The Shor Bazaar Blog
Showing posts with label kk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kk. Show all posts

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Sunday Mid-Day article on Hindi bands being denied opportunities at live venues across Mumbai

This is the Sunday Mid-Day article by Lalita Suhasini about Hindi bands being ignored by live music venues in Mumbai. I, KK, am being quoted.

I sincerely hope that the venues take my critique in a positive manner and help young Hindi bands to showcase their talent.

Swarathma, Raghu Dixit, Ankur Tewari and the Ghalat Family, Faridkot, Prayag, Anhad, Talaash, Coshish, Kamaal Ke Phool, and many more - let's all join hands to fight for our rights!

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Dr. D. Y. Patil Dental College: Fahrenheit ’10 – Jan 23rd, 2010 – our experience

During our trip to the venue, through heavy traffic on a warm Saturday afternoon, our drummer Sidd Coutto (ex-Zero/HFC, ToT) was reminiscing about the fact that he had won his first competition at DY Patil College a few years back. Apparently, once he had had to play drums without drumsticks (yes, with bare hands). He went on to mention various anecdotes from the numerous times he had performed there. It was encouraging for the rest of us because it was the first time that all of us apart from Sidd were about to perform at DY Patil, and more generally in Navi Mumbai.

We were taken care of very well by our hosts (special thanks to Shruti Shanbhag and the team) after our arrival. The entire process of soundchecking was marred by some technical snags related primarily to the monitoring situation. But the sound consultant Carl Alfonso (Elektra events) and our friend Geo (sound engineer) did their best to provide use with decent stage sound.

We started out with “Jaisalmer Express” as an experiment; usually, it what we end the show with. Despite a low turn out, the crowd seemed to enjoy the first half of the show – especially, the appreciation that we got for “Chandramukhi” and “Savita Bhabhi” was remarkable! The second half was rather lukewarm as the audience seemed to looking forward to the “Battle of the DJs” event which was scheduled immediately afterward.

It’s ironic that a few uncivilized (drunk) members in the audience assaulted one of the DJs and halted the “battle” almost before it started. Police and security had to intervene to restore sanity to the proceedings, which unfortunately ended on a rather dull note.

However, we enjoyed ourselves on stage – for the first time in humane temperatures – with our new line-up that includes Sidd (drums) and Rohan (Utpat) on percussions/tabla. We would like to thank the entire team of Fahrenheit ’10 for their excellent co-operation and care. We also would like to thank Aditya Jha and Kaniskha (our manager) for the necessary communications which made this gig happen! Also, thanks to Carl and Geo for the sound!

All in all, a wonderful experience. We look forward to performing there again. Here are some band photos that we took before and after the gig!


Our set-list for the night

  1. Jaisalmer Express
  2. Mumbhai (Bombay Boys cover)
  3. Nahin Accha
  4. Yeh Hasin Vaadiyan (Roja/AR Rahman cover)
  5. Chandramukhi
  6. Savita Bhabhi
  7. Pehla Nasha – Pal (QSQT cover/KK cover)
  8. Rasili
  9. Yaar Bina (Junoon Cover)
  10. School
  11. Madhushaala
  12. Sayonee (Junoon cover)
  13. Apsara

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Launch Gig...that almost never was...

Well...well...well...it almost was the perfect anti-climax. The cops came in when K*N*A*P were midway through their set....and it was announced that the party was over... We were terribly disappointed, and started giving away our cd's...played the song over the PA...and were ready to scoot out...when...when....Sameer appeared out of nowhere....looked at us and said - "Fuck it - lets do this.." 

7 minutes of chaos followed....3 minutes of which weere spent looking for Robin who had left to see off his friends. The rest of the 4 were the maniacal rendition of our debut number...as usual we could not hear ourselves on stage...Aggie was super on drums....and JD...well....he even screamed at the Sound Guy in the middle of the song... :)

It was a fun gig! 

A million thanks to Sameer for making this happen!!

And an extra special thank you to all those who came to support us....

See ya'll next time!!

- Joy

Monday, July 27, 2009

"Don't Ban the Bhabhi" - Indian Express, Mumbai 27th July, 2009


Our friend Georgina Maddox at Indian Express did a wonderful job with this article. We heartily thank her and Indian Express for covering us!

"Savita Bhabhi finds a voice" - DNA Mumbai, 26th July, 2009

DNA Mumbai ran a story on us on the 26th of July, 2009. We would like to thank DNA for the publicity and, especially, Suparna Thombare for her excellently written article... and Tanveer Khan for the exuberant photograph.

KK (Ze Doc)

(Article courtesy DNAindia.com)

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The first single

Shor Bazaar is recording our first single at Empire Studios. We are collaborating with Chinmay Harshe (engineer) and Jonathon Fernandes (Reverse Polarity, Dream Out Loud) who's on the drums. The song's a bit of a secret and you will have to wait until its ready to know more about it. I can guarantee you one thing, it sounds sinister! Here are a few snaps from the recording session.


The tracking is almost over. Just a few more days to hear it (and download it)!

Cheers,

Krishna (KK)

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Monday, March 2, 2009

The Aarohi '09 Experience

We almost didn’t make it! It was a hastily put together, ill-planned itinerary which meant that three of us had work-related issues to take into consideration. Such journeys necessitate the acquired skills of clowning around to be utilized and the few VNITites we encountered on the train must have been left wondering how such a goofy group of people can perform cohesively as a band. The 13-hour-long journey without reservations in an Indian train’s second class compartment on an intensely hot day didn’t manage to wear four of us down - our guitar gizmo man Joy was flying in.

From the moment that we landed in the Nagpur railway station (along with the guys from Indigo Children who arrived at the same time coincidentally) we were treated with utmost care by the hard-working team at Aarohi ’09. JD’s asthmatic tendencies pre-empted an intense dusting session at the unused hostel rooms which would eventually become our abode for a couple of days - the bunker beds really were reminiscent of boys hostels from our past and the baths without showers reminded me of my own scary days from medical college hostels of the past.

As we walked across the ground through a dust storm which had formed right in front of our eyes to the ‘green room’ behind the stage, we were rather disheartened by the lackadaisical sound people who were running three hours behind schedule. Indigo Children took a couple of hours for their sound check which was marked by incessant delays due to technical snags and more. We tried to do our sound check as fast as we could as the crowd was already assembling and were getting impatient. We had used ‘Rasili’ and ‘School’ as our songs for teasing the crowd and it sure seemed to have worked.

Apparently, there was this viral SMS being sent across the campus about this hindi band playing hair-raising stuff. That surely helped us as a considerable crowd of about 500 had assembled by the time we got on stage after the band competition. Joy and Sumit who did not even have time to freshen up after being the judges of ‘Purple Haze’ (along with Jayen Verma, the fastest percussive bassist in the world) must have been recharged due to the energy rippling off the crowd before them. What followed will best be described in pictures and video.

In the half hour that we were allowed to perform we did six songs – ‘Rasili’, ‘Mumbhai’, ‘Apsara’, ‘Chuppi’, ‘School’ and ‘Jaisalmer’ - and we had a blast on stage. It was one of the only gigs where JD’s famously risqué lines got across to the crowd through the mayhem of cymbals, slap-pop and guitar drones and we saw guffawing teenagers in scores amongst the audience. A gig with Shor Bazaar can’t go on without JD injuring himself in one way or the other and this time he sprained his ankle while jumping off the stage, thereby disrupting the guitar circuitry of Robin, left lost amidst his fitful stage-act.

After the performance, as the punk-rock anthems of Indigo Children were being dished out live, we were overwhelmed with requests for photographs and some autographs too. We heard chants of ‘Shor Bazaar’ peppered with high-pitched shrieks when we headed out to watch the Children go amok. We were totally drained and yet we couldn’t help but bask in the adulation poured on us, at least partly due to my own version of couture. This is the first time that we were tagged with a few genres like hindi-metal and hindi-thrash!

It was a wonderful experience and we thank all you guys who helped us pull this off! We thank the talented bands who participated in the contest and Indigo Children for sharing the stage with us. We also would not like to overlook the sponsors ibibo.com and Xion Media Labs for sponsoring this event. It’s no secret that we would like to take centre stage, hopefully not just once more, when we could unleash our entire arsenal at you. We’re waiting for the call!

We would very much appreciate hearing from you about what you liked and what you didn’t about the band and the performance and about our mannerisms on stage and our wardrobe. I already have had many a requests to upload the lyrics of our songs. We are certainly going to be working on that. You could also send in the photos that you guys managed to take to our e-mail or post them on the many platforms for Shor Bazaar fans on the Internet – MySpace, FaceBook Group, FaceBook Arist Page, Orkut Community etc.