If you haven’t received the latest issue of ThermalAndAQuarterly, our no-spam newsletter, view it here.
In every issue, we carry a sort of quiz question under ‘That Day This Morning’. This month’s question: Which TAAQ song opens by celebrating a little bird that is becoming increasingly rare in Bangalore?
Send us your answer by midnight on June 16 along with your terrestrial coordinates.
[wpcf]
Jazz Yuppies – Double Bill with Nate Linkon
How about spending Sunday night with a saxy, horn-y blond?
Now that we have your ever-so-fleeting attention, here’s an invitation. Our good friend Nate Linkon (he of the smokin sax) is breezing by just in time to play a sensational double bill with Thermal And A Quarter. We will be reheating some microwaveable goodies and performing some smoking new ones at the Jazz Yuppies Reunion Tour with Nate.
Sunday June 14: Bb (B Flat) 100 ft Road, Indiranagar, Bangalore.
TAAQ featuring Nate Lincoln and Arathi Rao. 8 pm onwards.
Friday June 19: Fete de la Musique, Alliance Francaise de Bangalore 9 pm onwards. TAAQ featuring Nate Linkon.
Jazz be there. And bring along your grooviest state of mind.
Happy World “BirthDay”
- My problem is with remembering birthdays
- My problem is with expressing genuine happiness in it being someones birthday.
Its kind of a weird thing, making that birthday wish phone call, even to the best of friends. Its one of those eeeeeyho type things, and theres so much relief once you are done with it. I dont know if there are others who feel this too.
- I mean … its someone or the others birthday everyday
- Why cant we all individually allot one day in a year where we can legitimately call everyone we know and wish them a very advanced or belated happy birthday.
- We can express true happiness of the event of the birth of that friend and give genuine wishes for a wonderful next year and many wonderful more such years to follow.
- This way its just one day we need to remember in a year and on that day you can call and wish as many people as you possibly can.
- So we switch the deal around and instead of me calling you on your birthday, i will call you + everyone i know on a random day that i have chosen. Do this instead of remembering many birthdays. This way i cold just randomly call and wish you on a day and close the deal for the year.
- It would be more interesting for the receivers too, cos suddenly on a random day you will get a gift and a nice message etc.
- This is so much better than the current system where you really expect everyone to call you and if someone forgets then you get offended and also there are discussions about your age and all that nonsense. In this new concept age is no criteria, its not about how old or young you are – its communication of pure happiness and joy of your birth into this world. It can be on any day.
- And as your facebook friends list crosses 365+ you wont have to call and wish almost one person per day, thereby turning the whole wishing thing into a daily routine like brushing your teeth. It gets so mundane and mechanical..wake up brush your teeth, have coffee, check whose bday it is, call and wish. – Then you’ll have to keep making up new and unique types of wishes for everyone, everyday
- Maybe we can we have one common day dedicated to celebrating everyones birth day
- Maybe this can be once in 4 years, so we can combine it with the opening ceremony of the Olympics and we have a real blast giving gifts and major partying and all
- Stop this whole concept of one happy birthday per person, instead make a big bang of it on just one day, where the whole world celebrates Happy-World-Birthday and everyone around the world, in offices, college/school, families, friends etc etc buy gifts and wish each other a happy belated or advanced birthday depending on weather your birthday has gone by or yet to come for that year.
- Now for the most important part – Because I came up with this idea and cos i’m sort of a selfish bastard id like happy world-birthday to be celebrated on my Birthday 5th of June
- So ladies and Gentlemen, please wipe off all those hundreds of birthdays from your calendars and facebooks etc etc and just mark one day that is 5th June and pick up the phone and call everyone you know and wish them a Belated or Advanced birthday…. and be done with it for the whole year.
….and dont forget to call me 
Rajeev celebrates World Environment Day by adding a new year to his impressive portfolio of World Birthdays. Join us in wishing him many more.
And if you really want to make him happy today, make him rich!
Love you mushily, Old Man. And may you always keep the beat.
London Diary – Day 4 | May 28, 2009
Great Scotts!
It’s an 18-year-old drummer!
It’s a Piano Player!
It’s an upright Bassist!
It’s the Branford Marsalis Quartet!
The stars coordinated my good fortune to attend this gig at the legendary Ronnie Scotts. Thanks to a certain saxophonist who once graced our sound: the good Nate Linkon who’d caught his idol with the same quartet in Frankfurt and had blocked two tickets at the legendary Ronnie Scotts in Soho, London.
One for me…
I found my way through the well-planned maze of the London Over-and-Underground to reach this beautifully envisioned idea just in time to catch the first set of the Ronnie Scott all stars, a fantastic bunch of musicians to warm the stage up for the main set. A beer and a happy reunion with Nate our ‘ol mate later found us giving up our side-row seats for the center view (standing room only) at the bar. A setting perfect for Live Jazz.
The club opened on October 30, 1959 in a basement at 39 Gerrard Street in London’s Soho district. It was managed by musicians Ronnie Scott and Pete King. In 1965 it moved to the current place at 47 Frith Street. The original venue continued in operation as the “Old Place” until the lease ran out in 1967, and was used for performances by the up-and-coming generation of musicians.
Zoot Sims was the club’s first transatlantic visitor in 1962, and was succeeded by many others (often saxophonists whom Scott and King, tenor saxophonists themselves, admired, such as Johnny Griffin, Lee Konitz, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt) in the years that followed. Many UK jazz musicians were also regularly featured, including Tubby Hayes and Dick Morrissey who would both drop in for jam sessions with the visiting stars. In the mid-sixties, Ernest Ranglin was the house guitarist. The club’s house pianist until 1967 was Stan Tracey. For nearly 30 years it was home of a Christmas residency to George Melly and John Chilton’s Feetwarmers.
Now this is the kind of heritage that London’s vibrant music culture is built on. And judging by the attendance at the gig, this culture is as strong as ever and thriving. Why is it that we have to struggle so hard against the culture vultures, the keepers of our so called moral and cultural heritage, to just go out and express ourselves the way that we, as musicians know best? As a voting citizen, why is it that my opinion as an artist doesn’t count? We need more effort, to change this mind set of the power that be. Grow up. Indian culture today is not what it was a hundred years ago. And it will be something entirely different a 100 years from now. Regardless of the people who think they have the power to control such a thing so much bigger than us all – music.
Here’s to some more Ronnie Scotts on the rocks.
Thanks to that meeting with fate, watch out for a gig alert featuring one of TAAQ’s all time greats. We have a date with Nate!
I couldn’t have written anything better about Branford and the quartet than what I read when I went online to check out my spellings. Click on the link and turn on your speakers for some the most refreshing collection of jazz I’ve heard in recent years. Anyone who gets to the end will go out and get some of this great music. Even better try to catch the man in person!
Long trek. 500-buck tickets. Rain. Famous names, but fresh contexts. A few hundred denizens of our fair city added all that up and found some (sum?) reason to make it to Fireflies on May 30 to watch the Guitar Gurus play. Happy to say I was one of those, for it was some gig!
Got there (Fireflies is quite a ways out of town) just in time for the first Guru of the night, John Anthony. The Fireflies amphitheater was already looking pretty full, and despite the ubiquitous blue tarps over the stage, sound console and speaker stacks, the ambience was everything Fireflies is known for. The old Ficus religiosa that forms the stage backdrop was as entrancing as ever, dreaming quietly in the intermittent drizzle.
I’ve heard John play before (he’s even guested on an early-Rzhude acoustic album called 4/4). On stage with him that night was Fayaz Khan on Sarangi, and Darbuka Shiva on percussion; everything else was coming from some sort of computer/groovebox/sampler/gizmo. It’s always great to watch John play, his Carnatic-twisted licks blurring with rock distraction, but somehow the mechanical rhythms and loops over which he played diluted things a bit for me. He also seemed to be having some small trouble with his tone, which tended towards muddy on the faster passages. The compositions were quite fun though, and I liked the gentle acoustic pieces best.
Ran up to get some local chow before settling down again to watch Amit Heri and Sanjay Divecha. Had heard so much about the latter, and was really looking forward to this. Two guys, two Godin nylon-strings (which brand caused a pal some confusion – “hey look, they’re playing Go… Go… Goblin guitars!”) and some great chops – couldn’t be better. Starting with a truly elegant version of Eleanor Rigby, the duo proceeded to defy the damp (it had begun to pour) and pick their way through each other’s tunes with a real sense of joy. That’s the only word I can use. I’ve seldom seen Amit happier on stage, as each egged the other on to greater heights. It was, for the most part, a wonderfully restrained, thoughtful set. Another Beatle track showed up delightfully mangled – Get Back. Sanjay is a really expressive, lyrical player, and I’m glad I finally got to see him play. Amit showed off some his famous non-linear licks, but I somehow preferred his more restrained playing that night.
Up next was the first ‘band’ of the night, with axeman Derek Julien at the helm. Playing an unabashedly 80s Carvin, Derek had Dwight Pattison on bass and I’m sorry I didn’t catch the names of anyone else in the band. Nice tone, decent instrumentals, but it was that time of the night when the sandman gets busy, and I was having some trouble staying fully alert. Decided to walk about a bit, and bumped into various friends and bookends.
Got back in just as Vikramjit ‘Tuki’ Bannerjee was getting on; with Jeff Rikh (Jeff Rocks! Er, Jeff Rikhs!) on drums and others from the Krosswindz line-up, I figured this would be the real band of the night and was not mistaken. From the first note, you could tell this was a bunch that had been playing together for donkey’s years, and that rhythm section was just magic. Tuki – well, he had the best tone of the night, a singing, stinging, growling, jangling, mangling Strat sound that had me riveted. He’s a bold bold player, always out front, effortless bashing away, and with a charmingly sloppy stage act to boot. ‘Tuki’ is just such an apt name, I thought… he’d be in the midst of a blazing solo, step over his beloved GT-5 – and into a spot not covered by stage lighting (resulting in a mild scatter of strange notes); step back, get his cable stuck under his effects and yank it out of the guitar – twice I think – and still stay completely sanguine! His version of Jeff Beck’s Cause We Ended as Lovers was stellar. Overall, his performance was, well, ‘incendiary’ (remember Almost Famous?).
Decided to split (it was 3 am) before the big jam at the end. A great night. Should do it again sometime…
Bruce at Kyra
Kyra is the kind of place Bangalore needs. A venue planned around performance, acoustically designed, with a good-sized stage, appropriate sound installation, lights… They call it a ‘dinner theatre’, and it’s a bit odd on stage at first; dinner tables are set right up against it, and the audience is seated in vertical rows so they can turn a few degrees to watch. But it sounds good in there. The ‘atmosphere’, we’re sure, will follow soon enough. And by the number of acts performing there already, that shouldn’t take too long.
Sound check was early this time around – we were supposed to do the Live Gig at the Music Strip in Cubbon Park in the afternoon, in memory of Sunbeam Motha. Straight away, we know this is going to be a good gig – there’s a nice drum kit, everything works, and it sounds good even without the warm bodies of your audience to soak up those frequencies. You know how it is sometimes in these indoor gigs – soundcheck is one big boomy waffly affair with random howls and suspicious wolves (notes, that is). But here, everything is nice and tight. You feel like digging in and playing.
Had some trouble with the acoustic guitar – really need to a) invest in one with a kickass pickup system or b) somehow get said kickass pickup system and install in current axe. Anyway, manage to get it sounding ok by bypassing all the floor gizmos and plugging right into the board.
Trek to Cubbon after soundcheck to find everyone rather sodden with rain-grief. One brave band manages to belt out one song standing in the freshening drizzle. Interestingly, there was a blue tarp being held over the dry drummer, who, not being plugged into anything with electrons buzzing through it, wasn’t in much danger of said electrons fizzing up his nostrils or anything. The guitar player and bassist dripped – but walked off unscathed. Kudos! Needless to say, that Gig was called off before things got any Live-lier. Hope to play there again another day.
Back to Kyra – we start just after 8 (nice minty chocolates, those), with our brand new version of How Can I Get Your Groove. Nice crowd in there – can see some regulars, new faces… and they’re singing along. Do our still-cooking version of It’s Probably Me and jump into all the brand new stuff – Jazz Yuppies, The Song, Mighty Strange – and all of it is going down well, I say!
Rzhude and Rajeev
Pony up for the acoustic set and actually manage to pull off Andy McKee’s Drifting without completely mangling it. Rzhude also steps up and does some old favourites before getting in an acoustic version of Brigade St. Second set has all the usual suspects – Jupiter Café (The Work Song cropped up again in the jam) Chameleon, Simply Be (which went down really well) with grand set-closer Motorbyckle. Gave away our free This Is It CDs for all those designated drivers, signed a few. Good gig! And the food is pretty good too…
Photos courtesy Akhil Gupta
Kyra is what Bangalore has always wanted
And suddenly… unexpectedly… just like that… Bangalore gets a world-class performance venue.
Despite being the IT/BT capital of the world for over a decade, all that progress hardly made a whisper of a difference when it came to sound and lights available at any of the performance venues in our city. Progress, if any, was reflected in the pricing of the food and drinks. The only place that has great, world-class sound is apparently the Infy boardroom where Murthy and Nandan jam on their Midas XL8 digital console (known to be the world’s best board). No kidding, they’ve got the works in there, I hear. While we mega rockstar guys have to shut up and play with whatever comes our way. Not to forget the standard pre-gig scenario of haggling with the organizers for that extra sub-woofer or a slightly bigger mixing board or removing a few tables at that pub to make that stage just a tad bigger so that I don’t have a guitar neck going through my ears or have my boom stand up the frontman’s rear.
Finally, here’s a venue where all of that bad stuff is history.
Kyra, with its 30/40 stage + JBL VRX compact line array system with multiple dual 18″ subs powered by QSC amplifiers, processed and managed by a DBX Driverack + VRX delay speakers designed with ‘EASE’ to ensure even quality of sound across the venue. Not to mention the Soundcraft GB 2-24 24 channel mixer + Truss with 36 lighting points handled by a LSC Maxim M dmx lighting console with 48 faders.
Phew…I’ll stop for now, but there’s plenty more. For all the yada yada yada visit the one and only www.acousticcontrol.com, who have done a fantastic job at Kyra.
And the best part is Kyra promises that this is just the beginning… they are just starting off. Some standard teething troubles, etc. happening but lots more stuff is gonna be put in there.
And if you are wondering why yours truly is being so nice to this place, hear this: Finally, man, finally… finally… finally somebody decided to respect the work of the humble drummer and invest in a high end professional acoustic drum set. My eyes flood up as I thank the person whose decision it was to put in a good high-end kit in there. Contrary to what everybody (including my wife) thinks, we drummers do put in a lot of work into our sound, and for time immemorial we have been disregarded when it comes to spending that lil extra on making sure there’s a good kit at the live gig.
Thank you Kyra. Bangalore desperately needs you.
All the very best, and whatever happens the show must go on.
Gig review by Bruce coming soon.
Thank yous:
Team TAAQ: Vinay Kewalramani (Sound + Gig Mgmt), OB-Wan and Guzuru (Guitar/Bass/Drum Techs)
Kyra: Navneet, Chris, Shimrei, Anand, Ajit and all the staff
More later,
Cheers
Rajeev
Photo courtesy Akhil Gupta
May 17. It’s the night of the big election result, and the CEC is likely to call off the dry day at 6 PM. That means a lot of us are going to be very thirsty indeed. Flipside: the roads are going to be a lot less safe if all the tipplers get behind the wheel after celebrating or mourning or whatever.
This Sunday, Thermal And A Quarter and Kyra raise a toast to the spirit of responsible drinking.
If you stand up for your tippling friends and stay sober, and if you volunteer to drive them home, you get a free drink coupon from Kyra (redeemable, of course, on your next visit – if you are not driving again, that is!). Also, the first 1o lucky Unstoned Heroes get a free, autographed copy of This Is It, the hottest rock album by the coolest Indian rock band.
If you don’t have the liver to abstain, there’s help. You can hop into a cab arranged, by the management, at a very special fare.
Go on, be an Unstoned Hero!
Drink. And be driven.
For tickets, contact Kyra Theatre
RSVP on our Facebook page
Sunbeam Motha
In the foggy ruins of time I have met Sunbeam Motha – and not in his musico avatar.
In the early nineties of the previous century, just out of school, I attended a meeting of the Society for Afforestation and Verdant Earth (SAVE) – coordinated by urban governance expert Vinay Baindur and others whose names I now forget – after-hours in the conference room of Electronic Relays India off Residency Road.
Only Sunbeam, of course, was entirely unforgettable.
Then an adolescent with a bodybuilding ego bigger than my corporeal form could ever attain, I was deflated by the sight of his sinewed, veined forearms. They looked immensely strong.
He was also intense and articulate, with a blood-quickening old-world vocabulary completely devoid of all the IT bullshit that has corrupted Bangalorese now. When he spoke, he roused. Over his rugged good looks, he wore an aura of Bodhisattva-like compassion and mysterious free-spiritedness.
It was July, and one evening after a meeting the monsoon held us all up for two hours. Topically, we found ourselves chatting with Sunbeam about rain and rainforests. He invited us over to see an afforestation project he had started near Bannerghatta. The following weekend, my friend God and I trekked behind the National Park to a barren hillside stubbled with new saplings. Sunbeam wasn’t there – probably held up by another of his many passions – and somehow our paths never crossed again. I hope his forest survives.
There was another side to Sunbeam Motha – one every Bangalore musician worth his pedigree knew of and revered. And because Sunbeam is now no more, we will all pay tribute to his memory and to the Music Strip, which he pioneered in the early 1980s. The Strip got its name from the place where it was allowed to be held – the avenue behind Queen Victoria’s statue in Cubbon Park (then, as now, the Police Commissioner forbade holding the gig anywhere else).
Time chases its tail this Sunday, when the Music Strip reincarnates as The Live Gig. Join us and many others at this fond and nostalgic revival. We’re on nearabouts 4 PM.
Sunbeam’s photograph – courtesy Sheila Remedios
Your current browser does not support this website. Please upgrade to a more modern browser.
Suggested options are
Google Chrome
or
Mozilla Firefox
You can also upgrade to the lastest version of Internet Explorer
