Live and loud!

Calcutta plays host to some ‘great’ live music every day of the week. Where else would you get to see seven different bands on seven days (Nevermind that all of them seem to cover the exact Pink Floyd favourite)? From Someplace Else to Trinca’s, to newer shindigs like the Princeton Club and Sourav’s, there’s a bunch of joints serving up enough music and till late, every day. Everything shuts down in Bangalore by 11 pm; joints once-known in Mumbai for live music would rather hold Bollywood nights; Chennai is only known for its college festivals. To rock ‘n’ roll, baby, you gotta be here in the City of Joy.
(A few words about the same old, same old. A colleague and I plan an album of Floyd reprises by Calcutta bands, featuring Comfortably Numb versions 1 to 6, by, hold your breath, Hip Pocket, Saturday Night Blues Band, Crystal Grass, Plan B, Rudraa…..and whoever’s making a foray into the ‘scene’. That song can be replaced by, let’s see, Clapton’s Cocaine, Black Magic Woman by Santana, Walk Of Life by Dire Straits….Why, oh why can’t these guys choose a new song list? Or at least, a different Floyd number?).

No big gigs:

Floyd again. Roger Waters plays Mumbai on February 18. Even on his second visit to India – he played Bangalore in April 2002 – the former bass player/frontman of the psychedelic rock giants is skipping Calcutta. Not just Waters. Sting, Deep Purple; Earth, Wind and Fire; Bryan Adams — all the big names have bypassed Calcutta on their India tours. Just last week, Mumbai played host to blues legend Buddy Guy and the Alan Parsons Project. The last big gig we saw here was in 2004, the Joe Satriani concert. The city’s saving grace is the Congo Square Jazz Fest, which has brought some of the best names in international jazz to town in the last four years. But a single Herbie Hancock gig in a year isn’t enough.
So why do they all skip Calcutta? As the organisers put it: (a) lack of a proper venue; and (b) dearth of sponsors.
We don’t have the sprawl of the MMRDA grounds (Mumbai) or the Palace Grounds (Bangalore). And the ‘authorities’ just wouldn’t let anyone except A.R. Rahman play at the Salt Lake Stadium. Eden Gardens is a no-no. Where does an Oasis, a System of a Down, or a Deep Purple play? Come on, not the Rabindra Sarovar stadium! Even Satch (that’s what Satraini’s lovingly called) deserved a better venue.
As for sponsors, the hisaab is clear. Bringing down a band like Pink Floyd entails huge expenses on everything from luxury stay to gear haul to security. Who pays for that? A Rakhi Sawant night guarantees full returns; how many people will buy tickets at Rs 2,000 to watch Sting? You can’t argue with that.

Published in t2, The Telegraph, February 10, 2007