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Friday, May 21 – Farewell concert for Rzhude

ashwin srinivasan, guitars, taaq, TAAQ and the Divas | May 18, 2010 | Permalink | Comments Off

“History’s a merry-go-round
Carousel, spinning turning…”

- ‘Then and Now’, from the album ‘This Is It’

More than ten years ago, Rudolph Antonio David (aka Rzhude) walked into his first jam with TAAQ, carrying a headless Washburn Bantam 4-string bass, a 40W Stranger amp, and a sense of groove that would change the way this band made music.

A true troubadour, Rzhude is the balladeer, the quiet but strong voice in the shadows of the campfire, telling stories simply and powerfully. He brought to TAAQ music a new sense of accessibility; to TAAQ work a new sense of fulfillment.

We’re calling this gig a ‘farewell concert for Rzhude’, but in truth it’s the celebration of an era. The Rzhude Decade — from 1999 to 2010 (something like the leap year, a Rzhude Decade has 11 years instead of ten — there’s another TAAQologism for you!). And during this era, we have had musicians of various stripes playing with us — a closer peek at the poster will give you their names*.

Seems like just yesterday that Rzhude walked in, plugged up and jammed with us like a true fellow traveller. Now, it’s time for him to hop off and change horses on the carousel.

Share the nostalgia as we recollect the glory years between then and now. Join us on the unending ride.

*The fine print: (L-R) Nate Linkon, Manoj Ganessan, Jason Zachariah, Tony Das, Ajit Abraham, Sunil Chandy, David Pascall, Sriram Iyengar, Jayesh Nair, Preetam Koilpillai, Bryan Richard, Vishak Gopinath, Bruce Lee Mani, Rzhude David, Rajesh Mehar, Rajeev Rajagopal
Where the state has no name – Hyderabad, Jan 21

CWG, guitars, indian rock music, jam | January 20, 2010 | Permalink | Comments Off

We have a special fondness for Hyderabad because our third record Plan B was put together there at Ramoji Film City in 2004. Now, it saddens us to hear that this erstwhile princely state that has its own cricket team is turning into Jekyllabad (if you will excuse the atrocious pun), torn asunder as it is by contending claims for statehood. War-cries for new states are ringing across the country. And in nearby Puduchery (Pondicherry as we still love to call it), a new fight has erupted against statehood.

Drawing and re-drawing borders within borders… what a state for a nation to be in, we thought. Didn’t you too?

While we have time left, we shall give our fans in undivided Andhra Pradesh something to sing about. Here’s the chorus of a new bluesy number we composed just for the occasion.

Where the state has no name
Borders like boulders thrown
In a laughing god’s game
The dice fall in unkind spots
In a land of polyglots
Where the state has no name

We’ll perform this number at our concert in Hyderabad on January 21. Be there and don’t forget to sing along.

Concert details: Hard Rock Café, GVK 1, First Floor, Road No 1, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad. Telephone: 91-40-4476-7900

Watch this space for updates.
TIMES OF NEED – The Grammies, Climate Change and more

concert reviews, guitarist, guitars, opus, Rzhude, Vikramjit ‘Tuki’ Bannerjee, vote | December 13, 2009 | Permalink | Comments Off

TIMES OF NEED is not on time but that’s because we’ve been saving ourselves some trouble for the yearend holiday season. So, you will notice that the November-December issue is a double-issue — your first-ever! Which also means that in the effort to give you some extra reading material, we’ve compromised on our tagline ‘No more page threes’.

In this issue:

Grammy Nim Ajji*

Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhh, ohh-oh-e-ohh-oh-oh
I’ll get him hot, show him what I’ve got
Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhh, ohh-oh-e-ohh-oh-oh,
I’ll get him hot, show him what I’ve got

Is that another musical epiphany like the one that made Rajeev pen the lyrics for Sold? Nope, says TAAQ’s drummer. Those are the lyrics for Poker Face, Lady Gaga’s Grammy nomination for Song of the Year. Songwriters: Germanotta, Stefani, Khayat, Nadir.

Impressive, eh? “I think Germanotta wrote ‘oh’, Stefani wrote ‘ohhhh’, Khayat wrote ‘ohh-oh-e-ohh-oh-oh’ and Nadir just stood there looking HAWTT!” he says.

*For the un-Bangalored: Nim Ajji, a mildly ribald term of endearment, is Kannada for ‘your granny’

Hot earth, cold feet

A magazine cover went: ‘Can we save this fragile Earth?’ Heck, it’s us who are fragile. Once we’ve all been expurgated in a cloud of greenhouse gas, good old Gaia will take a well-deserved few million years off and be ready to welcome other, maybe less ‘intelligent’ but more ‘aware’ species.

But then again, if there is one turning point in the history of mankind that screwed everything up, it’s the creation of the drum machine.

Jailhouse Crock

We learn that the shamed and now imprisoned boss of Satyam has asked for a few simple pleasures to make his incarceration worth the time. Buttermilk? Yes, said the guards. Guntur Chicken? Hmmm, ok. Gongura pickle? Ok, but only on Sundays. You can already see where this is leading, so why wouldn’t the prison authorities?
By the time he got to asking the management for what he really, really wanted (nope, not a Spice Girl), the authorities had enough. So when Raju wanted a laptop, they shook their heads. “There is a mouse in his prison cell, let him make do with that,” the warden was reported as saying (off the record, of course).

Tiger, Tiger burning out?

It is every cat’s prerogative to bring home something that disgusts the hell out of his folks. When you’re a big cat, that something has to be bigger and badder and smellier than most. But then again, not every cat has the privilege of driving (yeah, we know it’s a responsibility, not a privilege) a Cadillac Escalade. You should know, if you are Tiger Woods.

MORE?

TIMES OF NEED from Thermal And A Quarter – Vol 1 # 4 Nov-Dec 09

DOWNLOAD TIMES OF NEED-NOV-DEC 09-VOL 1 #4 [PDF]
26/11 – Hard Rock Cafe, Delhi

guitars, indian rock music, pedals | November 24, 2009 | Permalink | Comments Off

Yea, it’s 26/11.

But we will not be in Mumbai.

We will be in the capital, regaling you with every reason not to dunk your head in sorrow but to free yourself from paranoia and terror.

And for the occasion, TAAQ will be louder than usual, with many more voices joining in the chorus. And nearly every song will have a touch of Broadway. Be there — you haven’t seen (or heard) us like this before!
TAAQ feat. Amit Heri, Amyt Dutta, Tony Das and others – Blue Frog, Mumbai, 9 PM, Nov 11

artists, asheem chakravarty, bruce lee mani, carlton braganza, dewarists, driving directions, Fête de la Musique 2009, firangi paani, guitars, Highland Nectar, hoedown, hustings, hyderabad, opus bangalore, shows, taaq, TAAQ and the Divas | November 10, 2009 | Permalink | Comments Off

Wednesday, 11/11/09 – 9 PM:

Thermal And A Quarter joins guitar players Amit Heri, Amyt Dutta, Tony Das and others at Blue Frog, Mumbai on the occasion of Eleven Guitar Day.

In the afternoon, Guitar Doctor Bruce Lee Mani will test-drive the new Digidesign Eleven Rack. Free workshop on guitar technique and technology from 3 PM – 5 PM at Blue Frog, Mumbai.

Read Guitar Doctor’s review of the Digidesign Eleven Rack.

Limited seats. Attendance open to pre-registered participants only. Last-minute aspirants can try their luck by emailing elevenrack@ansata.net.

Presented by: Digidesign – www.digidesign.com
Event Support: Groove Temple and Blue Frog
The 'Rock' in Hard Rock Cafe

bassist, carlton braganza, guitars, indian rock music, publication, shows, TAAQ and the Divas | November 9, 2009 | Permalink | Comments Off

Never has a Hard Rock Cafe gig sounded so delicious (loud, yes, but good) and not in a long time has TAAQ played its four-chambered heart out like it did on Thursday night at Bangalore. And I say this as a very disgruntled photographer who found the lighting, the cross-beams and the fat railings thwarting the remotest photographic possibility. The one thing that made my night was the way these guys played, and the way the gig sounded.

There was talk of a “new PA” and the boys sounded very excited about it. But I know at least three HRCs in India to be notorious for their acoustics — for the most part, they are hollow, sepulchral places and the stages (except in Pune) are placed where most people wouldn’t care to notice the band. Which means the band usually must make most of the effort to get itself noticed.

Rajeev finds something amusing about the set list

I didn’t pay much heed to Shut Up, but right from Respectable, the quality of the sound was very impressive. Actually, that nice lush sound was a pleasant surprise and I had to keep pinching the next guy (a very unlucky Umesh) to convince myself that it wasn’t my uncharacteristic sobriety that was making me hear things.

Tripping over a very drunk couple who first tripped on the music, then on each other and then sprayed the floor with fragrant bile, I craned my neck for a decent angle and finding none, resolved to wait it out and listen to the gig for a change. A very smart decision, in the end.

There were heartbeats of an old TAAQ magic — some impromptu, loosening-up jams and evidence of visible on-stage chemistry especially from the freshly recuperated Rudolph David. Won’t Stop and Mighty Strange were followed up by a slightly muscular version of Hey Jude. Ordinary Affair was tight and Holy Jose had an extra smack of la-di-da from Jason. My favourites from the evening were Drunk and Grab Me.

More photos on our Flickr page
NovemberFushtu at Rocktoberfest, Delhi – Nov 1

bassist, directions, Grammies, guitars, Line 6 POD 2.0, linking road, pedals, PODxt, valentine's day, world music day | October 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comments Off

We’re back in Delhi this weekend to enjoy a nice nippy evening while Bangalore is soaking up the November rain.

Sunday night, 9ish, at the Garden of the Five Senses on the occasion of Kingfisher Rocktoberfest. Be there and tell everyone who missed us last time to make no excuses this time round.

It’s Kannada Rajyotsava in Karnataka on November 1. All of you partying back home, don’t miss us too much!
Octoberfest – the photographic evidence

bangalore rock, bassist, carlton braganza, guitars, jishnu dasgupta, kingshuk niyogy, polls, rock music, shows, taaq, valentine's day, video launch, world music day | October 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments Off

During soundcheck we didn’t quite bargain for the interference from a few thousand mouths equitably chewing cud and yakking over gargles of beer, or the gurgle of their innards haplessly digesting it, or the sloshing of their bladders as they rushed off to empty them, or the annoying honk of several hundred plastic party horns that someone had carelessly distributed, or the gnashing echoes of heavier-than-thou Malayalica that had been performed before us, or the competing discord reflected from the PA of a neighbouring festival.

Ergo, our sound onstage was so murky that we could hardly hear ourselves think. But how many inebriated men and women (and children — we hope they were the ones driving their parents home) in the audience cared?

It was, in the final analysis, not a bad show after all. We had a lot of fun on stage playing just before Indian Ocean who put together a nice act despite the shock absence of their singer and tabla player Asheem Chakravarty (who is in a coma at a Qatar hospital following a massive heart attack). That did muddy the evening’s mood. Our thoughts are with Indian Ocean and with Asheem’s family, and we hope he recovers quickly and gets back on his feet.

We, too, had our own absence to complain about. We were without Rzhude, who is convalescing after a viral fever. Prakash (Cryptic, Antaragni, Karma 6) filled in quite solidly for him despite the short practice time he had on hand. We also had Jason Zachariah guesting on keyboards.

Enough words. Here are the pictures:

And finally, one of the crowd. It’s always quite characteristic of TAAQ audiences that the people who appear to be enjoying themselves the most aren’t waving or jumping up in the air but watching calmly with a wry smile.

Person in picture (with Hard Rock tee and looking stagewards with hands clasped) may please claim one numbers free autographed CD upon producing ID proof. Please send us your name and address via email along with your Orkut/Facebook/Twitter account profile as photo ID.

More in our Octoberfest Flickr photoset
Thermal And A Pint – Octoberfest, Oct 25, 7 pm

culture police, guitars, moral police, polls, publication, valentine's day, world music day | October 22, 2009 | Permalink | Comments Off

Thermal And A Quarter – live at Octoberfest

Thermal And A Quarter Pint.

Live at the Kingfisher Octoberfest, Bangalore, Oct 25, 7 PM. Don’t worry about the billboard-makers who missed out our name — they were probably partying already.

S’will, s’way!
Gig Alert: Delhi – Sept 3

directions, guitars, indian rock music | September 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comments Off

TAAQ live at Hard Rock Cafe, DLF Place, Saket, New Delhi.

Thursday, September 3.

8 PM onwards.

This is our first visit to the capital in a few months and our first at the new Hard Rock Cafe. Be sure to be there.

Rajeev finds something amusing about the set list