Back in the day when we had a heavier prog-rock sound dominated by Bruce Eddie Shredder on lead guitar, Rajeev with the Alice in Chains cap on drums and the elemental Mr Sunil Chandienne on bass, we used to play this absolute crowd-immobilizer called Late O’Clock. We started performing it around 1997-8 and essayed it live as late as 2005.

If you haven’t ever heard of it, take a listen to this unreleased studio session from the taarchives.

The legend (for those who like to keep a tidy catalogue):

Late O’Clock (Instrumental)
Recorded 1997-98 @ Ebi Studios, Banaswadi, Bangalore
Personnel: Bruce Lee Mani: Guitar | Sunil Chandy: Bass | Rajeev Rajagopal: Drums | Bryan Richard: Rhythm Guitar

Yes, yes, we’re feeling generous. So, head to our ReverbNation page and download it. Just one thing — please don’t heckle us for lyrics.

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For over three years, Guitar Doctor Bruce Lee Mani has been prescribing fixes for your guitar ills. But what if music is an illness you don’t want to recover from?

Ask Rajeev Rajagopal, TAAQ’s drummer, who has been ailing for 15 years and loves every malingering minute of it.

“The illness,” says Rajeev, describing his symptoms with the enthusiasm of a certified hypochondriac, “is about trying to get each limb to have a mind of its own. With its onset, you start to have immense fun sitting behind a drum kit. It takes a lot of patience to perfect your symptoms, though, so you need to be patient!”

Chortling at his own bad puns is probably another symptom, but he continues undeterred: “Someday, if you get to be like Rodney Holmes or Simon Philips, you’ll know what it feels like,” he says looking wounded because you think he’s faking it. “With every clinic I attend or conduct, the illness manifests in beautifully creative ways.”

So what should aspiring drummers do in order to be terminally ill?

“Teaching how to play a musical instrument doesn’t end with learning how to play it,” says Rajeev, as if he is addressing a convention of gonecases at Drummaholics Anonymous. “How you play with other musicians is what really matters and this is what makes a good band. And this is especially true for drummers, because just being a great drummer alone won’t make your band sound good. Drums, unlike guitars, are not made for solo performances. It’s important to know how to play with a guitar player and a bass player.”

Can you show me where it hurts?

“Keeping time together is different from keeping time by yourself,” continues the Drum Patient. “Speaking the musical language through eye contact and finding your way through the arrangement of a song, and transitioning between parts in a way that brings out the dynamics of what is being communicated musically – these are the elements of playing in a band that musicians must really learn.”

There is no pain, you are receding…

“I have played with guitar players like Bruce, Prasanna and Vinny Valentino,” says Rajeev, relishing the pain of personal experience. “A drummer’s target audience is not other drummers – you’re playing for the song and for the band. If you can instill the confidence in guitar players, bass players and singers that you can bring value to their music, you’re starting to get there.”

Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying…

“Through this philosophy, I have been able to live up to being the drummer of Thermal And A Quarter for 14 years,” says Rajeev, coughing softly with the smug confidence that all hope of recovery is quite irrevocably lost. “The illness has also given me the confidence to play in the presence of other musicians such as Mike Pope and David Gilmore and ability to soak it up at amazing workshops with Rodney Holmes and Simon Philips.”

And you have become comfortably drummed.

Thinking of rehab? Wait, try the prehab first.

Guitar Doctor and Drum Patient recently conducted their first combined clinic. At the workshop, held at TAAQ’s Queen’s Studio, five aspiring guitar doctors and five aspiring drum patients got together to rewrite musico-medical history.

The pictures, taken by Ashutosh, are evidence of the futility of therapy.

For a free consultation, leave a comment here and the Drum Patient will gladly let you know how you can catch the bug.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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).

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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

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Five cities. One band. One message: Shut Up and Vote.

Through Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, we spread the word. We played the music. We sang the songs. Shut Up and Vote, Humpty Dumpty, Chameleon, Look at Me, Jupiter Café, Simply Be… wry anthems and strident protest songs from thirteen years of TAAQ.

Thank you for being there. For singing along. For cheering us on. We hope you will make a difference by rocking. The vote, that is.

Big thank-yous to the team that that put together this amazing tour – Vinay, Milan, Umesh, Niranjan, Arif, Prashanth, Rishi, Sharat, Vijay, Suman, Vandana, Abhinand, Velu, Rani and all the Janaagraha/ Jaago Re volunteers in Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai & Bangalore.

Thank you also Anushya Badrinath, Gaurav Vaz, Shrenik Sadalgi, Srinath Shankaran, Gurudarshan Somayaji, Vinay Kewalramani and Rani Jeyaraj for your amazing photo-finishes of the tour.

You are the *real* rock stars!

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