Ode-type Verbiage
Its friday evening. I'm home alone, a cup of hot coffee in hand, poring over a crossword puzzle. I've got Collective Soul, Portishead, Ustad Vilayat Khan and Dizzy Gillespie queued up to play in the background...you know it can seldom get more soulful that this.
I lie back on the couch, thinking about 4-across...looking out of the window as I do that. I stare up at the skies, at the fine raindrops falling through the twilight sun.
There is something about this scene that makes you want to freeze time and at the same time reflect, go down memory lane and revel a bit in nostalgia. Its nature's way of prodding you when you're perched at the edge of boredom.
Summer of 2000...just out of school and a long time before dawn's highway of college bleeds again, lot of time to kill.
That juncture in life where Blyton, Nat Geo and gully cricket is still the hypogeek's idea of fun.
Efforts of making conversation about music seemed freakishly amateur. But amidst the need to drown in mysticated hemlock because of such 'musical' shortcomings, there lay a silver lining.
Albeit condescendingly, a copy of Kill 'em All lands in my tape-recorder...courtesy a pal who's just far beyond cool.
Joblessness and more importantly the burning crave for revolution allowed the eleven otherworldy songs on the album play themselves out. It'd begun, the truest and most impressive of all my existential stances in life thus far....rock,stone,metal and suchlikes!
Realising a whole new definition to music in this manner is powerful. It lends you a lot of strength to swim out of the sea of cheese that was the hindi film song scene of the 90s. On hindsight, I'm glad about how I remained conveniently marooned in this...in not having listened to much music before rock. It accentuated the effect that Hit The Lights had on me (its the first song on the album) and hence almost all subsequent songs of related genre.
It felt nice to be doing something without the need to belong, without having to do something to prove you're cool and stuff. Its unarguably an attribute to the innocence of early youth.
Music is known to have that engulfing effect, metal more so. From the outset, metal enjoyed my unabashed bias and rightly so. The grungy sound of the guitars, the screeching vocals, the ultraspeed drumming were earliest influencing factors. The lyrical content which started off as trivial and plain amusing grew to tremendous levels of significance.
With time, life revealed the odd cloud of taint, which naturally engendered considerable angst not so deep within.
With the innocence fading away, the discern in rock lyrics only increased and so did the typically adolescent need to identify with anything rebellious!
In retrospect, its a case of coming of age as a listener....with the mellowing down process setting in. But rock's sure as hell had its effects. Be it drastic attitudinal changes such as replacing "my coffee's gettin cold" with "my beer's getting warm", wearing a lot more black than ever before or generally doing things that suggest distinct cultural shift!
I recalled how I was so hooked onto the whole Satanist wing of rock that I manually backamasked Stairway to Heaven to check whether it really had subliminal messages!
Among the few occasions that I wanted to plunge into the 'making music' area, one stands out.
The time that I went to a vocals audition for a band called Straylight Faith (name copyrighted) and then came to know they were a couple of overly intimate ladies who mainly covered happy Beatles tunes came to mind. aah, my brush with the Lesbian Benthamist Choir, I recall!
Its been a fabulous five years, which has given me a zillion rock shows to go to (Bangalore raawwks!), which has given me a fabulous outlet to rage and pain and most importantly given me a rationalised me-n-tal attitude...but its time to explore newer realms of music and thereby broaden my musical perspectives.
Que sera sera, I hope to remain hooked onto rock for all of my lifetime!
Im a rocker!
Do as I feel as I say!
Im a rocker!
And no one can take that away!
- Judas priest
Its now raining real hard, and I finally get 4-across...'Euthanasia'.
I lie back on the couch, thinking about 4-across...looking out of the window as I do that. I stare up at the skies, at the fine raindrops falling through the twilight sun.
There is something about this scene that makes you want to freeze time and at the same time reflect, go down memory lane and revel a bit in nostalgia. Its nature's way of prodding you when you're perched at the edge of boredom.
Summer of 2000...just out of school and a long time before dawn's highway of college bleeds again, lot of time to kill.
That juncture in life where Blyton, Nat Geo and gully cricket is still the hypogeek's idea of fun.
Efforts of making conversation about music seemed freakishly amateur. But amidst the need to drown in mysticated hemlock because of such 'musical' shortcomings, there lay a silver lining.
Albeit condescendingly, a copy of Kill 'em All lands in my tape-recorder...courtesy a pal who's just far beyond cool.
Joblessness and more importantly the burning crave for revolution allowed the eleven otherworldy songs on the album play themselves out. It'd begun, the truest and most impressive of all my existential stances in life thus far....rock,stone,metal and suchlikes!
Realising a whole new definition to music in this manner is powerful. It lends you a lot of strength to swim out of the sea of cheese that was the hindi film song scene of the 90s. On hindsight, I'm glad about how I remained conveniently marooned in this...in not having listened to much music before rock. It accentuated the effect that Hit The Lights had on me (its the first song on the album) and hence almost all subsequent songs of related genre.
It felt nice to be doing something without the need to belong, without having to do something to prove you're cool and stuff. Its unarguably an attribute to the innocence of early youth.
Music is known to have that engulfing effect, metal more so. From the outset, metal enjoyed my unabashed bias and rightly so. The grungy sound of the guitars, the screeching vocals, the ultraspeed drumming were earliest influencing factors. The lyrical content which started off as trivial and plain amusing grew to tremendous levels of significance.
With time, life revealed the odd cloud of taint, which naturally engendered considerable angst not so deep within.
With the innocence fading away, the discern in rock lyrics only increased and so did the typically adolescent need to identify with anything rebellious!
In retrospect, its a case of coming of age as a listener....with the mellowing down process setting in. But rock's sure as hell had its effects. Be it drastic attitudinal changes such as replacing "my coffee's gettin cold" with "my beer's getting warm", wearing a lot more black than ever before or generally doing things that suggest distinct cultural shift!
I recalled how I was so hooked onto the whole Satanist wing of rock that I manually backamasked Stairway to Heaven to check whether it really had subliminal messages!
Among the few occasions that I wanted to plunge into the 'making music' area, one stands out.
The time that I went to a vocals audition for a band called Straylight Faith (name copyrighted) and then came to know they were a couple of overly intimate ladies who mainly covered happy Beatles tunes came to mind. aah, my brush with the Lesbian Benthamist Choir, I recall!
Its been a fabulous five years, which has given me a zillion rock shows to go to (Bangalore raawwks!), which has given me a fabulous outlet to rage and pain and most importantly given me a rationalised me-n-tal attitude...but its time to explore newer realms of music and thereby broaden my musical perspectives.
Que sera sera, I hope to remain hooked onto rock for all of my lifetime!
Im a rocker!
Do as I feel as I say!
Im a rocker!
And no one can take that away!
- Judas priest
Its now raining real hard, and I finally get 4-across...'Euthanasia'.
posted by Manu at
1:28 pm
7 Comments:
damn good post.
Damn good...
Good writing in this style is reflected and judged by how much of it the reader can see.
I could. :-)
Non-Sensei
@NS: thx a lot...it means a lot to me! i wish the whole world stopped for a bit and sat down to listened to me...although i stop wishing that way after my shortlived bout of acute narcissm......and the verbiage goes on...
The rain.. Just has to be the rain!
I'm glad about how I remained conveniently marooned in this...in not having listened to much music before rock.My sentiments exactly.
Must echo NS. Damn good post!
@sita: thx...glad u feel so! and yeah it has to be the rain!
I see NS and sita have been here, n im not surprised. After all, you are a rocker :-)
Rock is so much fun. That's what it's all about -- filling up the chest cavities and empty kneecaps and elbows.
-- Jim HendrixADI
@adi: u betcha! thx for the Hendrix pearl o' wisdom...its oh-so-true innit?!
hmmmm...they said it all...and i second, third and fourth them!
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home