Caricature Carnival

I had originally meant to write a ‘proper’ review of what I witnessed, however, since you are by now, no doubt, familiar with my propensity for the seventh sin, this – an extract from an email I wrote to a friend about it – will have to do.

Here goes.

On Sunday I did what I haven’t done in a very long time – go to a concert featuring saif ali khan playing the guitar with Parikrama. We (my friend and I) thought we were late coz we reached at 4:10 but as it turned out, they let crowds gather and gather and then finally let people in only around 5:30! (side note: the chief sponsors were royal stag and Genpact btw - this fact will play a larger role further into the story) So, we were in this open air farmhouse with NO seating (we couldn't sit on the grass coz it was all wet) and the event begins with an inter-company band competition - and as it turned out, it was an inter-BPO-companies band competition! This is a summary(!) of what ensued:

1. EXL - the instrumentalists in the band were DAMN good! The vocalist however, firstly, was very bungaali (accent!) and secondly, since he was from a BPO (accent-er!) - so what he combined to form was by far the weirdest accent in the whole wide world! Singing wise, his mission seemed to be "hit a note and darned well stay there with all my might!" However, they chose to perform a very crowd-pleasing array of songs which was, of course lapped up and so they managed a pretty decent job - Come Together (Beatles), Creep (Radiohead), With or without you (U2) and We will rock you (Queen)
2. Daksh - The poor band was very morose and gloomy and the crowd was rather mean to them - they WERE pretty off but also, pretty low on confidence so we felt rather sorry for them...poor things! They played some Nirvana and Metallica's Unforgiven (all sad - in every way!)
3. Hutch - These guys called themselves "Pink Patrol" and after singing the first three songs (Knocking on EAVEN'S door (not 'heaven's', mind you!), The wall - II (Floyd and something else) rather sorrily they decided to reveal just WHY they call themselves that by getting their other...ahem...female vocalist come on stage to perform the last number - what's up (4 non blondes) - ummm... Lets just say she was scolding everyoNe and demanding the answer to her angst ridden - WHATS GOING ON?! Like it was all our fault or something that she didn't know the answer..oh, and just in case we didn't get it already - she was dressed in pink.
4. Vicissitude - These guys ROCKED! And I mean - ROCKED! And from the word go at that - especially coz what they played is not my typical type of music and YET I loved them and they were really really good! The lead singer was re-a-lly good! Ok, so I should stop saying that and move on to the songs the played - RATM (don't know the name of the song) followed by Limp Bizkit's Take a look around (MI2) followed up by a medley they created which had everything from more RATM, summer of '69, the wall-II, we will rock you ending with Ma tujhe salaam (Rahman) - it was classy and really good! Unfortunately for them, they ran out of time (what the organizers were doing to any time that exceeded time was switch off the onstage volume so they had to get out :( )
5. GE - This was THE team and THE performance of the day! OmiGAWD! Well, so let me just tell you how the lead singer began (in his highly BPO accent - This was actually default for every other band and well most of the crowd did comprise fellow BPO compatriots - I am slightly biased and also not used to it so it jarred like crazy and so I go on and on about this!) - verbatim opening speech, "we will begin with the prayer of all rockers...can you peoples GUESS? HAAN?? HAAAN?? Come On peoples! ...well its our very own Pink Floyd...say yeah to Pink Floyd coz HE ROCKS!!" I kid you not and then he went on to attempt to sing - at least I think that’s what he was trying to do - the wall-II! After he finished (both his attempt and the song) he moved on to murder nirvana's man who sold the 'whurrld' - even the instruments were like completely off and you have to really suck at a whole new level to get the intro to this song wrong!! Then, suddenly he sits down on stage and makes this semi-dedication-type- announcement to someone saying "This one goes out to a friend I promised something two years ago and now, I am keeping the promise..." he then made some strange sounds with his mouth and out of nowhere burst into "na JAANE kab se" (Aadat by Jal/Atif Aslam) that was when the audience (including me) practically cried and begged him for dear life to get off the stage....man!
6. EFunds - now, after the last performance, I think we, the audience, was ready to embrace practically anyone who would replace the last band, so these guys technically had an unfair advantage! But then, this band eventually turned out to be the only other really good band in the competition anyway. So, the first thing different was a female lead vocalist who was really really good - with the whole stage management and building rapport with the audience thing. They also began in style/show-sha - spoke about december 8th being John Lennon's death anniversary etc and the whole Efunds team released white balloons in the air as a mark of respect or whatever and then she sang two lines from Imagine. And THEN she followed it up with one of my favorite songs and she sang SO well - Green day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I actually don't remember the remaining songs - though they were great too! So, basically, by this time, I had shortlisted these guys and Vicissitude as my favorites.
7. Genpact - very non descript initially, but they played two self composed numbers - the second of which was good enough to get the crowd moving - which is a great feat considering that easy familiarity of known songs does not exist and stuff...but overall, in my mind, they were average and not like, exciting or anything...also, admittedly, at this point I was highly distracted wrt things on stage coz suddenly there were a lot of drunken/leery uncle-jis all around us and I was NOT very happy about this!
8. JWT - the last band and presumably the only non-BPO (I am assuming this was the advertising industry's J Walter Thompson - if so this would be the only non-BPO entry) - they had 4 separate vocalists and each was better than the other - but their stealer-of-the-show (at least for us!) was their guitarist - he OBVIOUSLY thought he was ;like the coolest and mostest-nicotine-deprived person/thing-everrr to hit the planet - he had a lit cigarette in his mouth the whole time he was on stage - Slash style! It was just so amusing to watch and we kept staring at his mouth to see when the HELL the smoke releases and where the hell it (the smoke goes!) - amazingly no smoke went anywhere!

This was the last of the bands and like, the results were on stage in two seconds FLAT from the time these guys cleared the stage which of course led us to wonder what came first - the competition or the results! So:

• Third place - EXL (what?! Ok, cool...they were not AS bad as some of the others)
• Second place - Viccissitude (YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!)
• First place - Genpact (what? WHAT??! This is SO rigged!) - and this is where that little sidenote about the sponsors connects to.

Ok, so next came Parikrama and as was apparent - Nitin Malik has recently discovered that he can sing in falsetto - so he sang the entire length/breadth/height/depth of Rock 'n' Roll (Led Zep) in what can best be described as a cross between Bee Gees and Kishore Kumar in that Half Ticket song. They moved on to Jump (Van Halen) and then two other songs...and then, he comes to the mike to announce Saif Khan's arrival! So, now, by this time, we were really really pooped and in my case, frostbitten for the next 100 janams worth of limbs - so the general thought was he had BETTER be able to play more than just "happy birthday to you" or "twinkle twinkle little star" on the guitar. He came. He played. And like, WO-OW! He really CAN play - played the lead on two AC/DC numbers and then he started to SING! Sang Johnny Be Good (Chuck Berry/Elvis/Green day) and then, Roadhouse Blues! I am seriously impressed and quite shocked - like, he can totally chart an alternate career and all that!

And then my poor legs couldn’t take any more and so, we left.