Ergo August 4

Monday,August4,2008

ABYTE OF LIFE

RANVIR’S RUN

Channel [V] to Ugly aurPugly

FREE CIRCULATION

Vol. 2No. 151

Return of the Kingmaker

Dalmiya returns to cricket adminis-tration with a bang!

0810

Last band standing

Parikrama and Strings performed at WesleyGrounds, Royapettah, on Saturday. While aprolonged sound-check session marredParikrama’s act, Strings more thancompensated.

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PAGES 2 & 3

ERGO

Monday, August 4, 2008

NAMMA CHENNAI

02

Father’s cloutsaves son

The son of a senior IPSofﬁcer, now attached tothe Railways, wascaught red-handed forshoplifting from a videorental store inNungambakkam. Theyoungster attempted to slipaway with a few CDs but the storestaff nabbed him and handed him overto the cops. His father’s clout and asympathetic policeman saved the sonfrom further trouble.

Lucrative compromises

Most of the cases that come to theLand Grabbing Cell of the city policehead to ‘lucrative compromises.’ Thereason – a ‘ﬂexible’ senior lady cop.Some cases are talked and sortedaround the table with the cop’s lawyer-husband acting as the mediator. Thehusband is also known to be solicitingland dispute case clients from his sideand bringing it to the ‘attention’ of hiswife in khaki.

SIM cards in prison

The price to hold a SIM card inside thePuzhal prison for convicts is known tobe nearly Rs. 75,000. The recent bustingof SIM cards inside the prison held by aterrorist made headlines. Reliable khakisreveal that SIMs are handed to someconvicts by money-minded cops whokeep the handset and hand it over tothe detainees whenever they need tomake a call.

P

arikrama, one of the mostpopular rock bands in In-dia, who boasts of having played 1000 concerts in In-dia and abroad, performed along with Pakistani band Strings, onSaturday at Wesley Grounds inRoyapettah. They performed aspart of IIPM’s annual culturalfest, A-maze ‘08.The band performedseveral of their crowd-favourites along with a number of covers, including Highway to Hell(AC/DC), TheTrooper, Fear of the Dark (IronMaiden) and a badly done version of Yellow (Coldplay). Parikrama’s grace isthat, like many other successfulIndian rock bands, they haveused ethnic sounds with the helpof the violin and the tabla.The band members of Parikra-ma are Nitin Malik (vocals), So-nam Sherpa (guitar), SaurabhChoudhary (guitar), Subir Malik (keyboard), Chintan Kalra (bass),Srijan Mahajan (drums), ShambuNath (tabla), Imran Khan (violin). With such a variety of sounds, it isno wonder that the band quotestheir favourite inﬂuences as Lyn-ryd Skynyrd, The Doors, Led Zep-pelin and others.The original songs that they didperform were only ampliﬁed intheir performance because of thesound of Imran Khan’s violin, which was heavenly and had thecrowd jumping and applauding at these precise moments. Espe-cially worthwhile was ImranKhan’s solo ‘Open Skies’, besides which the band performed theirhighly famous ‘But it Rained’, atribute to the victims of the Kargil war. Although the band was satis-factory in their performance, they played covers which has oftenbeen a source of contentionamongst fans of the band. Thesucceeding band, Stringsplayed only originals, which as some of the crowdmembers said, is their pluspoint.Since the band arrivedlate, and also had theirsound check to top it all,the concert started twohours late. However, Ergomanaged to catch up withSubir, who was rushing toset up the equipment forthe band.Listen to the podcast tohear what he has to say about the band, their stageperformances with IronMaiden and Saif Ali Khan.

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MITHRA SURESH

mithra@goergo.in

Forget sound check

WHERE’S THEORIGINALITY CHECK?

From the website

Parikrama says

: “We can still boast virgins,teetotallers, immoderate non-smokers, twomarried men, and at least one bisexual manamongst the seven of us.” It’s your guess!

(From left) Nitin Malik, Chintan Kalra, Saurabh Choudhary, Sonam Sherpa

The star of the ensemble:

Imran Khan

P H O T O S : R . R A V I N D R A N

Monday, August 4, 2008

03

All Strings attached

Strings undid what Parikrama didn’t do

S

trings came as a refreshingbreak – not just because theband that preceded them had athree-hour soundtesting sessionfollowed by anhour-and-a-half-long concert,that too mostlycomprising covers.With an antics-free, no-theatrics approach to singing,it’s easy to understand howStrings has endeared itself tofans here – probably the bestand most successful Pakista-ni crossover band since Ju-noon. At IIPM’sAmaze’08, held at Wes-ley Grounds, Royapet-tah, Strings waswelcomed with asigh of relief.As lead vocalistFaisal Kapadiabrought to ourattention, Sat-urday’s con-cert wasStrings’ ﬁrst live performancein India after the release oftheir new album,

Koi Aane Wa-la Hai

. ‘Humsafar’ and the al-bum’s title track ﬁgured on theevening’s play list.‘Na Jaane Kyun’, that haunt-ing track from the OST of

Spi-der-Man 2

, also Strings’ firstmovie assignment, proved ahit with the audience.As did ‘Dhaani’, with the au-dience more than keeping upwith the duo.The shy Bilal, who confinedhimself to the guitar-playingand backup vocals till thispoint, took centrestage with‘Anjaane’, here too ably joinedin by the crowd.While most recall ‘Duur’ asStrings’ first hit, it was ‘Sarkiyeh pahad’ which made Faisaland Bilal optimistic about asinging comeback eight yearsafter the original four-memberband’s split in 1992.“This song gave us the cour-age to come back,” said Faisal.Strings ensured that an eve-ning that didn’t start too wellended on a right note.

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SHALINI SHAH

shalinishah@goergo.in

P H O T O S : R . R A V I N D R A N

Strings and notes

Any Strings fan would notice the attentionthat goes into most of Strings’ videos.Commenting on the role music videos haveplayed in the band’s popularity so far, Bilalsays, “Video did play a role in the band’ssuccess initially. Now we hardly see ourmusic videos. It’s just Bollywood now. Wecan’t depend on the videos anymore. Withcorporate funding and the kind of moneybeing pumped into films now, it’s difficultfor us to compete when it comes to musicvideos.”The lyrics for all of Strings’ songs, since thetime of its formation, are written by noneother than Anwar Maqsood, Bilal’s father. “Idon’t think we can work without him,” saysBilal.While Faisal and Bilal are the face of Strings,Adeel on the lead guitar, Haider onkeyboards, Qaiser on drums and Shakir onthe bass guitar have become almost apermanent fixture on Strings’ concertvenues.

P H O T O : S . S . K U M A R