To avid readers of this blog and to those of you who know me well, I probably come across as a guy who doesn’t particularly enjoy Indian pop. Well you wouldn’t be too far from the truth, but on an innocent question from a very good friend I dwelled into the world of Indian pop music and lo and behold I actually ended up missing it.

Now before you go ahead and read assuming there is a catch of some sort, there isn’t, I truly miss it. You see Indian pop is, sadly dead. Think about it, when is the last time you saw a song on TV or heard it on radio that wasn’t associated with a movie of some sort. Gone are the days when we saw Shaan, Lucky Ali and the likes belting out rather wonderful songs with actual music videos associated with them. Gone are bands like Strings, Silk Route etc who gave us some lovely music.

That to me feels wrong, I’m of the opinion that the process of creating music should be, for all rights and purposes, free. And that can never TRULY be the case with a song from a movie. You see movie songs are requests, a request for something that can fit into the perspective of the movie, a request that needs to conform to what the director or the producer wants. Something that gets the public interested and that’s it. This is completely different from an artist sitting around with a guitar or a piano humming something and thinking to himself that he might have something on his hands. The artist in that case is free to say what he or she wants to say through that song. These days “music” channels such as MTV and Channel V only play reality shows or some other load of crap most of the time, and half or less, “a teaser”, of a song from a movie the other times.

This in a country with some great Indian pop/rock talent out there, what do those do? They play college competitions, clubs, pubs and the lucky ones get recognised and tour in parts of the world like Swarathma and the Raghu Dixit Project, the rest either move into some music related work or just fade away into obscurity. There is no other way to put it but that is WRONG, and for that I feel bad.

We need a music channel that plays music, and not just the crap the bollywood brigade doles out. We need our bands to be recognised and played all over, signed and touring by recording labels that are not just happy having them playing some clubs but put some money behind them and have them sell concerts and albums. What the hell makes Swarathma and the likes any less good than that doctored bubble factory stuff the US roles out in droves? Heck I feel bad even making that comparison (watch Pyasi and you’ll understand what I mean).

So it was that on one innocent question that i reminisced and this post came to be. What will come from it? Probably nothing but what needs to be said, needs to be said. For now I take solace in the fact that the music existed in the first place. And thank God or Google (hmm same thing?) for Youtube.

 

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Someone once said the best things in life are free, but lets face it, the guy who said that was either high or just plain didn’t have the money. In todays world you rarely get to find rare gems for free. Which is why I consider myself quite lucky to have stumbled upon one of the most interesting new bands I’ve heard, or seen in Bangalore, at a free concert.

First and foremost I need to give credit where its due, Alliance Francaise organised a series of concerts over five days for free, for their Fete de la Musique, that I had the pleasure of attending. Among the names where the usual headline acts of Thermal and Quarter and Galeej Gurus etc and a whole load of other bands, many of which I’d never heard about. Among the new bands (well new in my book anyway) were The Bicycle Days, a band claiming to be rock group thats, psychedelic, alternative, electronica, “psychobabble” among other things, now if that’s not a confused bunch I don’t know what is.

But then again the lack of a label gives them the freedom to be, well, anything they want to be, and oh boy do they do that well. The band consists of Shreyas on the drums, Rahul on guitar, Paul on Bass, Karthik Basker on vocals and rhythm guitars and Nikhil on Samples. To the uninitiated to simply put it Nikhil is the guy who does the bulk of the effects for the band, everything from whooping echoes to the haunting vocals are all handled by his trusty mixer and Mac. But a good effect is impossible without good raw product going into it, and I’m glad to say the raw product in itself is worthy of standing on its own.

Shreyas was great on the drums, and with all the madness going on around him, without a good beat to keep everything in the same dimension their songs could’ve easily fallen apart. Rahul on guitar is on some level Tool influenced, those riffs were all too reminiscent of the great Adam Jones. Paul on bass was one of the stand outs of the night for me, his precise, elaborate bass lines had the whole crowd in a daze. Then we come to the front man, Karthik Basker, Karthik was a junior of mine from college, he was a friend of a friend, always seemed a little lost in his own world. To be honest when the show started off I had my doubts about him as a front man for a band. But between his flashy “look-at-me” t-shirt, calling the crowd perverts and downright collapsing on stage he makes a great front man; wacky, unpredictable and at the end of the day downright good. His haunting vocals fit perfectly with the mood of the songs and combined with the dark echoes and effects from Nikhil, created long lasting impressions.

The lighting, which now seems like a forgotten art, was also very well done, they were dark and moody keeping in tone with the kind of music that was being played. But unfortunately the acoustics of the auditorium had some room for improvement, to say the least. And in a band where effects and the likes are so focused on, you need a place with good acoustics. The show at Alliance was good, but to me it merely acted as a taster, like a trailer for good movie. It just made me want to go back and hear what those songs actually sound like in the studio.

To any one whose a fan of music that’s a bit out of left field, like that of Porcupine tree etc, I say try The Bicycle Days. Circles is a personal favorite of mine, and TBD if you ever do end up reading this, I NEED that song in my iPod tell me how I can make it happen.

It is truly refreshing to see a band that’s not just playing just classic rock or metal, these ears were aching to here something different. And The Bicycle Days have more than fulfilled that thirst and given me the hope that there might be more like them out there. I hope they continue to make great music, cause this is a band with immense potential and I’d hate to see that go to waste. Keep up the good work guys.

You can find The Bicycle Days on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/thebicycledays
And you can find their music at http://soundcloud.com/the-bicycle-days

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