Tag Archives: Trapped

The Jack Daniels Rock Awards 2013

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The eighth edition of the annual Jack Daniels Rock awards was held on the 22nd of February at Mehboob Studio amidst little hype and no fanfare. The invite-only event hosted by Sameer Malhotra and The P-Man (Rohit Pereira) saw successful rock bands from the scene, across genres, being feted for their musical efforts over the past one year, by people who had little or nothing to do with the scene.

Bombay punk rockers, Blek kick-started the evening performing songs from their debut album, Hexes + Drama & Other Reasons for Evacuation to an audience of around 100 people. Their half hour long set included some of their popular songs like ‘Minus the Makeup’ and ‘Fog + Strobe’ which was also nominated in the best song category. Blek’s set was followed by the first set of awards which saw Shantanu Hudalikar win the best producer award. Advaita’s The Silent Sea and Swarathma’s Topiwalleh shared honours for the best album art while The Blue Frog, Mumbai was adjudged the best live music venue.  The emcee then made Michele Obama’s virtual presence at the Oscars seem less random by calling upon a Bollywood designer along with an eye-candy model to give away the next set of awards – Blek were back on stage to collect their award, after being declared the best emerging band of 2012. The next award handed out was for the best keyboardist which was shared by Jason Zachariah (Jason Zac Band) and Zubin Balaporia (Indus Creed). The designer-model duo then gave a priceless tip of advice in fashion to the musicians gathered (who, judging by the vibes, couldn’t care less), before handing over the best drummer award to Jai Row Kavi (Indus Creed). Bombay Jam band Something Relevant was up next on stage, playing a half hour long medley of songs from their second album, We Could Be Dreaming which was released last year.

Actor Suchitra Pillai was then accompanied on stage by Ken Ghosh (Bollywood director) to give away the next set of awards – Tony Guinard of the Ska Vengers tipped my personal favourite Roop Thomas of Blakc to win the best bassist award. Thermal and a Quarter frontman Bruce Lee Mani deservingly bagged the coveted best guitarist award, having being nominated alongside other stalwarts like Keshav Dhar, Baiju Dharmarajan and Mahesh Tinaikar. A clueless Mandira Bedi then walked onto stage to hand over the awards for best male and female vocalists – Vivienne Pocha won the award for the best female vocalist scoring over equally good singers Samara C (Ska Vengers) and Suman Sridhar (Sridhar/Thayil), while Angaraag “Papon” Mahanta overpowered the likes of Uday Benegal, Rabbi Shergill, Bruce Lee Mani, Gareth D’mello and Vasu Dixit in a star studded list of nominations for the best male vocalist.

The Rolling Stone all-star jam that followed, showcased artists from bands like Something Relevant, Split, Goddess Gagged and Colour Compound, recreate the magic of some of India’s most popular rock songs  – from Siddharth Basrur and Gareth D’mello’s duet take on Them Clones’s ‘Zephyretta’  to Rachel Varghese’s cover of Junkyard Groove’s ‘Imagine’, Saba Azad’s cover of  Orange Street’s ‘Candywalk’ to  Gareth’s beautiful delivery of ‘Lucy’ by Zero, Suman Sridhar’s horror screams and deafening screeches on Workshop’s ‘Pudhe Sarka’ to Rachel Varghese’s rendering of ‘Trapped’ by Indus Creed,  the wonderfully selected set list for the jam had something for everyone’s taste and gave the attendees a lot to cheer about.

The Rolling Stone jam session was ensued by the last set of awards that saw Keshav Dhar’s Skyharbor bag the recently introduced – best metal band award before Papon made it two for the night after ‘Boitha Maro Re’ was adjudicated the best song, overshadowing some splendid tracks like ‘Maeva’ (Skyharbor), ‘Fog + Strobe’ (Blek), ‘Dissolve’ (Indus Creed) and ‘For the Cat’ (TAAQ). Former Miss India, Yukta Mookhey was then called out of oblivion to hand over the last couple of awards – Advaita’s ‘The Silent Sea’ won the top honours bagging the best album award, however it was Indus Creed who won the bragging rights and took home the 5 lakh rupees prize money after being adjudged the best Indian band for the year 2012.

Despite oddities of the award presenters, a no-show by most winners and a kitty cat on the loose, the award show at large went off smoothly, thanks (largely) to the free flowing Jack at the event.

Ishan Vartak

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Outlawed feat. Indus Creed at National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata

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This was my second time at an Indus Creed gig. I was equally stoked as the last time I had seen them as a kid. When I went into the grand and beautiful courtyard after my ritualistic cigarette at five past 8 in the oddly chilly Calcutta evening, Indus Creed were already on stage and ready to rock the place.  They sparked the fire on the stage with ‘Dissolve’ from their latest album. This was followed by ‘The Money’, which is a jumpy track in itself and to top that, Uday Benegal was displaying some brilliant stage performance with his signature ‘Monkey Dance’. From this point onwards it was evident that the crowd was having a ball despite Jai Row Kavi’s absence with Andrew filling in for him. Indus Creed struck all the right chords and the crowd literally swayed with the music.

Outlawed feat. Indus Creed at National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata

Indus Creed moved into some classic stuff from the ol’ times with ‘Trapped’ from their self-titled third album. Unlike the other songs they played from the album Evolve, this song sounded way different from the album version. The bass was extremely prominent and the outro was pretty much a free-jam kind of thing which was brilliant.

As the gig proceeded, it was more obvious that the band’s output mix was not quite up to the mark. But Indus Creed sounded incredible as they picked up with ‘Fireflies’ which Uday dedicated to “all the lovely ladies in the crowd” of which there was quite a significant number. ‘Fireflies’ was a huge hit and the crowd went on to prove this by singing along to the lyrics.

Outlawed feat. Indus Creed at National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata

Next up was ‘Cry’, the intro of which was starkly different from what was on the CD, primarily because of Zubin’s tremolo-ish flute tune. This is what music is all about – constantly evolving and changing with time. It felt great being in the front row of an Indus Creed gig all over again. As these thoughts lingered in my mind, IC hit it suddenly with ‘Bulletproof’ and Mahesh nailed the solo precisely and elegantly. This was followed by ‘Take it harder’, during which I noticed that the bass drum skin was that of a white breasted eagle. It looked awesome and fit beautifully into the band’s genre.

‘Pretty Child’ added to everyone’s delight and in the sheer excitement, the crowd started singing and jumping around. Between all this, the band started with a grungy and groovy riff that I immediately knew was from ‘No Disgrace’, my personal favorite from their latest album. Mahesh topped off this ecstatic moment with some carefully placed pinch harmonics to the riff. As Yoda would have put it, “Beautiful, It Was. Enjoy, I Did”.

Outlawed feat. Indus Creed at National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata

The band then moved its pace into an all classic Indus Creed set with Uday heeding to the crowd’s request for ‘Pretty Child’. Next was the customary band introduction which ended with a beautiful outro to ‘Pretty Child’. This was followed by ‘Rock n Roll Renegade’ from the band’s previous album as Rock Machine. There was a sound glitch in the middle of all this with the guitar’s output disappearing and reappearing mysteriously, but Mahesh and the rest of the band covered it effortlessly.

Indus Creed was planning to end the set with their classic ‘Top of The Rock’, but the crowd didn’t budge even after the band went off stage. After a little while, with some more pleading and cajoling from the crowd, Uday came on stage and said “How could we possibly let such a beautiful crowd down?” and started off with ‘Fireflies’ once again! The response from the crowd after this one was magnificent!

Outlawed feat. Indus Creed at National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata

As the band went offstage, fans reached them for autographs and pictures. The most awe-inspiring thing was that after being the epitome of the rock movement in India for nearly three decades, these musicians are unbelievably humble and modest. It was really nice to see them interacting freely with their fans. As all good things come to an end, so did this gig. Quoting Uday, Indus Creed truly ‘Lost their virginity to NUJS, Kolkata’.

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Joy Chakraborty

Debdutto 'Joy' Chakraborty is the skinniest music fanatic, plays some guitar, jumps around trees, and likes to stay in the shadows. He is also studying B.Tech as a side project.

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