Bittersweet Symphony

I’ve just come back from managing my first band. Yes you heard that right, Band Manager. A friend of mine from school days has a younger brother who has started his own band. He plays the rhythm guitar. They were performing at the, what I like to call, “Durga Puja Cultural Extravaganza” (DPCE) organised by one of the societies in our locality. It is a regular feature and used to be the major crowd puller until a few years ago when some Bengali Association set up a much bigger DPCE in the adjacent park. It pulls most of the crowd now but the residents of that society are still faithful and the gathering is quite overwhelming at times.

Anyway, getting to the point, I had gone to the DPCE last night with the family for some fresh air and maybe some entertainment too. I bumped into him and asked him if he was performing again this year. He has been performing for the last two years, I had seen the first performance and it was not bad keeping in mind that he had just started learning to play, but I couldn’t catch it last year for reasons I can’t quite recall. He was very excited about it and told me about the songs they were going to perform and that they had been working very hard. He introduced me to the rest of the band minus the vocalist; apparently he was unavailable so they were going to do an instrumental. The playlist sounded great but I feared if they would be able to pull it off without the vocals. Then we were discussing live performances and bands and I told them about our desperate search for a drummer for our college band. They asked if I was in a band too, when I said no they asked if I was the Band Manager. Again I said no but he asked me to come and help them out the following day. I gladly agreed. Live music is always a treat and more so if it includes head-banging.

So today I reached the place just in time because their performance was pushed up as the children who were dancing to “Dhoom Machale” were late. I helped them get the equipment on stage and then went to the sound guy for the all-important sound check. It is a long wait for the crowd and agonising for the band as well - one guitar was louder than the other, the mic on the keyboard was screeching and howling while the drummer was looking for a stand for his mic etc etc. Finally they get tired of waiting so the guitarist decides to start anyway. They started off with Sweet Child Of Mine and the lead came out better than I had expected, then went on to The Trooper (short and sweet) and Fear of the Dark which was disappointing not because of the band but the crowd, you will understand if you’ve heard the live version. And they ended with For Whom The Bell Tolls which was mind-blowing too but for the crowd.

I did my best to get some energy into the crowd by shouting and clapping loudly and non-stop head-banging but it didn’t help. They were just waiting for pauses between songs when there would be a huge eruption of applause and then silence again when they started playing. It wasn’t a great sight for the band but they kept at it. It was like playing to a TV audience who had to be told when to applaud and when to laugh.

The good thing for me was to hear live music again after a long time and more importantly the happiness on the kids’ faces when I congratulated them on a job well done. Curiously they thanked me again and again for supporting them. Get used to it guys, your going to make it big. Rock on!

Dedicated to Varun, Abhishek, Sagar and Eshaan of WILD STRINGDOM.