Posts Tagged ‘nitin joshi’

The Symbiosis Institute of Design (SID) fest Fundamental 2010 came through after much trial and tribulation but thanks to the persevering Kshitiz, the student co-ordinator, we made many exceptions to our rule!

It was an unusually early flight we took to land in Pune which was to our surprise much colder than Bangalore where we left from! And we were promptly welcomed by 2 guys from SID who looked like they really needed sleep and BAD! That was just the beginning!

We were whisked away to our hotel and all was well till lunch when I decided to head to the college to check the status with the stage and the sound set up. Now the sound vendor was a good chap and he had reasonable equipment but sadly, he had gotten it all wrong! The monitors were phasing all over and for the longest time, Nitin Joshi who made the miracle happen, was seen marshalling the troops and rewiring everything to get it to a sound checkable state!

The sound check it self was quite a challenge and after moving everything around including the PA itself we were finally set to do the show.

The crowd was sitting down like they were ready for class early in the morning but it only took the slightest invitation from Raghu to get them all right up front and almost on stage along with us! From there on, there was nothing really that could go wrong. The energy coming back at us that night was something else and it was pushing us to take the songs to a whole new place!

There was an incident in the middle where our violinist Karthick snapped a string while tuning up for a song and we started hearing chants of “Go Karthick” which upon clarification, we realized that they wanted him to go to the girls hostel! It was a landmark moment and we have to congratulate Karthick for getting the tuning right and continuing to play at the right tempo and not speeding up for obvious reasons! What happened post the gig is beyond the purview of our lovely little blog.

But after all the confusion that ensued in the morning, this was one of the best gigs we’ve played in a while. The energy from the lovely people at SID completely overwhelmed us and to say the least, we’d love to get back there very soon!

A huge thank you to all at SID, especially Kshitiz who went completely out of his way to ensure this happened!

Also for doubling up as an excellent photographer apart from his main role as the miracle worker sound engineer, Nitin Joshi who took these lovely photos of us playing at SID!

Nitin Joshi, our sound engineer is one of the most fun people to hang around with. Largely because you will never have a dull moment when you are around him and also because at the end of it you will get a fantastic looking photo portfolio!!

These are some of the lovely things he does with the photos he takes of us in his spare time :P

One of the first talk radio stations in India, Chennai Live 104.8 FM was launched yesterday with ‘The Raghu Dixit Project’ returning to the music scene after our (much needed?) break and it was an eventful show if nothing else!

We finished our sound check and much to our surprise, everyone in the band not just remembered the songs but also was quite tight with all of them! That made things much easier for us and calmed our nerves a bit which resulted in Nithin doing a “photoshoot” for the band :P .. See the results yourself to believe it! All credit for the photography and direction go ONLY to Nitin Joshi and Siva Prakash who seem to be finding an alternate career option opening up for them!

The show itself was quite an adventure with Siva tearing the snare drum skin on his very first hit!! Now none of the others realized this happened and we thought it was just that the mic was off and we were expecting it to come back on any moment and carried on with the song all the time looking back to see Siva’s helpless face and looking with anger at Nitin who could do absolutely nothing about it either!! Siva managed quite well with only rim shots and the toms as we suddenly had to improvise into a very different version of “I still love you!”

There was a quick break when someone was sent to see if he could get a replacement snare and we carried on with the rest of the band adjusting along and Siva displaying the full range of his creativity as we tried to vary songs to not miss the snare drum that much but if you have heard any form of music, you will realize how important the snare is when keeping a beat and not having it was quite a challenge!

The rest of the show passed without any significant incident and we managed to get a few legs shaking in that very formal event and even managed to sell quite a few copies of the album! The snare skin was finally replaced in time for the last 2 songs of the show and from there we ripped the show ;)

Its been a good return and managing to do this after no practice for 2 months is a good sign for us :) .. there is quite a hectic show schedule lined up over the next couple of months, so expect a lot of activity here!

And also .. if any of you was at the show … drop in and tell us what you thought!

And of course .. I have to leave you with the customary photo of Raghu singing his lungs out with his eyes wide shut!

There are those few moments before the band goes on stage to perform that are very tense and filled with nervousness … It happens to the best of us!

What I am talking to you about are the moments slightly before that kicks in! The band is absolutely mental before that, we do a range of things backstage that can only be termed “crazy” at best .. In this category fall quite a few things like the famous ‘RDT’ - the Raghu Dixit Tantrum which deserves a separate blog post about itself ..

So presenting to all of you … The different faces of the band!

Many times, we try to look inconspicuous (knowing that we are the stars and all :P ..) but there are two things that don’t let us do that … our clothes and our size! :P but then sometimes, we try to look like people we just can’t even if we try hard … or can we?

Sometimes the attention from the female fans is just way too much to handle … (yea yea .. its our blog .. we can say all this!) and so its required to go undetected. That is when we try a little bit of camouflage! which doesn’t quite work out sometimes ..

At our last gig, we were slightly early for sound-check or rather, the sound-check was a little later for us … since we were there at the allotted time! and it so happened that it was at the Miss Teen India beauty pageant that we decided it was only fair that we exercised our valuable judgement about the competition. And the mother of all coincidences was that there were 5 chairs laid out by the judges table just waiting for us to take our seats!

And we don’t disappoint when there is such expectation ;) we take such jobs a little too seriously actually!

But finally .. the show goes on perfectly and we have only one person to thank for that .. our dear manager! We do have others to thank, but our managers deserve much more credit than they actually get … so this is for our dear management company, “Only Much Louder” .. you guys are the real rockstars! and no wonder .. when you are led by a true specimen such as … Vijay ‘one in a million’-Nair!!

Also .. a very very ‘Happy Birthday’ to our dear friend Shreyas who helped more than anyone else to get the band’s online presence working and for starting the Raghu Dixit Tribe which all of you should absolutely join!

Shreyas - Always remember .. Age doesn’t matter unless you’re cheese!

PS: All credit for the photographs (except for Shreyas’) goes to Mr. Nitin Joshi the Pentax weilding monster! and my good companion for anything related to photography!