jakarta java jazz 09Category Archive

  • TAAQ feat. Amit Heri – Hard Rock Cafe, Bangalore, Aug 13

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    TAAQ featuring Amit Heri - Hard Rock Cafe, August 13

    TAAQ featuring Amit Heri – Hard Rock Cafe, August 13

    Yes, it’s true.

    Amit Heri, Bangalore’s sensational emissary of world jazz, joins Thermal And A Quarter for a spellbinding evening that no guitar buff dare miss.

    For those in the dark, jazz guitar player Amit Heri has performed at top international music festivals including the Berlin Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Festival, London Jazz Festival, Paris Jazz Festival, Rome World Music Festival, WOMAD, etc. He has shared stage with Charlie Mariano, Zakir Hussain, Mandolin U. Srinivas, Ustad Sultan Khan, Shankar Mahadevan, Trilok Gurtu, Robert Miles, Salif Keita & Angelique Kidjo.

    Thursday night is his first gig with TAAQ, featuring Bruce Lee Mani, Rajeev Rajagopal, Rzhude and friends.

    8 PM, Hard Rock Cafe, Bangalore.

    Dump that Thursday evening conference call or take it from Hard Rock Cafe instead. Treat your office colleagues to the sound of at least two guitars doing their thing.

    Think of it as our recession tip for a pay hike. ;)

  • Gig Alert – Hard Rock Cafe, July 23

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    TAAQ at Hard Rock Cafe Bangalore - July 23, 2009

    It’s official. Barring such events as the much-anticipated delivery of a package from Stork Celestial Logistics to the Manis, the gig at Hard Rock Cafe, Bangalore stands scheduled for Thursday, July 23.

    Thermal And A Quarter decrees that you spend a windy Thursday night with our brand new originals – Simply Be, Mighty Strange, De-Arranged, Grab Me, Surrender… and sing-along favourites from This Is It and the albums hitherto. Served hot.

    For those who want only covers, come play the guessing game. Let’s see how many you get.

    Bruce, Rajeev and Rzhude will be joined by special guests Tony Das (guitars), Jason Zachariah (keyboards), Divya Joseph (vox) and Shalini Subramanian (vox).

    Trash all your other appointments and make a date with TAAQ for Thursday night. Check with the Hard Rock Cafe management about timings and entry tickets (+91 80 41242222 / +91 80 41699210).

  • Jazz Yuppies – Double Bill with the saxy Nate Linkon

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    Jazz Yuppies - Double Bill with Nate Linkon

    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.

  • London Diary – Great Scotts!

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    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!

  • Guitars, gurus and fireflies in the rain

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    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…

  • TAAQ Live @ Kyra, May 17th 2009

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    Bruce at Kyra

    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

    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

  • What does it take to be an Unstoned Hero?

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    Unstoned hero

    TAAQ live at Kyra Theatre - May 17, 2009

    TAAQ live at Kyra Theatre – May 17, 2009

    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

  • May the sun always shine on Sunbeam

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    Sunbeam Motha

    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

    Event details on Facebook

  • Popping the Pune cherry – Hard Rock Cafe, April 8, 09

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    TAAQ at Hard Rock Cafe, Pune

    TAAQ at Hard Rock Cafe, Pune

    Yes, we made history. History that was seen, heard and experienced so palpably that it reverberates in the Hard Rock Cafe that we left smoking yesterday.

    TAAQ at Hard Rock Cafe, Pune

    TAAQ at Hard Rock Cafe, Pune

    Sound wasn’t cooking very well during the first few songs. But when we came back from our break with Motorbyckle, four-stroke sound effects and all, Pune finally got a taste of what it had come here for. Look at Me followed, and so did cheers. The audience had totally warmed up, and warmed to us.

    TAAQ at Hard Rock Cafe, Pune

    TAAQ at Hard Rock Cafe, Pune

    Everything was cooking just right. Even the lights, handled ineptly and impromptu by yours truly on an urgent and frightening command from Vinay at the sound console, started to make sense. Perhaps because by the second half, most of my first scotch on the rocks had also nourished my liver.

    High spirited

    High spirited

    The covers got us a nice response – Run like Hell, Hoedown, Roxanne and Wonderwall all went down very smooth. Chameleon and Hot Day got them headbanging and grooving in turn. And by the end of the night, plenty of long atrophied muscles had been revived.

    TAAQ at the Hard Rock Cafe, Pune

    TAAQ at the Hard Rock Cafe, Pune

    CD sales have never been brisker. At the console, I felt very like a bartender on a Saturday night. Many people bought all three at our very special Tuesday night price. And after the last guest had left, we tore through the Atkins Diet Hard Rock dinner (designed exclusively for the American Appetite) and headed off to Hotel Phoenix to uncoil. It was well past two when we hit the sack. We got back to Bangalore this morning.

    TAAQ at Hard Rock Cafe, Pune

    TAAQ at Hard Rock Cafe, Pune

    Thanks to the good folks at the Hard Rock Cafes in Mumbai and Pune, and Groovetemple for making these Midweek Weekend shows a very special hit.

  • Midweek in Mumbai, the harder they rock!

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    Hot day!

    At thirty-six ticks Celsius, Mumbai’s concrete-paved roads shimmered like beaten glass under the liquid glare. But they tell us it is actually cooler than the week before – by a whole round four degrees. These becalming meteorological statistics help us keep our cool. And we’re on our way with a little help from good, eco-friendly air-conditioning everywhere – on the plane to Bombay, in the airport lobby, in the cabs to the hotel, in the hotel lobby, in the hotel rooms, at the Hard Rock Cafe… Sweating it out has never been tougher.

    Hard Rock Cafe billed it as an Alternative Tuesday, but it turned to be more the epithet we gave it - the Midweek Weekend. The crowd was thick by when we went up at ten, and there were no free tables or seats at the bar by half past.

    Bruce Lee Mani at Hard Rock Cafe, Mumbai

    Bruce Lee Mani at Hard Rock Cafe, Mumbai

    TAAQ Hard Rock Cafe Mumbai - Set List

    TAAQ Hard Rock Cafe Mumbai – Set List

    Blistering opening with Shut Up and Vote. Chased that with Getting There and Surrender. We broke set at Hoedown. If you remember, the last time we played here at the Hard Rock Cafe in Mumbai was the night before 26/11. So, we resumed with One Small Love and followed that up with a very extended Sold just to keep up the irony.

    Roadies eye-view

    Roadie's eye-view

    On bass, Mr Tony Das, impersonating Rzhude (laid low by mumps) for the night, went to great pains to prove his identity. But the Mumbai die-hards would have none of it. The night wore on, the crowd didn’t. Some chose to mosh while the rest just noshed. At the bar, some very vocal boys and girls grooved grandly.

    Magical evening. We wound it up very reluctantly at ten past midnight.

    Tonight, we descend upon Pune with our first-ever gig at the Hard Rock Cafe.

    Be there!

    On the road to Pune

    On the road to Pune

    Just in: Rediff.com has recorded and posted a video of Shut Up and Vote from our performance at Hard Rock Cafe, Mumbai.

    View the video here

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