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Here's the Latest from the Blackbirds...
NEWS FLASH!!!
The Blackbirds at Mood Indigo Finals! Mumbai, December
24,2003 Dhruv
To sum up Mood I: it was like your biggest dream and your worst
nightmare happening at the same time. Like
finding a bug in your honey-fried noodles with ice cream.
What is the biggest kick? Sex? Formula 1? Money? I believe it's playing music to a 75,000. Wembley. And
the like. And to experience that at Mood I, if even with 1/10th the number of people was one hellofa kick.
Anyway, cutting straight to what
happenned at the finals. It was always going to be hard in the finals. But we
hoped to do much better than we eventually did. Now the Blackbirds have played a 100 gigs in it's one year
of existence: most of them as a two member band with a drum machine, but nonetheless. For us to screw up a
song takes a lot of things to go wrong. Unfortunately for us, many of those things happened that night at
the Open Air Theatre.
My "rock star" feeling went down several notches the
minute I walked on to stage and heard the BC/MC chant
go up, heard the "Backstreet Boy" gaali and the
various (dis)respects paid to members of my family. This, BEFORE we
even played a chord. Our first tragedy though was when
Vinit got his acoustic's tuning knobs stuck
in my bass strap as we were helping each other plug
in. The guitar DID go off tune, think the E string dropped a step or four. We started with "Rain": the harmonies were off initially, but were brought under control
as the song progressed, then we covered Back in the USSR and did our first original "I Will". Now Varun plays this song
with the brushes...and volumes, inspite of sound check were too low for anyone to hear the snare. What made it worse was that
we couldn't hear it either on our monitors. The rest of the song was an exercise in damage control. Enough said. Thereafter,
we did My Generation by the WHo and wound up thing's with Bhupal's inspired soloing on another original called That Day.
We
walked off the stage and took one last look at the 8000 crowd: it had all happened too fast. We needed more time, we needed
a different kind of crowd... To
end, it would be fair to say that Mood I finals was not the best gig we played. It is unfortunate that it happened at what
is our biggest setting to date and for a long time to come. We did what we came to do. And that was that. There were several
lessons for us to learn: several. And we learnt them.
| THE BLACKBIRDS QUALIFY FOR LIVEWIRE FINALS AT MOOD INDIGO 2003, IIT POWAI
December 22, Mumbai: In their first ever
visit outside Pune, the Blackbirds wowed a 200 strong Powai crowd and the judges at IIT and made it to the finals of what
is arguably India's most important rock competition. Livewire has seen finalists the likes of Indus Creed, Pentagram, Parikrama
and in more recent times, AFS and Zero.
The Blackbirds played a 20 minute set that
drew from their influences: the Beatles and the Who and an original composition titled "That Day", which was the high point
for the band. The Blackbirds comprise Vinit (guitar, harmonica, vocals), Dhruv (bass, vocals), Varun (drums,vocals) and Bhupal
(mandolin, vocals). Bhupal returned from Australia to join the band a few weeks back and his presence has been pivotal in
getting the band through to the finals.
4 bands were selected amongst the 37 that participated
from all over the country. The 3 other bands selected are all Mumbai based bands: Sledgehammer, Earth Clan and Xenon. Finals
will be held at 6pm on Wednesday, the 24th of December at the Open Air Theatre at IIT Powai. Crowd attendance is expected to be close to 10,000. The Finals will be followed
by the Pro Nite featuring Canadian rockers QED and Bombay's Zero.
Read reviews of the event at Gigpad
(www.gigpad.com) in the forums (Thread is titled "Livewire
Day Two")
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