Photographs: Gurudarshan Somayaji
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NovemberFushtu at Rocktoberfest, Delhi – Nov 1
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!
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Octoberfest – the photographic evidence
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
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Thermal And A Pint – Octoberfest, Oct 25, 7 pm
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!
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Gig Alert – Hard Rock Cafe, July 23
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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Popping the Pune cherry – Hard Rock Cafe, April 8, 09
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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Midweek in Mumbai, the harder they rock!
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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Shut Up Roundup – the big thank you
- Shut Up and Vote tour – Thank you!
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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Floyd night at Take 5 – Sunday, March 15
On Sunday night, we set the controls for the heart of the sun by playing tribute to Pink Floyd.
An interesting aside: If you thumb carefully through Nick Mason’s memoir Inside Out – A Personal History of Pink Floyd (Phoenix, 2004), you will learn that Floyd’s first single was called ‘This Is It‘.
Really!
Of course, we had no idea when we cut our album. But the fact that it was launched in March of 1967 makes for an eerie and happy coincidence. A coincidence that will make itself felt this ides of March.
Organised by Globosport and sponsored by Seagrams, this series of eight tribute concerts to great artists by different bands have been unfolding in Bangalore at Take 5. We take on Floyd on Sunday night, March 15.
Take 5, Indiranagar (above Cafe Coffee Day, 100 ft Road ).
8 PM onwards.
Entry free.
ERROR REGRETTED: The latest issue of our newsletter ThermalAndAQuarterly wrongly mentioned this was a Rolling Stone Tribute gig. In fact, the show is sponsored by Seagrams and organised by Globosport. We’re really sorry about the mixup and for the hard feelings we may have caused. Hope nobody was hurt.
As for us, we need to catch up on sleep.
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TAAQ off to Jakarta for Java Jazz ’09
It’s all happening, folks.
Yes, we’ve been invited to play at the Java Jazz Festival ’09, Jakarta’s prestigious international Jazz festival. Also on the bill, as you’ll see when you click on that link, are folks like Dave Weckl, Simon Phillips, Jason Mraz, Harvey Mason, Mike Stern, Prasanna, Brian McKnight, Dianne Reeves, and oh, did we mention, Thermal And A Quarter!
We will play pre-festival gigs on March 4 and 5 at the Sultan Hotel, Jakarta. Here, we will be joined by special guest Prasanna. Our festival appearance is on March 6, where renowned jazz guitar virtuoso Vinny Valentino will appear as a special guest on TAAQ material.
Enough name dropping… but we’re quite delirious about it all you see! Us apart, there is, of course, significant representation in terms of fusion and crossover styles – there’s Moon Arra (with Jagadeesh, Prakash Sontakke, Karthik Mani and others from good ole Bangalore). Prakash Sontakke, heard so wonderfully on Plan B’s ‘Dead Inside’ on Hindustani vocal and slide guitar, will join us on stage for a few tracks.
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