Hard Rock: been there, done that

It's 2.30 in the night and I'm sitting here catching up with Vinokur. As I browse through the very few pictures that one of our friends clicked with my camera, I felt like I found one that I could share with you guys. With Vinokur encouraging me to blog about my experience at the gig, here I am.

So, as I had indicated earlier, I was just feeling a little 'underpracticed' as a band. On my part, I had not brushed up my vocals and was struggling to remember the words of a couple of songs. So I was a little wary of what's about to happen. I reached the venue much earlier than my bandmates because I took the train instead of cabs and cars. It was empty. I could count just 7 customers in there. The band who were playing along with us were doing their sound-check.

I listened to the band going about their process and it struck me quite surprising how unprofessional they sounded. The drummer was not really 'tight' and the guitar tones were a lot amateurish. But they sort of fitted in together when the band started sound-checking and as a surprise they played one of modern rock's big hits.

By then Tim, Rob and S. had joined me. Soon we were doing our soundcheck and I was very happy with the sound that we were getting on stage. The sound guy was a somebody that we already had worked with for Noise Market. As he did that time, he gave us very good sound. During our soundcheck, I realized that I and Tim were singing different lines for one of the crowd-favorites. Apart from that, everything was in place.

Later on in the night, as the crowd started filling in, the other band took to stage and gave a good sounding first hour of songs. We were lounging with a few celebrities and media people (from VH1 and MTV). The only thing which is worth mentioning about here is that there were 4 supermodels (women) who were hounded by the cameras and the channels.

I don't have a problem with these beautiful women coming dressed pretty and flaunting themselves. What annoyed me is that they seemed to have no 'purpose' but to just give interviews and act cool. Basically they seemed rather 'brainless' to me. I wanted to just talk to one of them and find out really if they loved doing what they were doing. But I couldn't because we had to hit the stage.

And when we did hit the stage, we had our problems in getting chairs. If you are wondering why a rock band would need chairs, I would like to remind you that we are an acoustic rock band and we play sitting down with acoustic guitars. The famous DJ Mihir Joshi was anchoring the Metallica album launch and we weren't ready to perform until he had played 5 of the songs from the album.

We started playing to a very shoddy mix on our stage monitors (monitors are speakers kept on the stage - the band performing listen to themselves play through these) which means that we could make errors while playing. We did make a few, but then it sort of went unnoticed as the crowd was totally behind us - singing along, cheering us. It really felt good to see a few of my gay friends (from GB) and Dr. R. and her boyfriend and a friend of his in the audience.



Suddenly I realized that I was living my dream - playing in Hard Rock Cafe to a full audience who were cheering me and the band. It was an experience, believe me! We just got to play seven songs (about 30 minutes) and we were almost interrupted in the middle of the last song by the anchor. All the negativities like minor goof ups, a bad stage monitor mix and stuff etc were simply overshadowed by the bigger picture.

As we got back to the lounge area, we saw smiling faces and heard a lot of 'It was a great gig!' and stuff. Despite this, I was feeling just okay because I knew we could perform much better. But then, there is always a room for improvement. Especially in the starting phases of your career.

Post-gig, we had a kind of luxurious meal (I had a meat burger - something more nutritious and extravagant as compared to my regular meals and I had 5 glasses of orange juice to drown the food. The other band were playing the second part of their set. It surprised me that half the crowd had already left. That reminded me again of the kind of popularity that we have despite playing covers of songs.

I happened to chat up with the singer of one of the big metal bands in Mumbai (Scribe). I just wanted to tell him how I enjoyed their performance at Independence Rock. But we talked for a few minutes where he clearly expressed his utter hatred for covers and cover bands. I was once again reminded as to how much of bias that the crowd and the venues have for cover bands (like us, I might add!)

You know, a cover band could earn you a lot of money. It's not so tough to be in a cover band. You just have to learn the songs from their original artist and to imitate them. The real tough thing is to compose and create our own music. Even tougher is to get people to listen to it and support us. This is so tough in India, it's frightening.

I'm digressing far too much I guess. But that's the way I feel about it. And I guess I should write that way as well.

To sum it all up - it was an unbelievable experience - something which reminded me how difficult it is for people to come up with original music into the scene. It sort of saddens me that I'm a musician who does add to the pressure original artists face. Thereby, I declare myself a hypocrite. But we have to do this to make some money. Interestingly, it also justifies why the supermodels should do what they do.