most “elegantly wasted rock star” is a balloon of penetrating insight, smirky name-dropping, bitter bitching and bourbon-laced warmth, punctured with several needles. At the Stones’ next show in Mumbai, I was not yet a fan. Keith Richards, older than my dad, with skull-ring, kohl-smeared eyes and eerie T-rex grin, did me in. Life reaffirms how Richards ogled at Mick Jagger’s Chuck Berry records on a train, how they traipsed London bars seeking out the blues, and how they were a crack song-writing duo for decades before Jagger made it “very difficult to be his friend.” How they shoplifted to afford drummer Charlie Watts. And how they played “American music to English people” before discovering that white Americans had not heard the blues. “The Stones’ greatest contribution was to turn American people back on to their own music,” he says. Read the full review in Tehelka . . . → Read More: Keith Richards’ “Life” reviewed in Tehelka Walking a fine tightrope between the live and studio sounds, and maintaining continuity with the previous album, Fandango! became a watershed record in ZZ Top’s career. Bands with a big stage sound often betray themselves when they enter the studio but ZZ Top had figured their way around that. Fandango! also coincided with a time when the band’s trademark beards started to appear. . . . → Read More: Before the beards – ZZ Top’s Fandango! Mumbai has engendered a great number of bands but the Bombay Band that once shook the foundations of indie rock culture in India is a relic. So, it is refreshing that the reprise of that once-favourite memory comes to us from one of the youngest and most talented groups in the city. They represent the panache and insouciance that makes Bombay so dear and fondly remembered. That band is Something Relevant. . . . → Read More: The Bombay of Something Relevant My piece on the music of Thermal And A Quarter, published in today’s Mint Lounge, traces the history of the band’s music, its relevance and rootedness to Bangalore’s cultural milieu and argues that rock music can actually come from a deep place — if only you care to listen. . . . → Read More: Bangalore's own Roots Rock In its May 1 issue, Tehelka has published my counter-point on the Indian rock scene – you can read it here. . . . → Read More: Tehelka hears us out My friends at Thermal And A Quarter and I read Inder Sidhu’s outcry against “the media’s hysterical coverage of Indian rock bands” (and before that, in 2008, Deepanjana Pal’s diatribe against Indian rock) in Tehelka with familiar feelings of resigned amusement and piquant regret. While Sidhu makes some pleasant noises and points available fingers at the usual suspects, he disappoints us by stating the obvious and therefore fails to offer us any fresh insight into what actually ails the rock scene. What ails the media we already know. Sidhu writes that the “vocabulary and context for rock criticism does not exist in India.” When was the last time you met an editor who condescended to carry a major story about any Westernised urban counterculture in India? When was the last time any self-respecting commentator (such as you, we hope) turned away from the clippings morgue and did some legwork to find out what’s really happening in India’s underground music scene? For instance, how do Indian bands approach songwriting, where do they learn to play their instruments, where do they rehearse? How do they finance gear, studio time and production efforts? What level of initiative does it take for a band to bag concert dates at Hard Rock Cafe or Blue Frog, or plan a five-city tour? Or to cut an album and market it independently? These realities offer story ideas for any journalist with a serious interest in writing about Indian rock. Perhaps Sidhu might want to consider exploring these areas instead of expending two thousand words on a subject he believes is not worth writing about. That’s laughable. Of course, we are aware these stories can’t be written within a week’s deadline but has any journalist cared to investigate the possibilities, or any editor dared to commission them? . . . → Read More: Don’t believe everything Tehelka says about Indian rock! The ‘One Small Love – Bangalore for Mangalore’ concert on February 14, a red-letter day made infamous by Hallmark cards and various killjoy extremist groups, will bring together musicians Konarak Reddy, Ravi Kulur, Alwyn Fernandes, Gerard Machado, Karan Joseph, Gaurav Vaz and Swarathma along with Thermal And A Quarter. . . . → Read More: One Small Love – drawing the line I happened to be streaming Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of Strange Fruit when the news video of the policeman’s killing, which had been buffering, came alive. Both audio tracks played side by side and I was struck by the eerie similarity of their themes — it had a sort of roughhewn, impromptu resemblance to Simon & Garfunkel’s Silent Night-7 O’clock News. The age of original heartfelt protest songs in jazz, pop or rock has passed unlamented ever since we started counting Madonna, MJ, Eminem, the Black-Eyed Peas and Amy Winehouse among protest singers. Insidiously, Protest has become a marketing label, a genre if you like — which adds up to a nice new varnished shelf in a large music store somewhere before Punk and after Gospel. Most artists have realized that they have little to protest about but their own inconspicuousness. And their acts of protest are in truth about having a go at the fifteen lucre-encrusted minutes of fame that their voices, if sufficiently loud, would bring them. . . . → Read More: Protest and the Strange Fruit of Mistaken Identity Indie band… I’m not a fan of the phrase myself because I think it is a label for styles of music that you can’t/ don’t want to stick a label on. I mulled over that blog title before I posted it but I kept the word in for a reason — to catch the eye of those who debate over what indie is. I don’t think an indie band need make money at all. But it must make original music even if it appeals to an audience of one. And it does not even have to publish or promote this music. But then again, indie also refers to the endeavour to create music independently and make it available and accessible to an audience whether through performance or distribution. Derivatively, indie also refers to the infrastructure that must exist for indie musicians who want to make a living doing what they love and believe in. Most important, I feel that indie needn’t be seen as some low-on-frills, preachy fringe movement but a sort of cooperative society for independent musicians that helps them feel confident about the worth and validity of their music. Of course, this feeling of self-worth and achievement should also put money in their pockets because they too need to feed their dogs, send their kids to college, and splurge on a vacation at Bora Bora. . . . → Read More: When Indie gets the blues |
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