Jai Ho...

"I thought you only enjoy rock concerts and not the Bollywood ones"
"That's right"
"Then how come you are going for Rehman concert"
"Isn't he our own rock star"
Yes I think so... you can't put A.R.Rehman in the same category with likes of Anu Malick and Udit Narayan. He is class apart! And how on earth I can resist the opportunity to listen to the maestro live in concert ... Despite the hubby's protests against standing for hours together in cramped crowd with feeble possibility of getting a good look at the man, the wify made him attend the concert. I was sure Rehman would make him forget all the agony and oh boy ... ARR did that in most spectacular way !

As expected, there was huge young crowd and all Pune roads seemed like flowing towards the Balewadi stadium. But there were aunties and oldies too and even families attending with 2 year olds. Hats off to Pune's music lovers... they attend Sawai Gandharv and Rehman with equal enthusiasm !

Given our great time management, we reached the place dot on concert time. I had slightest hopes of catching any good view of the stage given my previous concert experiences (and my not so good height). So first thing we did was to find a good position in front of one of the screens and settled down on the ground. What I didn't expect was that I would be able to enjoy almost whole show sitting right there. People were more interested in sitting comfortably and watching the screen than jumping up and down to catch a view of the stage. I guess it only happens in Pune !

I really didn't have any choices for songs to be played given vast number of songs of him that I adore. He started with "Jage hai der tak" followed by a Tamil song. I thought ab toh gaya... people will boo him for playing Tamil song. They just waited patiently for next one to come. The patience was paid off very well when he started "Jiya se jiya". That song has enchanting beats which make it more enjoyable live.

There was Hariharan singing "Roja janeman", Rashid Ali singing "Kabhi kabhi aditi", Sadhana Sargam singing "Chupake Se"... all the Delhi6 songs were sung and so were "Kaise muze tum mil gayee" and "Maiyya Maiyya". No singers were introduced apart from Raja Hassan whose name flashed across the backstage. I really wish he doesn't sing again after the way he almost killed "Masakkali". Sivamani made a brief appearance. We were hoping to get a small solo peace from him but in vain. There were some dancers and light show but who had time to pay attention to them, while dancing to those songs and cheering our hearts out.

The man himself performed "Dil se", "Rehana Tu" and "Maula mere maula". What I loved most was that the man did less talking and played more music save a futile attempt to "interview" people from audience.

Turn offs of the show, RJ's who were anchoring as if they were on air...( RJ Shrikant you suck big time) and the winglis speech by Karad. Yes we saw Lata Mangeshkar and also one lady snoozing in the front row.

My verdict ... awesome show!!! Still have hangover of it. Afterall You don't get to listen Rehaman playing piano live with Hariharan singing "Tu hi re", Roop Kumar Rathod singing "Roshan Sama" "Bhini Bhini" (just awesome!) everyday...

ARR you ROCK !!!

Three movies, a concert and Rum Ice Roy

It’s been a long time since I have written a post about ‘how my weekend was?’ There were lame weekends or I was just lazy to write about them (Lazy is synonymous to me!) Weekends come and go away before I recount anyy details about it. This weekend was no different apart from the ‘Aerosmith’ concert that I have written about in previous post. Three rock-concerts old and I couldn’t be happier. DNA people please get ‘U2’ and ‘Linkin Park’ to Bangalore before I get old to jump in the concerts or lose interest in Rock music (who knows!). On the second thought, I wouldn’t mind listening to ‘GnR’, ‘Goo Goo Dolls’, ‘Metallica’ and ‘Bon Jovi’ live :-) (Human mind is greedy you see)

Though the weekend went insignificantly there was happening week for a change! Three movies watched in a week. It’s been a while since I watched movies during weekdays though my office is in the heart of the city and there are at least 3 theatres within 10 mins reach from here. It is always laziness plus too much of work and I can’t sit at a place for such a long time ;-). This week was definite change with three movies being watched.

Shrek 3:- For a change my company did this good deed of giving away free tickets for the movie it has provided technology for. How proud I feel to tell this!! If you are animation fan and you happen to watch Shrek series you will definitely appreciate the animation created by DreamWorks and rendered on servers provided by my dear company. Rendering for animation of this kind requires high end servers and we provide them! Moral of the story is, there was a contest to win free tickets for the movie and a colleague of mine got 4 tickets to the show in PVR cinema Europa screen. Can you beat that? First day show tickets that too in the most hep theatre of Bangalore! How can I miss such a golden chance? The tickets were collected bunking group wide meeting! The story is not that great, they have tried to add too much of senti-aap touch and made Shrek behave more human like. I adored him more in first two parts. But the animation is awesome! The new character Arthur looks damn cute!

Life… in a Metro :- ‘I didn’t like the movie because it is too realistic’ was the first review I got in this movie and it made more that curious to watch it. It was running houseful for a while and finally we managed to get tickets for Wed 10 pm show. Getting ticket episode itself will make topic for another post! The movie is too realistic for sure. It feels like we are peeping into our neighbor’s life and sometimes our own too! The stories of love, betrayal, infidelity run parallel crossing each other every now and then. The movie handles a good topic but does not disturb you or make you think about the degrading morality in our modern lives. In the end, it goes the ‘happily ever after’ way. What disturbed me more was the writer didn’t allow the married women (Shilpa), to follow her heart and go against her cheating husband. Instead she became typical ‘Bhartiya Naari’ who sacrifices her love and self-respect for the sake of family. What nonsense!!! Do watch it for Irrfan Khan. He is not used much but he sure makes his presence felt in the movie.
I was telling my mother about this movie. I said I don’t think you would like to watch this movie; it would shatter the typical Indian mind like it did for my friend. She plainly says, ‘you know what these things have been there in our society since long. Aren’t there stories of infidelity even in our purana’s? It’s just that these days we have advanced media so the things are being discussed openly and women are getting strong to oppose/expose them’. Mom, you surprise me as always!

Cheeni Kum :- I liked this one more from previous two. Nice subject, good direction and cinematography and amazing actors made the movie worth watching. One dialogue that I remember right now is when Amitabh is trying to convince Tabu’s father about their relationship. He says “Why should you have problem when you daughter is not marrying someone younger than her?” It is generally said that women mature before guys do. They should marry guys at least couple of years older than them so they are on same page. We Indians go little overboard in this theory and consider it immoral when a woman marries a man younger than her. I say why we should have problem in that if two people are ready to spend their lives with each other and fine with the age difference. On the other hand, there are lot of girls who search for security, comfort in their husbands just like they received from their fathers. Just as a guy likes to compare his wife with his mother and expect her to cook, care like his mother did what is wrong if a girl searches for her father in terms of maturity and understanding.
What is your take on this?

And I should not forget to mention ‘Rum Ice Roy’, you are right it is name of ice cream which has rum in it and lot of rum for that matter. Sunday night was ‘Corner House’ time after a long time. I thought of trying this one as name sounded interesting and hoping it will have unrecognizable traces of liquor. But my-o-my, it lives up its name, had the rum taste for real (Don’t ask me how I know taste of Rum ;-))

… I am too bored with work today, hence all this blabbering!

Aerosmith rocked Bangalore ...!!!

After all the confusions and whining… the Aerosmith show has been attended. (For starters, like my dear brother and Apoorv, Aerosmith is the cult rock band and their songs are like anthem for rock fans worldwide). It’s just the next day morning I don’t have hangover of it. I don’t know what it was… the humidity or the stupid crowd or too much of expectation or the band itself.

First it was the friend who was supposed to come with me. He decided to play prank on me and till the last moment kept telling me that he is not going to come. Then we were late for the show. The gates were supposed to open at 5:30 and we reached there by 5. I thought now I won’t even get the glimpse of the stage. But surprisingly there were not many people around. Ooh… has too man bands taken away interest of Bangaloreans or was it the highly priced tickets? I was expecting people crowding the place since morning, after all this is not just another band. They are the ‘Bad boys from Boston’ touted as one of the all time best bands in Rock history. This time the organizers also didn’t seem in the mood of making the show much popular. They had started publicizing for the show just couple of weeks ago. And on the day of event there was much confusion about the exact place of show. You must know that palace ground is a huge huge place. So unless you define exact place to enter, you are bound to get lost in taking rounds of the place and half of the roads are one way. They had not put directions properly so we ended up circling the place in crawling traffic. Thank god we were on bike, I saw many people talking the long walk (almost 2-3kms). Inside there was confusion about which line to stand in for the entry. They had common entrance for both the ticket types. Then there were separate lines for gals in a sideey corner. Even after being so late, we were able to get place pretty much near the stage. Unfortunately there were too many tall guys around me so I couldn’t see much as usual. Rock shows is one of the times when I badly wish that I were taller or least other people were shorted than me. I had to jump and keep searching for the view. My neck still hearts with that pain .
So we were inside by 6 pm. The crowd has just started to build up. We were expecting some band to open and help us kill the time before concert starts. Apart from contestants of some stupid air-guitar contest (one of them won a guitar signed by Aerosmith … luck man!!) and some firangs walking around to check the setting and clicking snaps in various poses, there was no activity on the stage. It was unbelievably hot, and despite all the no-smoking signs there were lot of chimneys around, by 8 pm we were soaking in sweat (how I wished for rain). After a while people started booing and shouting for the show to start… some creative mind started shouting ‘Angrezo Bharat Chhodo!’ After minutes of testing and retesting, they appeared on the stage. The video that preceded their appearance showed their journey through times and finally Indian flag covering the whole screen. There was also a Ganesha Idol sitting next to the drums, Pretty Interesting I say. Steve Tyler was wearing his trademark funky cloths. This time it was a female-ish looking hat, huge butterfly hanging around the neck and too many straps on the microphone. He is too dramatic on stage. They started with ‘Taste Of India’ followed by ‘Love in the Elevator’. They sang ‘Eat the Rich’, ‘Living on the Edge’, ‘Dream On’, ‘Jaded’, ‘Sweet Emotion’, ‘Falling in love is hard on Knees’, ‘What it takes’ among others. Joe Perry sang a number too. He looked cool and according to him the best thing that India has given to the world is ‘Kamasutra’!!! One of the good things was that they had made a ramp, so I got good glimpse of Steve and Joe. Joe is amazing on guitar.

Like me, most of the crowd was hoping to listen ‘Janie’s got a gun’, ‘Angel’ ‘Dude looks like a lady’. We kept shouting hoping they will sing but no success. Two hours of non-stop singing, dancing around stage. For one song Steve was wearing the Karnataka style pagari! Till the end we were hoping they will sing ‘Janie’. But they just vanished backstage. The crowd kept cheering for more and suddenly Steve came on stage ‘I hear someone wanting more songs. How about one more song?’ And he started ‘I don’t want a miss a thing’. That was crowning of the show, I say. We all sang together with the song. It was great show but could have been better.

But what the heck … I listened to Aerosmith live in concert... yayy!!!

Rapture of the Deep

They came, they rocked and they won hearts!!!

The BAAPs of rock were here and they rocked Bangalore like never before (as least for me :-) )

First time I came to know about the band “Deep Purple” was when Kalpana Chawala died. She was a great fan of their music and had carried their music to the space! Next time was when I copied rock music collection from my colleague’s machine. I loved “Hush” and “My woman from Tokyo”. But to be honest I was never die hard fan like I am of Bryan Adams or even my recent favorite list additions like Dire Straits or Metallica :-). Yeah yeah yeah… I am becoming a metal fan!. So why did I go for the show? To attend a live concert that too a rock concert! How could I lose such an opportunity and it turned out to be the best one. Oh yeah I have been to BA concert earlier but I was too away from the stage and couldn’t see more than a black clad figure jumping on the stage. How I wished I were 10 feet tall!

This time no mistakes made. We were there much before the gate opening time. ( I mean my friend was there at 3 pm to be right at front of the line. Yours truly reached leisurely at 5 :D). We were right in front of the stage, in 2nd or 3rd row (Mind you, that is hardly 10 feet or so away from the stage!). A local band played to start with. They were not bad. The guitarists were good and vocalist was eye-candy ;-). Then there was again break of half hour. I was already tired of standing for 3 hours. Three hours standing among crazy smoking stinking freaks, no place to move and no Deep Purple :-(.

Then they came out of purple haze. What followed was 2 hours of non-stop head banging and foot tapping music. Sigh I have no proper words to describe it. Steve Morse rocks on the guitar. The pieces he played on guitar were tooo mind boggling. So is the lead singer Ian Gillan, perfect entertainer with his ‘air guitar’. No talking, only music and serious music for that matter. If I had not seen in person I would have never believed the kind of music was being played by guys in their 50s. Unstoppable and unbelievable energy! “Smoke on the water” is still banging in my head. The recorded versions sound so lame now! The crowd could not stop screaming in excitement. My throat is still sore and feet hurt like anything. But who is complaining :-).
What a rocking show!! Whaaaaat a rocking show!!!

In the words of the band vocalist Ian Gillan, I would say “What a perfect way to end a rocking year!”