Sunday Jam yesterday was one of the more awful ones in living memory. The posters hinted at it: “The Return of the Heavies” it said, and the bill of fare listed one execrable Heavy Metal act after the other. Rather sad, since last month’s S-Jam was not bad at all, even going as far as featuring an acappella group from St Johns College. The impression one gets at S-Jam sometimes is that all these kids in Bangalore are obsessed with Death Metal, Nu Metal, Metal Core and all the incomprehensible (and indistinguishable) sub genre of Heavy Metal. Haven’t these chaps heard of Jazz, Blues, Fusion, Folk, Flamenco, Reggae…or even Indi-Pop for God’s sake…you could justifiably ask yourself. Actually, this impression is false. Just a year ago, there was this Acoustic Festival organized by Levi’s and it was a revelation to see the breadth of talent available in this ol’ town. It is really sad that they never turn up at S-Jam, which is probably the best platform in the city, if not India, for showcasing young talent.
What is probably worse, this time the venue was the romantic rock garden of Chitra-Kala Paristhan – which as Gopal said, is the nicest open-air stage in the city. It was fun to see the little old ladies who had come for the art & ethnic wear exhibition in CKP, wander into the garden and look on incredulously at the screaming and growling going on on-stage. I used to suspect that all these new groups start out with HM simply because all that distortion hides their lack of confidence in their own playing- and singing- skills. Now that I am starting to get the hang of the guitar myself -I can do some fairly decent Lightnin’ Hopkins and Buddy Guy blues licks, and my current ambition in life is to play CCR’s ‘before you accuse me’ from end to end without pausing to scratch my head between the shuffle and the turnaround - I know this for a fact. Once in a while, I turn up the distortion on my Marshall Amps, and even
I start sounding pretty cool.
Anyway, after two hours of torture, I decided I had had enough and was about to go home, when who should walk in but Shalini, toting her huge Bass. Yup, the same Shalini whom I had devoted a long blog to a few months ago. I looked at the prospectus…Legato Lilac was not on the list. But there she was, and maybe she’d play. So I decided to hang around. I didn’t have long to wait: she took the stage a few sets later with an apparently new band (at least, the singer seemed to be new and possibly the drummer). And Gopal didn’t introduce them as Legato Lilac. He said something I couldn’t catch.
They did some nice hard rock covers (what is nowadays called classic rock….hey guys, give us a break-when we were kids, we had our own sub-genre. Now everything without distortion is lumped under classic rock). Not as spectacular as the last time I had seen them, but nice and tight, and a big relief after all the ghastly noise that preceded it. Then they did an instrumental own-comp that was really good. Shalini came into her own and played a hard, intricate groove on the bass. And her smile lit up the amphitheater again.
I was sitting right at the edge of the stage, and admired her smooth, supple fingerwork. I’m learning a lot of blues bass riffs nowadays…wish I could play like that.
That was it. Gopal rushed them off the stage. Another HM act walked on.
I decided to take courage into my hand and walked over to Shalini who was packing up, and said:
“Err…Um…I didn’t catch the name of your band…”
“We’re called Today’s Special” she said. Oh God…she had a lovely voice, and up close, she looked even cuter than on stage.
“I thought you called yourself Legato Lilac?”
“That was just for that session, last time” she said.
“Oh…” I said lamely
“Did you like our set?” she asked anxiously.
“Hmm” I mumbled dumbly and nodded. Then I managed to blurt out “actually it was great…” and shambled off.
Damn! Once back at my seat, I realized there were dozens of other things I could have asked her … what do you call that own-comp? Why did you change the band name? Legato–Lilac was such a clever name, and it had personality...Did you read my blog about you….Damn! Now it was too late. If I went back now I would look like an ass.
Anyway, what’s the use… At last months S-Jam I’d heard she’s just gotten married or engaged or something…. Damn!
So I went home, instead.
And it really is sad they’ve changed the band name. Legato is a classical music term that means the opposite of staccato, and heavy metal guitarists have borrowed the term to mean rapid hammer-ons and hammer-offs with slurring to create that characteristic screaming, scalded cat sound of heavy metal. Juxtaposition that with Lilac…as I said, clever.
Btw… if a kind reader has Sahlini’s mail-id…could you please send her the URL of this blog and tell her I’m her biggest fan…
