Tsunami

Is the name of the supergroup, of which I am now a member.
By the way, "Supergroup" is not an indulgent trumpet-blowing expression as it might seem. It just means that there are 3 people in the band, which is a low number for a band. Three other supergroups that are well-known by rock lovers are the Police (Andy Summers, Sting, Stu Copeland) , Cream (Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker) and Rush (Geddy Lee, Alex lifeson, Neil Peart).
We played in front of a medium sized audience on the 8th of October, 2008. We played pop-rock-jazz based material that was probably not earth-shattering, but it was good to be on stage after so many years. The last time was in the USA around 1999, but we played hindi film music with no originals. The previous time was 1996 when we played obscure classic rock covers by groups like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Grand Funk Railroad. No one had heard very much of them and so didn't really care. I did not have my nice Korg N364 synthesizer at the time either so the sound was just untidy.

In 1996, in the town of Varanasi, I have fond memories of our struggle to establish ourselves as a rock group. We wore our hair long, but could not monkey around too much because we weren't that good with our instruments and would run the risk of playing wrong notes. None of us really got any attention from the masses (also known as "girls"). There were some in the institute that thought we were good, 99.3% of them were guys. Once we did attract some attention. It was from some local banarasis who may have been either students or serial rapists or both, not quite sure which. One threatened to burn the stage down before our show because alcohol was not allowed on the premises (it was an open air theatre). " Arre!! EE Raakkh so kaa hota hai? Raaakh so mein to daaru peebe kari!", he had averred.

Another memory is from the 31st night party at the Taj Varanasi circa 1996, where we were actually being paid to perform. We had no idea what to do and were playing obscure songs by Rush, Deep Purple etc..none of which could really be danced to because the beat was rather complicated and our drummer's playing was making it even more complicated (he was high at the outset). We each had a bottle of booze by us while on stage so as the evening progressed even we didn't know what we were playing! I vaguely remember some fat dude from Australia jump up on stage and sing "Break on through" by Doors in a completely incorrect scale. What I cannot forget is that at the stroke of midnight, all of the banarasi high society, who had arrived at the hotel to distinguish themselves from the hoi-polloi on the ghats, demanded that we play "Papa kehte hain". None of us knew how to play it,but we were all drunk anyway, so we played something. It didn't matter, they loved it and we played the shitty version of the song another 3 or 4 times until our vocalist started to throw up on stage. To date I don't know if it was because of the booze or the utter distaste for the song. In any case, that was the end of the gig.

Coming back to Singapore, unless work and other stuff get the better of me, I hope to do this once in a while. 1996 was another age. We had no sense of time!