One week to go!

It began as a murmur a LONG LONG time back and like a good broth, it was prepared slowly!

And now there is no turning back and no pushing it forward either (atleast that seems to be the case from here!). Its exactly one week left to the launch of the debut album and the magnitude of it is finally beginning to hit us! Its just one week for everything to go euphorically crazy!

The album as you already know is under the ‘Vishal-Shekhar Music’ label and is being distributed by HMV Saregama and should be hitting stores very close to where you are very soon! I am being bombarded with questions about the availability of the album and online sales. I promise to find out about the same and post here ASAP.

For now, please give us any innovative ideas that you can think of to market the album and get it into as many people’s hands as possible. Right from BitTorrent to Flash Mobs, let us hear your ideas and lets try to implement as many of them!

From here, I will give you one story about the album each day … so make sure you come back here often!

The comments section is waiting for you .. go there and let me hear your ideas!

That Perfect Drum Sound!

Its toughest being a drummer on the road especially around here considering the ‘wide variety’ of drum kits and pedals and drum stools etc that are assembled together for shows. And for a drummer, the time s/he gets at sound check is the only time s/he has to get used to the kit and then make it sound good and get comfortable enough to play a whole show and god forbid a solo on it!

The rest of us have it slightly easier .. the guitars we carry are the same everywhere and barring a few string mishaps and battery scares, we can confidently walk on stage with that trusted old guitar and know exactly what is going to happen … (yea right!!)

Over the brief time that I have been a musician (strictly part time!), I have seen very few drummers as meticulous as Siva is in trying to get the perfect drum sound on any given drum kit. Infact, he travels with his entire tool kit which comprises of various pieces of cloth, scissors, insulation tape, two sided sticky tape, cotton etc which he will use in combination with his drum tuner to get the most optimum sound out of every single kit provided. And to our wonder and amazement, he manages to every single time.

   

It is a unique talent and is a great talent to have! and all of us are glad Siva is so meticulous with the drum tuning because a great drum sound is half the reason for a band sounding good!

Oiling the machinery!

It was a very productive weekend for the band which saw us get together for 2 back to back shows in Bangalore and a very tight practice session for the big shows ahead!

The first of the shows was in a place called ‘Visthar’ in Kothanur which was quite a challenge to find! It was also the initiation for Navin, from OML who had come to Bangalore to manage the band for these two gigs. The place itself is a beautiful commune far away from the city and the setting itself was quite wonderful.

We were treated to some fabulous home cooked dinner after which we set out to play an completely acoustic, filled with impromptu moments which set the fun loving crowd at Visthar ablaze! Infact, at one point, everyone in that place was dancing away to glory! It was a real treat.

This was the first time that we had carried our own sound system and it was quite a challenge packing and lugging it all to the venue and setting it up, managing sound, playing, and they dismantling and putting it back into the van and taking it back home! It reminded us of the days when we had first started, but surely the equipment has grown!!!

The wonderful people and the super gig was good compensation for all that effort and it left a good feeling though we had to repeat this entire thing the next day!

Saturday saw us at BrewHaHa in Koramangala where we turned a quiet little coffee shop into a jumping and screaming mad house! We kick started the Brew Live series of concerts and ensured that the entire neighbourhood got to know! People just kept pouring in from the streets and boy was it a fun gig! It was completely encouraging to see Ravi and Sreeram jumping around with their customers and everyone seemed to love the music and when we had to do the “Mysore Se Aayi” repeat, we knew another place had been conquered!

The band is shaping up well and getting tighter as we go along, the next few shows are the biggest we’ve played as a band and I think we all set to take them on!

See you guys soon in Delhi and Bombay ..

PS: anyone who has taken photos/videos of the band during the past few shows, please give us a copy!

PPS: We are looking to play lots of gigs with the album launching, so if any of you is planning an event and would want us to play, do consider us and get in touch with us -  music at raghudixit dot com.

GAS Attack!

There are a few select words that will make a musician lose total control over his/her senses and if you are a guitarist, one of those words is ‘Fender’ and to be more specific, ‘Fender American Stratocaster’.

Yesterday, Vijay got his brand new Fender Strat which has not been christened yet) and he was in a state of bliss that can’t be described! He just wouldn’t stop smiling and it was brilliant to see him try to get the ‘feel’ of the guitar! if we had left him with it unsupervised, we would have had a whole new meaning to the word feel

The first show with it yesterday saw Vijay ripping the solos apart and flying all over the fretboard like superman on cocaine! All in all … we have a brand new smile in the band which won’t go away soon! So here is the man with his new baby! step up and say congratulations

PS: for those who are wondering .. GAS stands for Gadget Acquisition Syndrome!

Something’s Brewing!

Its been a really really long time since we played in Namm Ooru ‘Bengaluru’ and it seems quite strange to have a show in the town we are from! But we are .. and that is the good news!

BrewHaHa in Koramangala is where all the action will happen, so come there early if you want a realistic chance at sitting and watching us, but then who sits and watches us anyway!

Date: Saturday, February 16, 2008
Time: 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Location: Koramangala – Next to Jyoti Nivas College!
Street: JNC Road
City/Town: Bangalore, India

This is a free show, so there are no tickets, there is limited space so the early birds get to peck first!

PS: Put on your dancing shoes and come in the best of your spirits! its going to be a party!!

The first copy!

We announced that the album would be out quite a while back and many people are still skeptical when we tell them it will be out and available in stores by the end of this month!

So what better way to do this than show you some proof that it might actually be true! A little something to whet your appetites …

Ladies and Gentlemen … put your hands together for the first copy of the debut album of the band!

A lot of love and care has gone into the design of the CD cover, the inlay and everything about the CD. Trust me … you will absolutely love it! I’m telling you!

Vijay Nair, from OML, our band managers, called me earlier and has promised to send me updates about the album and how things on that front are going, so keep an eye out here!

The ingredients are in the pot … its just a matter of time now!

PS: Excuse the make-up. This was just before the Lycra MTV Style Awards in Mumbai!

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The balancing act!

It was over a year ago that I took my first flight with the band, well actually, for me it was the first flight trip ever! I had never flown before that and from that day, I have been flying like I am superman! The ride has been quite crazy …

Now, our band is not your average rock band and so we tend to carry stuff around that most bands don’t! and that includes Siva’s timbale’s and darbouka, the talking drum, a daff, generally .. things that won’t be provided on stage for us.

This requires us to be able to balance our luggage which on a long tour would look something like this

Into the vehicle that has come to pick us up, which could look like this

Naah!! just kidding … thats not happened to us … YET!!But the band has managed to master the fine art of balancing our luggage, and everytime we have to load up a vehicle that has to come pick us up, there is always the right way of doing things so we make use of the space in the most optimum way possible!

For example, look at Raghu here managing his and my luggage on a small airport trolley! What you see in that picture is 3 guitars in their flight cases, one suitcase and one bag with clothes in them, one DSLR bag and 2 shoulder bags (Ofcourse, Raghu’s shoulder bag is on his shoulder! … just in case you were looking )

Fitting our band with all its equipment in a single Qualis is not easy … Trust me!

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The Hey Bhagwan video shoot

Since we will be launching the band on TV with the song ‘Hey Bhagwan’, I thought I would repeat myself and write about our experience at the video shoot which happened sometime back! (I know! sometime is completely relative )

Taken from here

So it happened … my first taste of stardom! The Raghu Dixit Project shot a music video for the song ‘Hey Bhagwan‘ at the Mehboob Studios in Bombay.

It was the first time for me and it was a super experience!

The band had a full on beauty treatment session which included some facials and haircuts for some of us and some slick styling to look like the ‘stars’ that should be in a music video! well … sometimes you just gotta do it!

So anyway … after the beauty treatment, we head to Mumbai with our instruments and spirits soaring but only this time .. we don’t play to a crowd! We stayed at our manager Vijay Nair’s house from where we left quite early in the morning to the massive Mehboob Studios! This is an old building which has one section burnt down which formed the setting for the band shots of the video.

The concept of the video is a story about how Raghu comes to Mumbai with his music and then in a series of incidents that happen which involve him, he gives everything he has to people around him and is left with only music! and the whole narrative is interspersed with shots of the band playing live in the burnt studio. Well I guess I am terrible at narrating the story but the video does look quite cool and you should watch out for Raghu being pulled up 15ft in the air at the end by a crane!

So with the story out of the way … we begin the day with a photo shoot in the morning. These are photos that will be given out for publicity and for the record inlay etc. That was nice fun too with the photographer Ajay (?) kneeling and crouching and standing on chairs and lying flat on the ground etc to get various angles for the photographs while we were supposed to be serious or moderately laughing or just a little smile to a full scream to a variety of face expressions and arrangements for the shoot!

Once the photo shoot was done, it was time for us to go back to the dressing rooms and get our make up on! well .. atleast they were nice enough to not make us look horrendous! and the make up artist Xavier was a super chap who asked us what we wanted etc… and knowing my expertise with these things, I said ‘Absolutely nothing!’ but I believe that doesn’t count as a valid answer … the director had asked for a bronzed look and that is what we got!

The entire production crew loved the idea that Raghu and I wore Dhotis on stage and ordered that the entire band does the same! and so it was … this meant that Anirban, Ranjan and Sandeep wore dhotis with the band for the first time and it was quite a cool look at the end of it! And so we waited while the set below was being set up.

The movie industry in Bombay works like a charm! there are so many things … small and big that need to be there to make one video shoot happen and its quite amazing how it is all managed and how people just are there at the right moment with the right thing!! full credit goes to the production crew and Only Much Louder, our managers and especially Sameera and Neeca for pulling off with quite a bit of panache what I thought could have been a perfect recipe for disaster! And to Bobby and Vijay for everything that they did!

So anyway … the band shots involved us playing the song ‘Hey Bhagwan’ in what was a live setup and it was replicated to perfection. I guess it helps that the director of the video Shiraz is a musician himself and that meant that there were no loopholes where we were playing guitars that were not connected to anything and there was some magical sound happening! I’ve made fun of so many videos myself where these guys are playing their guitars that are not connected to anything and I’ve always sworn to never do that if I was part of a video! and this time … we made sure we had top of the line gear lined up and everything plugged in and ready to go for the video itself!

The shooting of the video was a blast! we played that song about 10 times or more in total and each time a different angle for the camera to take, but we were absolute stars! the energy in the video was unbelievable and each of us playing and enjoying it to our very best! jumping and moving around on the hot muddy ground which had loads of pebbles and nails etc … the remains of a burnt studio! But none of it bothered us! … every single one of those performances was a take in one and I think we made the job a lot easier for the production team than they expected it!

Lunch was just super and and we got a small glimpse of stardom with people pulling up chairs for us and having our make up artist come and dab off the sweat and apply some patches on make up which had run! and food being served on time, people running up and giving us water and juice between takes!! it was a total experience like none other and none of us were ready for it! We were doing our own lugging and carrying equipment around and going and fetching stuff that we wanted etc like we always do but it was quite a shock for the crew I guess! they were just used to stars who were actual ‘stars’ and not our kind

When we went down in the end to thank each member of the crew, the light guys and the sound guys and the food guys and everyone who was there! they were just so happy and the glee on their faces is definitely one of the things we will take back from this shoot! We even asked them for their opinion of the song and they apparently loved it! and are also waiting to see it become a hit! Raghu and I took down every single person’s name in a book to feature them in our credits for the video!

The video itself will be out sometime in January and only time will tell what will happen after that … but for now … this is something that I won’t forget for a long long time

Blast from the Past – The Documentary

The Raghu Dixit Project as you know it today was just formed .. we were still working on getting our name out and get event promoters know that the band was ready to play and we were on the look out for shows. At that time, we started making our press kit and take photos of us trying to look cool, we even held an evaluation gig for a select few people so that we could get user feedback and see how we can better the band.

This was long before the album was even in the picture, this was when Raghu was still waiting for that miracle .. Raghu’s brother Vasu got together a few of his friends and we hired video equipment and made a documentary! To this day, it is one of the most charming documentaries I have seen around by a band in India trying to promote itself … and No I am not saying it because I am biased … I would love to look at others if there are!

See for yourself!

Favourite Memories … Continued

Here are a few more memories … I realize that I will keep coming back with more but then that is what memories are for! For those of you who just joined us … this post is a continuation from here

These were still days when the band was not used to me constantly shoving my camera into their faces! so like most people do, every time a camera is pointed at you, out comes the brightest and most cheerful *FAKE* smile and the sidey-est pose ever! and the first few months are filled with these sidey posed pics! but then Raghu took matters into his own hands and told everyone to just look normal and natural and continue what they were doing when the camera is pointed at them .. not to look at the camera … this is the shot taken IMMEDIATELY after that!!

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This was during our first trip abroad with the band and infact, for Siva and Me, this was our first trip abroad at all … now for a musician, what is the one thing you find abroad that you don’t find in India? The answer is music shops but if you were misled by the pics above, it says a thing or two about how you think but then, who could resist taking these pics … especially me looking like a complete tourist with the pouch and the camera bag!

Raghu singing! Raghu sings this way because its the only way he knows how to!! and that is what makes this music and this band so special! there are no half measures, no middle ground .. its pure passion all the way! The songs are not extremely complicated, the music is simple, it sticks! You may come with all kinds of misconceptions before you hear the music … but I guarantee you … you will go back humming!

More to come!

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