Posts Tagged ‘raghu dixit project’

When I was first called to play for ‘The Raghu Dixit Project’, I knew I was playing where one of the best bassists in the country, Josy John had left a mark! On my best day, I am just about a fraction of what he does reguarly!

When Raghu called me today to let me know that he was in town and recording for Raghu’s upcoming movie, I had to clear out everything else I was up to and just sit and watch him record some of the most brilliant bass playing you will ever hear in a Kannada movie!

Sitting here for the past three hours watching him has taught me more than I have learnt in a long time. His bass playing reminds me of how at the end of the day, its not about technique, or the “right way” to play (he is as un-orthodox a bass player as you will find), its all about your groove and your choice of notes!

For the super star that he is, he is probably the most unassuming, down to earth musician you will ever find. I can guarantee you his humility will completely blow your mind!

Just to show you what I mean, take a look at the video here and when you’ve finally picked up your jaw that must have hit the floor by now, rewind and watch it again! *THAT* is what a bass guitar can do!

[youtube=http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=WMfzTgZQxO4]

This is a video taken from Antaragni’s show at BITS Pilani, a couple of years back.

It was a true splash and dash when we had to land up in the morning on Friday in Mumbai for the Rock On for Humanity gig. It was the same day that ‘Psycho’ was premiering and Raghu was torn between the two :)

The band made it earlier, and Raghu as a compromise managed to catch the first glimpses of the film and more importantly the crowd reaction to the music and the movie before he rushed to Mumbai for what would be a truly magical (or should I say ‘Magik’al) night!

The sound check went on quite well and Dwayne on the mixer did a fabulous job of helping us get things in order in under 30 minutes and Bobby and Nikhil of OML worked overtime to ensure that all glitches like the massive power cut in between our soundcheck were all sorted out and nothing repeated in the evening!

The gig started early and surprisingly for a show that had so many bands playing, was on time for the entire evening! The line up for the entire evening was easily among the best gig lineups I have seen in the country and there was no band that you could really skip .. it was 5 hours of pure entertainment!

We were up on stage after Avial (who I watched for the first time ever live and LOVED!) and we proceeded to completely rock the venue! The audience was just brilliant and seemed to be rooting for us from the word go! The set consisted of Hey Bhagwan, Mysore Se Aayi and Har Saans Mein as we had only 20 minutes or rather 3 songs to play because they needed to shut the show down at 10 PM. But like Siva says, it drains you more when you put 200% in a 3 song set than play a whole show and it was close to what happened :D

It was really nice to see the reaction we got on stage and was even better to meet with all the ‘Big Boys from Bollywood’. What warmed my heart the most was the fact that the organizing team raised *4 CRORES* for the cause and achieving that around a concert in India makes me happier than ever!

So a HUGE round of thanks and appreciation to the entire team that put this together and especially to Farhan Akthar, Arjun Rampal and Ritesh Sidhwani who came up with and drove this idea to such success!

If any of you was at the event and happened to catch us play, please do leave us a comment! let us know what you thought.

There is a LOT that has happened in the past month, we finished a very succesful tour of 4 countries in south east and central Asia. Raghu got back from another fruitful tour of the UK and even individually there has been a LOT happening.

Now all of us are catching up on life and this place did not see many updates, but I will promise you right now that I will tell you all the stories that are to be told about our journeys and everything.

For now, this is a quick update to let you know that things are well and everyone is alive an kicking.

We are scheduled to play at the concert for ‘Bihar Flood Relief‘ organized by the Rock On team where we will share stage with some of the best bands in the country. This is in Mumbai on the 31st of October. More on that very soon. In the meantime, if this is a cause that you would like to help with, please go right ahead to http://biharfloodrelief.blogspot.com/ for details on what you can do.

If you are in Bombay or close by, its time to make the trip and catch the concert! Click on the poster for details …

I know I have been a little late in updating you chaps about the shows in Hong Kong, so let me not waste time with BS and get right to it.

The first show we had was at the live studio of RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong) where our gig was being recorded live to be aired on Radio. It was the tour opener and there were a lot of firsts associated with that gig. Our first proper foreign tour, the first time we played in Hong Kong, the first time our show was being recorded live for radio, it was also Vijay Joseph’s first trip abroad!

We entered post lunch for our sound check and everything was set up for us and we spent most of our time just tweaking settings and inspite of the language barrier, it was not too difficult to get things set up the way we liked and it was time to get rolling at the show.

The show itself was quite stunning because the audience we had was 95% Chinese and we got them to jump and dance and sing and scream and more importantly sing “Har Saans Mein” with us!! Who would’ve thought :P

This was a picture taken after the show with the band and people from RTHK and the Consulate. Read about the concert and listen to it at the following location - http://www.rthk.org.hk/special/musicbeyondborders/india.htm

It started well! The first day in Kowloon was good for us to get used to the place and the temperature :P (Now I am just trying a star tantrum .. Its all fine!) We’ve been taken care of very well and are staying in pretty much the center of Kwonloon on the very fashionable ‘Kimberly street’ which I call the ‘marriage central’ considering the number of marriage shops around!

The hotel we stay in has some very interesting furniture which Raghu took a fancy to and as you an see in this picture, he was going ga-ga over the sofas and the couches!

Also, yesterday was the first time we saw the brand new Raghu Dixt Project T-Shirts and I should tell you they look quite fantastic! so the next you catch us at a gig, a T-Shirt is a must buy! Here is Vijay modelling for the T-Shirts. So tell us what you think!

Of course he is not a model, not yet atleast, but he did take some time to prepart himself in the many mirrors on the wall that don’t really show you anything!

After that, we headed to the venue of the show to take a look at the venue we will be performing at the next day. The lovely Stacey showed us around and it looked like a good place to play a show! And this will be the first ever time that we are recorded as a band to go on National Radio!

We closed the evening with a dinner hosted by the Indian Embassy at the Foreign correspondents club which was quite lovely and EXTREMELY Filling!!

Thats it for now .. more to come soon!

Just a quick update to say that we have reached Hong Kong and that all is well! It was a safe and quick flight and the Official Passports made everything easy after we landed … So three cheers to the Government of India!

We started a trend with the lungis on stage and it was time to re-invent ourselves and so with the help of the lovely Ashwini Shashidhar, we have a brand new wardrobe which we will debut on the tour of South East Asia!

But earlier today, we had a shoot for a local TV channel called ‘Suvarna TV’ for which we decided to wear our new clothes (if you are even thinking about the “emperor’s new clothes” funda … sorry to burst your bubble :P)

So here we are .. in our brand new attire :)

So tell us what you think! basically, that means … tell us how much you love it!

And also … we are off in the next couple of minutes to Hong Kong and to a whole new world and so I thought I’d leave you with a parting shot! Us saying bye with our “Official Diplomatic Paspports” in hand ;)

- Joke of the day - All credit for this goes to Vijay Nair

What do you call Darbuka Siva when he is totally scared?

Darpuka Siva!

So its finally happening :)

The Raghu Dixit Project embarks on its biggest tour yet when we travel to South East Asia for a series of concerts in Hong Kong, Russia, South Korea and Japan!

We don’t have a fixed iternary in each place yet but this is our schedule for now

Hong Kong - 17th September - 21st September

Vladivostok, Russia - 22nd September -26th September

Tokyo, Japan - 26th September - 2nd October

Seoul, South Korea - 2nd October - 5th October

So if you have any friends in these places, please do let them know we are coming and we would love to have  them at our shows!

While you are at it, some things to check out

- Details about our show in Hong Kong here

- South China Morning Post writes about us here

More to come very soon!

The Raghu Dixit Project plays tomorrow at JIPMER, Pondicherry for their annual cul-fest ‘Spandan-08′. Considering how our last show in Delhi went off, I am expecting this show to be a complete rocker!! so if you are in the vicinity and that means Chennai also :P, its a nice drive and will be some great music!

So come over and join the party with us :)

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!