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Underground to the fore
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There was no stopping the young musicians at “Underground 2007”
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Metal and mettle Winners of the a cappella category, Chocalat.
‘Underground 2007’ (September 27 and 28) could have put the Green Anaconda (believed to be the lengthiest snake in the world) to shame. If time can be equated with space, Underground 2007 was lengthier than this South American snake. With over 20 rock and metal bands given 20 minutes each to prove their mettle on the last day, dinner had to be at midnight. And rock and metal were just two elements of this competition, a trademark annual event organised by the Unwind Center for school and college students. As usual, there were four other categories – light music, a cappella, hip hop and acoustic.
In the light music contest, Shrishti (a band constituted of students from different colleges) would have swept the board, but for Srisharan Geekay (Loyola) winning the ‘best percussionist’ title. ‘Dhirbuka’ Siva, judge for the light music category, said Srisharan was more versatile than you generally expect percussionists to be. With roto drums as supplement to the regular kit, Srisharan seemed to be leading his band. The best guitarist (M.R. Ashwath), drummer (S. Prassanna), male vocalist (R. Vijay Narain), female vocalist (Nitya Andrews) and own comp (Ondrai Servom) titles went to Shrishti, which did well in a television music programme (Oh Laa La) hosted by A.R. Rahman. They are believed to be working together with the music director on a project.
The eight-member ‘Chocalat’ (MOP Vaishnav) bested the other teams in the a cappella category. This all-girl band sang three film songs ‘Rasathi’ (Thiruda Thiruda), ‘Oho Megam Vandathu’ (Mouna Ragam) and ‘Tumsehe Pyar’ (a pop song by Asma) using a lot of parts and harmonies. The band was structured with one of them playing the role of lead singer (Sharanya).
“As we entered the competition at the eleventh hour, we had no time to prepare three new songs. We used two Tamil songs we performed at our college culturals,” says Divya.
The band was going to be called ‘The Chocolate Box Is Half Empty’, but a sensible last-minute decision reduced it to ‘Chocalat’.
And a band from Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan (K.K. Nagar) named Esion (‘Noise’ in inverted order) came up with a song (which won the ‘best own composition’ in the acoustic category) that matched their wacky title.
Members of Esion performing.
They performed “Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?” to great applause. The vocalist faked a French accent and the guitars conformed to the Spanish style. A French man takes this question around the world and, after all the globe-trotting, is still in the dark about the chicken’s intentions.
Judges for the rock and metal categories, Mario (bass guitarist for ‘No Idea’) and Joshua Raj (lead guitarist for Afterburn) conferred ‘The Last Band Standing’ title (read ‘best band of the event’) on Grey Shack from MCC.
Grey Shack (with Vikram - lead guitar, Joshua - rhythm guitar, Deepak - drums, Rohan Sen - vocals and Tomojit Basu - bass guitar) performed a brand of groove rock. Vikram, adjudged best lead guitarist, said, “We don’t want people to head-bang to our music, but sit back and enjoy themselves.”
One of the three original compositions they played, ‘Beautiful Man’ (which is about a man who looks like a woman) had a touch of reggae to it.
Blind Image bagged the best metal band title.
PRINCE FREDERICK
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