TAAQ had to fight its way onto stage and once we got there, as is our wont, we kicked ass! Even the odd drunk staggering into microphones and amplifiers on stage could not upset a very tight set. It was clearly one of those nights – if you were there, you weren’t really there. Meanwhile at Cow’s Paradise, a retirement home for cows next door, the members of the genus Bos masticated noisily, unmindful of all the talk about “Paper Puli”.

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Photographs: Gurudarshan Somayaji

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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

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

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

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

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

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.

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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

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.

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

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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This was back in 2001? I’ve lost track of the date. But the day we got our production of Cd’s and Tapes is still quite clear… ‘lil did we know what we were getting into!

Four albums down the line we still aren’t sure…

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Thermal in thermals and other stories – the gig at Lodhi Garden, in pictures.

Thanks to Bobin

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