Archive for December, 2009

For the first time ever, in over 12 years, we cancelled a gig, in fact, we cancelled 2 gigs back to back because we just din’t have the confidence to go up on stage considering the state Raghu’s voice was in.

Earlier in the week, Raghu had a slight cold and sore throat which just got worse over time and yesterday, when we landed in Mumbai, it had become a viral infection of the throat. Raghu’s voice was completely gone and he could barely speak, but on what was an overdose of Betadine Gargles and Benadryl syrup and tons of antibiotics, we still went ahead with sound check!

But there was this nagging feeling in the back of our minds that it was not a good thing to push it and when he still couldn’t talk even, it was time to take him to the doc for a professional opinion.

Now the good news is that it isn’t the singer’s nodules that we feared it had turned into, but the bad news was that Raghu had severely swollen vocal chords and voice box and it was a viral infection and the ONLY thing that would make it better and not just supress it for a couple of hours was complete voice silence for a couple of days atleast.

Considering that, we decided to opt out of the MTV Roadies launch gig yesterday and the Virasat Festival we were to play at today. This is the first time ever that we are pulling out of a gig and it is not a good feeling! we left a LOT of people disappointed today, but it was the best thing to do considering the situation.

A HUGE round of thanks, really heartfelt thanks to Jagjit and Aashish at MTV, we promise to make it up to you guys! Sorry for letting this one go by, we really hope you managed to work things around!

A BIG round of applause and a million thank you’s to Vijayshree and the folks at the Virasat Festival for understanding and being the sweetest organizers a band could ever hope to work with! You guys saved our lives and we are forever indebted.

Thanks a bunch to Faridkot, who just finished a gig, took the decision and went out to Dehradun to play at the Virasat Festival, you guys saved our behinds and we do hope you have a great gig!

Thanks to Fali and Dhruv for putting up with the incessant calls and being such great people and working things out for us!

Thanks to Nikhil and Swarathma for being there and ready to go out and help at the shortest notice ever!

We owe all of you big time! And your unconditional support and love overwhelms us!

The good news is that it isn’t as bad as it could be, the bad news is that it isn’t as good as it should be! but a LOT of rest and quiet for Raghu is exactly what is happening right now and if things work out, we should be good to go soon!

Keep your fingers crossed and send him some love :)

We’ve played to a variety of audiences over the course of this year but we have to say, this was one of the most unique shows we’ve had to play at. Headlining the coolest Open Source Conference in India was something we found hard to say no to! especially considering it was our friends conducting it and our bass guitarist / manager who was also part of the organizing committee!

Mrinal Kalakrishnan’s robot exploits set up the stage perfectly for us to come in and tear the place apart! at a Geek conference, some uber cool geekery like he displayed rouses people’s spirits and gets them all excited like nothing else can!

We took stage and were completely loving the sound that Vijay from Shantala sound had set up for us and the band was sounding like a million bucks! We let ‘Hey Bhagwan’ pass with the audience getting used to the sound and the band on stage but after that, it was time for us to get everyone and I mean EVERYONE involved in the party!

We quickly pulled off a rocking version of “Mysore se Aayi” and by now the entire audience was set for the party! there were people jumping and dancing in the aisles, a train of people going round the hall and it was only getting crazier!

The mandatory “Khidki” joke went down excellently at the Open Source conference and the song itself was quite well taken. We played some more of the regular set that included “Neene Beku”, the token ‘Psycho’ number!

The best song of the day for me atleast was the brand new ‘Kodagana Koli Nungittha?’, it has shaped up to be quite a roller coaster of a song, and it is such fun to play on stage.

I have to make a mention of the live twitter feed behind us on stage which had some really nice words being said about the show, some kind of a live feedback system! It was just difficult to fathom how they managed to send out those tweets while going crazy at the show ;) but I guess, that’s the point of it all!

In all, a brilliant show and like Raghu said, it was an awesome gig that will be very memorable for us!

Also - Thanks to all @ Foss.in who got us to play there and to Swati Sani for these killer photos!