Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest |

New sounds

No need to fill in a tedious share application form for this ‘Public Issue’. Logging in to reverbnation.com/publicissue will do. Five sample pieces give an introduction to this band. This online help is aimed only at senile thirty-year-olds. Anyone belonging to a younger age group and is also a head-banger is likely to have heard the band. In 2007, it came second runner-up at Campus Rock Idols. In 2008, it was adjudged the Best South Indian Band at DSP Rockilution. The band has won Deep Woods twice and come second once.

Seshanth is Public Issue’s ‘new’ manager. He is still in college. The four other band members were all till recently in college. They are vocalist Christopher Stanley, lead guitarist Nipun Nair, bass guitarist Handel and drummer Vinay Ramakrishnan. They formed a band as college students. A friend’s garage was their jamming pad. Everyone was comfortable with the arrangement, except for their friend’s neighbour. A senior citizen, he took exception to the thumping, non-automobile sounds from the garage. He threatened the boys he would make a ‘public issue’ of it if they did not stop jamming. As they were unrelenting, he called in the cops. The boys came out of the episode, unscathed and with a name for their band — Public Issue.

The band is open to all sorts of music. It could be defined as ‘funk and progressive’. “In truth, we play anything that we are able to. We are not trying to fit ourselves into any genre,” says Nipun. “Comic elements have a big hand in our songs. ‘Clockwork’ is based on the nursery rhyme ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ and ‘Spiderpig’ on the movie ‘Simpsons’.”

Public Issue has composed 15 songs, of which five are marked for their debut album. While they enjoy composing their own music, they don’t see anything unholy about performing the music of the greats. At this year’s JRO, their medley of Michael Jackson songs was as good as any of the best tributes to the King of Pop.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail