RDP Live at Vismay 2009 – April 9th

Its been a long long time since we played in Bangalore (well, longer than we would have wanted to) so its time to rectify that and thanks to the lovely students at Don Bosco Institute of Technology, we are playing in their college for their annual fest – Vismay 2009.

Don Bosco Institute of Technology is on Mysore Road – just head down until you find it on Mysore Road itself You can also view a map on Google Maps – here

Come by and catch some fun new songs and a fantastic live set .. and I am not exaggerating!

Oye Its Friday

I know its been a while since we went to shoot for the Farhan Akthar show, ‘Oye Its Friday’. And this time round, I have been waiting to make this post till today very intentionally! This is to announce that we are featured TONIGHT on ‘Oye Its Friday!’. Watch it on NDTV Imagine at 10 PM.

Now for the long story!

We landed up at the magnificient ‘YashRaj Film Studio’ in Mumbai bright and early and ready to shoot for the first time on a talkshow on National TV! We were hustled into one of the many changing rooms where we just about managed to keep our luggage and had to leave to the studio for a sound check!

The sound check passed off without incident and was quite a breeze actually because of the lovely Nitin Joshi who was handling sound that day and also photography! infact, all these photos that you see are courtesy him! He is a total case of a man who is torn between two passions and is excellent at both!

Back to the story, After sound check we met everyone from ‘Jazz Junction’, the in-house band for the show who are capable of so much more than you see them play on the show each week! and each of them is a brilliant musician and singer in his/her own right. They informed us that we were infact, the first band that ever played everything live on the show and we were sounding good that day! it was a HUGE pat on the back! To go on National TV with the confidence that we can nail our stuff live!

Once that was done, it was time for us to go get some ‘make up’ on and come back down totally transformed for the show. By now, the man himself, Saurav ‘Dada’ Ganguly was on set finishing his part of the show before he left and we could go up on stage! Dada though had to leave early and was not on stage with us for later part of the show or to watch us perform!

We had to do two songs on stage and they would pick and edit our performance later to suit the format of the show. So we went up and belted ‘Mysore se Aayi’ and ‘Hey Bhagwan’ and the people from the show said it was a wrap after the first time itself! and we were just warming up and thought it was a run through! However, we were not so happy with the rendition of Hey Bhagwan and chose to repeat that song.

At this point I must make a mention of the lovely audience! These guys are extras who were brought in to the show and were strictly instructed to “Clap and show energy when the band is playing live!” but honestly, looking at them that day, I don’t think they were going wild just because they were instructed to

In all fairness to them, they put a whole lot of excitement and enthusiasm in us and it was just plain fun to play for them!

We were then called back on stage for the finale of the show and met Farhan Akthar who remembered us from the ‘Rock Gig’ that we had played months back! he chatted us up before going up on stage to do the end credits along with all the performers of the night and the ‘Oye Girls!’.

So the Moral of the story – The show airs tonight, Friday, 27th of February between 10 and 11 PM on NDTV Imagine. Make sure you tune in! and please do tell us what you thought of our performance!

Thanks in advance and I just have to do this .. “OYE!!”

Collect your passes!

A *HUGE* round of thanks to all of you for commenting and wanting to come for the show on Friday, the 23rd! I have your passes with me and Raghu and I would like to meet you guys and personally give them to you!

If you haven’t already collected your passes, then read
http://theraghudixitproject.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/nokia-touch-the-tune-in-bangalore/
and comment at once! That is how I am keeping track of the number of passes I should get.

So if you have commented, please come to the Coffee Day on Cunningham Road at 6PM on Thursday, 22nd Jan, 2009, collect your passes and have a chat with us!

It will be great to catch up with all of you!

Raghu Dixit Project in Bangalore – Finally!

So its official! our first public gig in Bangalore after a LONG LONG time will happen on Christmas Eve! The Opus Christmas festival ’08 plays host to The Raghu Dixit Project on the 24th December 9PM Onwards.

If you haven’t watched the band in a long time or haven’t watched the band at all, then this is a very good place to start. So, on the 24th evening, Opus, in Bangalore is where you need to be!

Josy John – The Bass Superhero!

When I was first called to play for ‘The Raghu Dixit Project’, I knew I was playing where one of the best bassists in the country, Josy John had left a mark! On my best day, I am just about a fraction of what he does reguarly!

When Raghu called me today to let me know that he was in town and recording for Raghu’s upcoming movie, I had to clear out everything else I was up to and just sit and watch him record some of the most brilliant bass playing you will ever hear in a Kannada movie!

Sitting here for the past three hours watching him has taught me more than I have learnt in a long time. His bass playing reminds me of how at the end of the day, its not about technique, or the “right way” to play (he is as un-orthodox a bass player as you will find), its all about your groove and your choice of notes!

For the super star that he is, he is probably the most unassuming, down to earth musician you will ever find. I can guarantee you his humility will completely blow your mind!

Just to show you what I mean, take a look at the video here and when you’ve finally picked up your jaw that must have hit the floor by now, rewind and watch it again! *THAT* is what a bass guitar can do!

This is a video taken from Antaragni’s show at BITS Pilani, a couple of years back.

‘Rock On’ for Humanity

It was a true splash and dash when we had to land up in the morning on Friday in Mumbai for the Rock On for Humanity gig. It was the same day that ‘Psycho’ was premiering and Raghu was torn between the two

The band made it earlier, and Raghu as a compromise managed to catch the first glimpses of the film and more importantly the crowd reaction to the music and the movie before he rushed to Mumbai for what would be a truly magical (or should I say ‘Magik’al) night!

The sound check went on quite well and Dwayne on the mixer did a fabulous job of helping us get things in order in under 30 minutes and Bobby and Nikhil of OML worked overtime to ensure that all glitches like the massive power cut in between our soundcheck were all sorted out and nothing repeated in the evening!

The gig started early and surprisingly for a show that had so many bands playing, was on time for the entire evening! The line up for the entire evening was easily among the best gig lineups I have seen in the country and there was no band that you could really skip .. it was 5 hours of pure entertainment!

We were up on stage after Avial (who I watched for the first time ever live and LOVED!) and we proceeded to completely rock the venue! The audience was just brilliant and seemed to be rooting for us from the word go! The set consisted of Hey Bhagwan, Mysore Se Aayi and Har Saans Mein as we had only 20 minutes or rather 3 songs to play because they needed to shut the show down at 10 PM. But like Siva says, it drains you more when you put 200% in a 3 song set than play a whole show and it was close to what happened

It was really nice to see the reaction we got on stage and was even better to meet with all the ‘Big Boys from Bollywood’. What warmed my heart the most was the fact that the organizing team raised *4 CRORES* for the cause and achieving that around a concert in India makes me happier than ever!

So a HUGE round of thanks and appreciation to the entire team that put this together and especially to Farhan Akthar, Arjun Rampal and Ritesh Sidhwani who came up with and drove this idea to such success!

If any of you was at the event and happened to catch us play, please do leave us a comment! let us know what you thought.

Update – We’re alive and kicking!

There is a LOT that has happened in the past month, we finished a very succesful tour of 4 countries in south east and central Asia. Raghu got back from another fruitful tour of the UK and even individually there has been a LOT happening.

Now all of us are catching up on life and this place did not see many updates, but I will promise you right now that I will tell you all the stories that are to be told about our journeys and everything.

For now, this is a quick update to let you know that things are well and everyone is alive an kicking.

We are scheduled to play at the concert for ‘Bihar Flood Relief‘ organized by the Rock On team where we will share stage with some of the best bands in the country. This is in Mumbai on the 31st of October. More on that very soon. In the meantime, if this is a cause that you would like to help with, please go right ahead to
http://biharfloodrelief.blogspot.com/
for details on what you can do.

If you are in Bombay or close by, its time to make the trip and catch the concert! Click on the poster for details …

Hong Kong – RTHK

I know I have been a little late in updating you chaps about the shows in Hong Kong, so let me not waste time with BS and get right to it.

The first show we had was at the live studio of RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong) where our gig was being recorded live to be aired on Radio. It was the tour opener and there were a lot of firsts associated with that gig. Our first proper foreign tour, the first time we played in Hong Kong, the first time our show was being recorded live for radio, it was also Vijay Joseph’s first trip abroad!

We entered post lunch for our sound check and everything was set up for us and we spent most of our time just tweaking settings and inspite of the language barrier, it was not too difficult to get things set up the way we liked and it was time to get rolling at the show.

The show itself was quite stunning because the audience we had was 95% Chinese and we got them to jump and dance and sing and scream and more importantly sing “Har Saans Mein” with us!! Who would’ve thought

This was a picture taken after the show with the band and people from RTHK and the Consulate. Read about the concert and listen to it at the following location –
http://www.rthk.org.hk/special/musicbeyondborders/india.htm

Hong Kong – Day 1

It started well! The first day in Kowloon was good for us to get used to the place and the temperature (Now I am just trying a star tantrum .. Its all fine!) We’ve been taken care of very well and are staying in pretty much the center of Kwonloon on the very fashionable ‘Kimberly street’ which I call the ‘marriage central’ considering the number of marriage shops around!

The hotel we stay in has some very interesting furniture which Raghu took a fancy to and as you an see in this picture, he was going ga-ga over the sofas and the couches!

Also, yesterday was the first time we saw the brand new Raghu Dixt Project T-Shirts and I should tell you they look quite fantastic! so the next you catch us at a gig, a T-Shirt is a must buy! Here is Vijay modelling for the T-Shirts. So tell us what you think!

Of course he is not a model, not yet atleast, but he did take some time to prepart himself in the many mirrors on the wall that don’t really show you anything!

After that, we headed to the venue of the show to take a look at the venue we will be performing at the next day. The lovely Stacey showed us around and it looked like a good place to play a show! And this will be the first ever time that we are recorded as a band to go on National Radio!

We closed the evening with a dinner hosted by the Indian Embassy at the Foreign correspondents club which was quite lovely and EXTREMELY Filling!!

Thats it for now .. more to come soon!

Reached Hong Kong

Just a quick update to say that we have reached Hong Kong and that all is well! It was a safe and quick flight and the Official Passports made everything easy after we landed … So three cheers to the Government of India!