The gig - report

The day at the gig didn’t start out very well as I had the problem is setting the mix right on my monitor speakers really. I thought I wanted the basic mix loud (the drums, rhythm guitar and lead vocals) on my monitors, but I wasn’t able to get that. It might have been my fault but I could have gotten off better without accusations that I was not doing my job properly. In my defense, I thought I was doing what I had been doing at previous gigs. It just didn’t work out I guess.

As I came back from the pride march, I wasn’t sure of the reaction that I would get from my fellow band members. Well, as always S. did manage to act homophobic and mean which didn’t help. I wanted the band to wear some of the stuff that I had got from the pride march. I think it was too much of an ask really, but anyway I was disappointed to find that they didn’t think it was important to push the message across. What could be a better stage than the day of the march at a college gig when you are with rainbow hats and masks? Yeah, in a parallel universe perhaps.

I am very glad that Dr. T., and a gay friend of mine (a DJ) came as my guest invitees. The DJ though managed to make me feel weirder by giving this lecture about why we shouldn’t have signed on to a label. He apparently thinks that they label thing restricts our freedom to choose what we want to play, where we want to play and when we want to play. He also thought that we shouldn’t charge as much as we do citing the example that he himself was not getting ¼th of what we normally charge for a gig. Well, whatever.

The bands which opened for us were two ends of the spectrum. The band called ‘Wehem’ were very unprofessional in their mix and performance. Their English was heavily mock-accented and the songs that they chose to cover were a tad on the sillier side. But despite that, the crowd were on their feet cheering and dancing. Fair, you could say. But come on, you have to be demented to appreciate mediocre music.

On the other hand, Prayag, our friends from Mumbai were simply brilliant. Everything about them sounded just right. They played brilliant cover songs and executed them professionally. Their original songs were even better. While being backstage getting ourselves warmed up, I felt good listening to them play. I thought maybe we would also sound good.

When we took stage after a fire-dancing performance, I was all excited and high. But the turn-out was disappointing. We had expected about 500 plus but there were hardly 200. For some reason or the other, our singer took some time to get into stage. I did my best to get the crowd active by cheering them on. But that didn’t really work out.

We started off brilliantly with our first single (hopefully). The band seemed in place and we played well. But from then on, at least my performance, flagged. I made mistakes and was not feeling all that great. I don’t know exactly why. The most prominent reason was the mix that I was getting. But I was also kinda tired with the lack of sleep, good food and the exertion in the morning and afternoon. And hence, I really didn’t give too much of a stage act.

The only thing that did help was the rainbow hat which I chose to wear in the latter half of the show. It apparently looked good and was very well accepted by the crowd. Our singer was a little off-color for the show and he forgot to mention the hat and the reason for me wearing it. We also fumbled and chose not to play one of our best songs. We actually managed to get only half the amount of time that we were promised and hence, we were a little shaken because of that I guess.
The crowd was weird. They were dancing in a weird way to our songs. And they protested against playing our favorite songs. This was one of the points that I was arguing against in our band meetings. But I was proven wrong. I guess we’ll have to resign to the reality that no-body really cares for music and all of the audience would only want to jump up and down to a fast beat.

Post-gig, I was bluesy. Some of our friends stripped down our performance and gave wonderful critiques. I’m very thankful for them. We had to hang out at the college until they managed to arrange transportation for us. That made me feel even worse. All I wanted was to come home and spend time with Vinokur. Instead I had to hang out with friends who were having a great time joking about. No offense to them really, I was not in a mood despite having come out to them during the process.

I learnt a lot from this experience. First of all, I learnt to eat and sleep well before performances. I have learnt the lesson to make sure that I get the mix right at my monitors. I have to get my new bass guitar adjusted so as playing is easier for me. We also have to figure out a way to get the entire band interacting with the crowd. One man show simply doesn’t work.

Anyway, the grim reality haunts me. 3 months into the contract, the record label has not paid us. They seem to be lackadaisical in everything that they seem to be doing. Besides, I’m not really having a great time with the band these days. I’m not so sure about this being the primary career path anymore. I badly want it to be though.

The Queer Azadi pride - a report

The day had begun well despite me not getting enough sleep overnight. I was with Vinokur very late, you know. I had a very long day. First it was the sound-check at the NM College before the gig. I was very thankful about the fact that for the first time in about 6 months, we got help for transportation of our instruments. The festival organizers were gracious enough to send us a couple of cars so that the actual lugging of instruments was reduced to a minimum. The actual sound-check didn’t go all that great. Again, some professional mishaps from my end, as I was convinced by my fellow band members.

Feeling disappointed but hopeful that the parade will cheer me up, I headed home at the strike of noon. I knew I was going to be late. I had to shower, dress and go half the way across Mumbai on a hot and humid afternoon. I tried calling a couple of friends to see if they were passing by my apartment. But everyone was already half-way to the destination. After my shower, I decided on wearing the one of the new tees that I had purchased for the events of the day. That went along with a pair of Levi’s L 531 jeans which reall y are discardable.

Thankfully, I was able to get to the station rather quickly. I carefully surveyed the stations for groups which might be going to the parade. I couldn’t find any although I did see a disparately high proportion of well dressed women on the platform. As always, Mumbai’s suburban trains were brilliant and I managed to reach the destination about 10 minutes before the starting time for assembly. I had to walk from the station to the August Kranti Maidan as I was not able to coaxe cabbies to drop me; I suspected sexual discrimination before I realized that the distance was rather miniscule.

I saw a bunch of media trucks in a row with reporters with cameras and microphones standing anxiously at the gates. Inside the maidan, I was surprised to find a lot of people and most of them seemed to have forgotten to dress. My judgement was proven wrong when I found that more than half of them were assembled there for something else going on in one of the two vacant spaces separated by a walk-way. On our side of the ground, I see a group of transgenders getting ready with make up dresses, facial paints etc.

The one thing which attracted me most was the rainbow-hat that I saw a few wearing. I wanted to get one and as I searched for some familiar faces, I was able to locate its source. I chit-chatted with a group of women who appeared to be straight before buying the hat from one of them. It costed me a mere 100 Rs. The women were pleasantly surprised (or so they seemed) to find a regular straight-looking guy with beard et al was sporty enough to buy a hat.

As soon as I wore the hat, things seemed to change for the better. I found a lot of my GB friends walking in with some of them wearing gorgeous outfits. A few minutes later, I was requested by Nitin and Vikram Doctor to give interviews to the media channels. Apparently, I was a good candidate and I was the only Mallu amongst the group. I wasn’t sure of this really. I was surprised to see myself standing next to Nitin whilst he gave a press interview in Hindi to a group of cameras and reporters of almost all the major Hindi news channels. Thankfully I was not asked to open my mouth. I just kept on smiling into the camera.

There were masks, flags, stickers and t-shirts (the only things which were way too expensive for me). I got all of them and decorated myself. By 2.30 in the afternoon, the group had grown to a sizeable crowd. The spokespersons of the various groups and alliances started giving speeches to the crowd. Lakshmi and Celina Jailed took all the attention of the media as you would expect.

Soon, we all set for the march. The group must have been over 500 by then. I chose a wonderful friend of mine as my date for the march. We held hands almost for the entirety of the march. I was holding a poster of the rainbow-torch almost throughout the march. We chanted slogans, sang rather frivolous parodies of bollywood hits and enjoyed the entire march.

In between though, I gave interviews to a couple of newspapers (TOI, Today group and a gujarati newspaper) and a Malayalam TV channel (Manorama). It was a hard decision to make initially. But I decided that it was time to be brave and to come out to the media. The questions were clichéd and apparently no one seemed to believe that I was gay (strange!). They also worked at the doctor angle and the partnership/marriage angle. The weirdest part of the entire thing was this feeling that my Dad and Mom would call me to ask me ‘Why didn’t you tell us first before announcing it on national television?’

The march ended at the Chowpatty where we hung out for half an hour or so. Some of the group with more limber bodies even danced to drumbeats. At 4.30, the police asked us to disperse. And I had to get back to the college for the gig. Hence, I walked with a few friends of mine to the station.

I got a lot of strange looks from people for my hat and the banners that I was carrying. But it really felt liberating to sit in a crowded Borivili local in the evening with splatter of colors. The public didn’t give me the smirk or the rude comment. Yes, Mumbai is growing up.

To end my little mal-written report, I would like to say that I was not really happy with the entire thing. It looked more like a circus rather than an human-rights march. And the media, well they really want just to sensationalize issues. They probably are not really looking to help us by covering this march.

Who is Miss Adela Quested? The investigatory report

[Why are we talking about Miss Adela Quested? Because he/she/it started commenting on my blog a couple of days back and has indicated his/her/it's desire for me, Kris Bass, in multifarious, nefarious ways. Here goes.]

Let's start from the name. Vinokur gave me the first hint that he remembered it as a character from the book 'A Passage to India'. Miss Adele Quested is the British Woman in the book who guided on a visit to the Marabar caves by the bearded Dr. Aziz, an idealistic, youngish Indian man who has befriended some English people. In there, gets confused and disoriented and apparently runs out accusing Dr. Aziz of assaulting her in the cave. Here's a still from the movie of the same title.

 

I don't know if this is a metaphor or analogy. I can see the smimilarities between me and Dr. Aziz. I'm bearded and I too am a Doctor. I'm youngish (28) and idealistic (maybe) and I have befriend English folk (not exactly, Vinokur is a darned American. But still he speaks English.) Since no one is sure about the sex of the character here, I'm going to refer to it as 'it'. Does 'it' adopt the aforementioned nick to drive in the point about lusting towards a bearded doctor? Perhaps. Let's carry on.

The first intended metaphor is drawn between Kris Bass and Jason Patric in 1987 horror/comedy The Lost Boys (IMDB). Jason acts the role of Michael, the elder of the two brothers who becomes a vampire after drinking blood mistaking it for wine. I'm not sure if I actually look as cute as him or that I am a vampire.

 

Then comes 'I haven't seen this much cuteness and naivete as the War of 1912.' This is by far the toughest of all the references. Here is the link to the Time magazine article. I guess we will need it itself to explain this analogy.

Throwing out Pet Shop Boys CDs comes up next. Well, I can sort of relate to that as I am so cute and sexy that Pet Shop boys are of no match to me. That's a wonderful compliment as even I love Pet Shop Boys.

It goes on to claim that it's the Darkman (Wiki) (from the 1990 film titled 'Darkman' - IMDB). The character is a scientist who after being attacked, turns into half-crazed, masked vigilante, known as Darkman who decides to get revenge on the criminals. This is interesting as I'm sure he is talking about taking on FlyGye as is evident from the interaction between the two.

 

Then it goes on to compare ourselves to the characters from the movie 'Weekend at the Barnies' (IMDB). It is compared to Andrew McCarthy who plays the character of a young employee in an insurance company whose Boss Bernie Lomax (to which I'm compared to - Shocking!) is involved in fraud of stealing money. In the final parts of the movie Andrew McCarthy uses the dead Bernie Lomax's body so as thugs can't kill him. Now, this is scary. I feel that the Darkman is after me!

 

Immediately though, it corrects itself by saying that it is more comparable to Ducky, an exchange student, with Chinky looks, in the movie 'Sixteen Candles' (IMDB) who in a alternate ends, wins the cute girl protagonist Molly Ringwald in the movie. Here I'm confused whether it is referring to its looks or the characters. Does it mean that it will win me over from Vinokur at the end of it all, perhaps in an alternate world? The plot thickens. Here is a clip from the movie where you can see how dorky Ducky, acted by Geddie Watanabe is.

 

Just to give the bait, it addst the twist of Malluhood, Kerala, incest in the reference of Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small Things'. Although this led to me admitting the fact that I haven't read the book, I was able to get a review of the book which will give you an idea as to what it means. And it did hit me at one of my weakest points: incest!

To add the bollywood twist to the story, it compares me to the apparently blind Rakhee in this video. A point to note here is that it has taken care to confuse us with immediately giving us the alter-idea of it being tall, dark and handsome like Amitabh Bacchan after the dorky impression of Ducky. It has also acknowledged that I can sing and the fact that it likes my singing.

Then comes this analogy where it compares itself to Rachel Ward in the movie 'Thorn Birds' (IMDB). In this movie, Rachel Ward's character lusts for the priest in the family. After early setbacks, they reunite with tragic consequence for both. Scary as well.

 

Shift to even gorier analogies - to Linda Blair in the movie 'Exorcist' (IMDB). It claims that it feels like the character Regan MacNeil who has unnatural powers. The famous lines 'It burns. It burns.' are quoted and it compares burning to the feeling that my beard does to it. This really sounded interesting. Well, until I saw a picture of the Linda from the movie. Here it is. :O

 

Time for another Bollywood twist. Here, it compares itself to Rekha in the movie 'Silsila' (IMDB) who has to separate from Amitabh Bacchan who has to marry another woman because of commitments. But finally, Rekha unites with Amitabh. It got really confusing here. First of all, I was Amitabh here. Elsewhere, it was Amitabh. Secondly, it compared Vinokur to Jaya Bhaduri (then, now Jaya Bacchan). Now Vinokur is bald, has a beard and has balls and stuff. How could this analogy work?

Then we get to see the inner-happening of it's mind when he confronts Fly by comparing alleging that Fly likes movies like 'Birdcage' (1996, gay comedy, 6.5/10 at IMDB) and 'Juno' (2007, comedy, 8/10 at IMDB). A scathing attack, one would presume. The reader is led to believe that this person could very well be a self-possessed witch or something like that.

This is when I intervened. I was overawed by all these references, almost all of which I had no clue about. I requested it to give me some time to understand all the analogies.

It responded by analogies ranging from apartheid politics (Winnie Mandela using a machete to cut a message in the dirt about it's infatuation) to pop culture (Lil Wayne's song 'Lollipop' (video) with direct usage of it's lyrics). We understand its frustration in its apparent resignation at wooing me by comparing its efforts to the likes of Cyndi Lauper and her works (Girls Just Want to Have Fun - video).

We also were able to see the glimpse of it's mind where it longed for love and care. It can't stand unrequited love. When I asked for permission for a detailed post about it, it's used metaphors and allegory, it responded rather despondently that it's efforts were not a publicity stunt but true love. Still, it gave its evil intent out by comparing myself to Rosemary Woodhouse from the horror novel 'Rosemary's Baby' (1967) by Ira Levin. We are led to believe that it curses my fate to be similar to Rosemary's whose husband signed a contract with the Devil to be able to impregnate her with Devil sperm in exchange of a successful career. But it urged me to go on and do what I wanted.

Despite all these analogies, we are confused. What does it look like? Is it a he or a she? Confusing. I put my data through the supercomputers at the 'Indian Society of Character Identification'. The results that came were astounding. It could be either this, this, or one of these.

But it's still cloudy, isn't it? It called for more detailed analysis of the clues that it left. And yes, I did find incriminating evidence of at least its sex. It is actually a male as evidenced by this line 'Listen you may have to move that score to the male side ;)'. To confirm it I searched methodically for all my frequented blogs for further evidence.

And finally, I found this comment on Pepe's blog. 'As you requested - blog address - from Quested as requested.' This was the blog that I was linked to from Vikster's blog yesterday. It was hilarious. And I had left a comment on it. I smelt victory. I went to the blog to check out the blogger's profile. But there wasn't one. The name was 'Joy Division'.

I went and checked for replies to my comments. Yes, there was one. From someone called 'ben' who sounded so much like Miss Quested - 'anything for you kris bass, I'm a sucker for laughs. Consider it an early Christmas -- check back tomorrow and there will be more funny.' It's a shame that Ben's profile is not public.

The closest that we can come to identifying this person is this. He's a male. He's called Ben. And maybe, just maybe, he looks like this. Even this is fine. I hope not this.

What do I feel about this 'dude' after all this research? I feel curious. I feel like knowing him more.