Rock but no Roll

My first performance with a guitar in my hand. Incidentally an electric guitar. This year, I decided that after my self-imposed exile from the College's annual 'Inaugural Day' performances, I would finally have a blast by playing and screaming on stage.

First task - get a band together. So we managed to put together 4 of us...2 who can play a guitar, one, a violin and a drummer. Drummer AM couldn't make it on a weekday due to work obligations and furious bosses who weren't very happy that he was going on study leave. Other guitarist SM and violinist AR were up for it, but we only managed to get together on Monday...show on Wed.

My first recco for a song was 'The Boxer' - S &G, primarily keeping the violin in mind. That was vetoed as everyone said that we'd be lucky if there was anyone in the audience who'd have heard the song. 2nd recco was 'She Will be Loved' - Maroon 5. Vetoed by me, saying that my self-respect was at stake (singing pop song on stage would be of far greater embarassment than having my finger stuck in my nose in the middle of a job interview...not to mention far more damaging as well!!)

And so we went the classics way... Song 1 - Californication (RHCP). Song 2 - Higher(Creed).

The tough part wasn't so much the singing or the playing, but really the combining of 2 guitars and coming up with stuff for the violin to play. Rest assured that these songs were not written with a violin in mind! Anyway things went off really well in practice...the voice was finally feeling a little free after a long long time...it is now finally nearing where I wanted it to be when I picked up the guitar.

First up was Higher - we were the first act after 2.5 hours of Kajrare and Dhol Bhaje
types of dhinchaak songs. Everyone was screaming 'Rock Show' by then. (not for us naturally - there was this hostel band scheduled to play)

First time round with Higher and I totally screwed up - wrong pitch and all that...disaster. Stopped after a line and a half and restarted.

Things were great from thereon except that the sound guy was really irritating. SM's guitar was obv softer (being an accoustic with a pickup) and he refused to raise it..so it was almost not heard. My vocal mic was so soft that I ended up literally screaming both songs out - pretty tiring. But all's well that....

In any case, what this 'performance' has done is convince me to pick up a good electric. Maybe I shall convince mama to forfeit the bike upgrade and do the guitar upgrade instead. Scoping will begin this week or early next week for specs and basic features to look out for, hopefully with bigger A's help - he seems to know a couple of things about guitars.

The whole thing has been recorded on the handy cam - will put on CD soon...anna is welcome to subject his ears to torture as and when.

I wanted to blog a couple of pics - but for some reason its not happening.. next time then.

21 birthdays and going strong

Another birthday, another cake, another year added to the tally. Nothing special.

I've never quite grasped the concept of celebrating one's birthday. As anna put it, one day I'm 'n' years old and the next it's 'n+1'. Even some of my birthdays which I've enjoyed the most (18th and 20th for example), I've always found myself rationalising at the end of the day.

Is it just another day? Or is it a day where everyone decides to try and make one person feel special. (in return for goodies, one might add!) I don't really know, and if I were to pick an ideal b'day, it would have to be just chlling out at home with family and some friends I can be myself around.

It's been an interesting few days. On Saturday night, I did something I've never done before. After a small evening get together (an advance bash, using the weeekend), A & A stayed back at home. Amma had much coaxing to do to obtain requisite permissions from the respective mothers.

What started as a plan to watch the Agassi-Ginepri and Federer-Hewitt matches quickly turned into something different. A mega-binge on NFS-Porsche Unleashed was followed by a perusal of the photos from the summer, while we tried to stay awake. Then at around 1, we began watching the Federer match. After watching the 2nd set go to Federer, we went for a long walk initially in the dry and then some pretty hard stuff.

Amongst things we saw - a Merc CLS, a guy voluntarily retching, a lot of rain and the Grant Road station clock showing '03:05'. We got to bed at around 5 - 5:30.

That's a pretty cool b'day bash...even without anna.

Of course, at around 5:15 or so, I heard myself rationalising in my sleep... :)