Gig Review: TAAQ @ B-Flat

 The Bangalore boys were back in town after their 55-show tour to wrap up what started out a few weeks ago. Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ) closed their recent extensive tour with a set of 3 night back-to-back performances at B-flat. Considering how long this band has been on the circuit, one always expects a super show. Last night’s gig met all the usual expectations from TAAQ.

Enter Heavy Riff

 While the show did start much later than scheduled thanks to the band’s additional commitment at another place, the set up was quick and they wasted no time in between songs. Being a budding guitar player, I’m always fascinated by the amount of equipment Bruce Lee Mani uses. But they’re all just there to add different colours to his playing. The evening was a blend of some of the old and the new material from the somewhat extensive catalog of TAAQ. This included songs like Someone Like Me, In the Middle, Holy Jose, Hot Day and more. They also played their version of the Nirvana classic In Bloom.

Bruce's Arsenal

Rajeev was immaculate on drums (as always) and did a rather cool drum bit with the song Fly. I recollect seeing the band about a year ago when Leslie Charles was brought on to handle bass responsibilities. While he seemed a little nervous at the start, and at a subsequent show I saw later on, he seems to have settled into his role really well. I do hope he can bring a little more groove to the band on future albums and gigs, not just as a bass player, but as a back up vocalist too.

Rajeev on Drums

The band played some of the songs from their recent Three Wheels Nine Lives album which included If Them Blues, Who Do We Have Sex With and a rather interesting organ (using the guitar) start to Grab Me. The audience was also treated to a fabulous performance of the TAAQ’s classic- Jupiter Café. The one song that did stand out in the evening was Bruce’s solo rendition of The Beatles hit In My Life. Respect man…total respect!

Leslie on Bass

Bruce Lee Mani

Bruce Lee Mani was at his usual best keeping the crowd entertained between songs about jokes of Roland from Poland (you had to be there to get it) and people coming from ‘native’ and going to ‘foreign’. I however don’t understand why he kept reminding us that it was Monday the next day and we had the day job thing to attend.

Playing Jupiter Cafe

The Guiding Star aka the set list

It was a super fun evening with a rather intimate gathering of fewer than 50 people. And B-flat has the sort of stage that if worked correctly by the band, can have everyone grooving. And TAAQ’s experience showed. I look forward to their gig at NH7 Weekender in Bangalore which should be a totally different experience.

Album Review : Paradise Valley – John Mayer

After having a long list of albums I've wanted to review, I chose to start somewhere and am going with John Mayer’s 6^th outing – Paradise Valley. I rather enjoyed the opening song of Wildfire and had a lot of expectations from the rest of the album. Unfortunately, considering the space that John Mayer has created in my books of being an artist who excels with each passing album, I found the album to be a letdown of sorts.

I've heard and reheard the album at least 5 times in the last one week and I just don’t find a single tune that I can remember instantly and want to come back home and learn on the guitar. With songs like Gravity, Vultures, Daughters and more to his credit, I expected a lot more from Mayer on this outing. I honestly don’t understand Mayer’s pet-peeve of having his current girlfriends sing on his albums. It was Taylor Swift on Battle Studies and Katy Perry (on Who you love) on Paradise Valley. I guess it’s one of those things you can get away with if you’re at the level of John Mayer.

Most of the songs felt like what was left over during the song-writing process of Born and Raised. The previous outing of Mayer was a move away from his blues avatar and had a lazy country ‘listen to my life story’ sort of feel to it, and I loved it. Mayer has tried to recreate the same in Paradise Valley, but falls short. The song writing in bits and pieces on a couple of songs was good, most notably on Dear Marie (which I assume is about his first real love), Wildfire and  On the Way Home. Mayer also does an enjoyable cover of J.J Cale’s Call Me the Breeze which is poignant considering J.J Cale passed away recently. Talk about timing.

I’m giving the album 2 out of 5 stars. It’s an easy lazy listen that doesn't really have you eager to want to listen to it again. Paradise Valley offers nothing new to listeners but just might satisfy the appetite of the really-hard-core John Mayer fan. To me, Mayer’s benchmark will continue to be the Continuum album.

Gig Review - Skrat @B-flat B'lore

Skrat’s back in town. Considering that I really love this band, it would be unfair to do another review in such a short span of time because we all know I’m just going to say nice things. 

Skrat at B-Flat B'lore

Nevertheless, just a quickie (not what you are thinking) about last night’s gig at B-Flat in Bengaluru. Great sound, packed house, a lot of people dancing, a few new covers (including ‘Born to be Wild’ which is one of my favourite songs which I've played in the last 3 bands I was in), top class energy. The evening's set list covered a lot of material from the new album (Bring Out the Big Guns) that was interspersed with material from the older album and a few Black Keys, Raconteurs and Johnny Cash covers.

The biggest thing I like about the band is their raw simplicity. No fancy processors or pedal boards. Just comes to show that you don’t need to know about a 1000 chords and scales to make music that moves people.

The last time I saw Skrat play in Bengaluru was at the Hard Rock Cafe, which was a letdown considering the acoustics of HRC needs a lot of work. B-flat was a much better venue in terms of acoustics and a far more intimate venue because the band wasn't standing 8 feet above you where you can’t see the drummer. 

The only downside to the show was that I didn't get a free cd. I hope the Yankee who did get the cd takes it back to his homeland and plays it for people there. Let the world know that India is much more than Bollywood. 

And now a word from our Good Times partner for the evening

(PS: I’m trying to learn a bit of proper photography so the pics are a little off because there is only so much customization I can do with a point-and-shoot camera)

An original approach of covers

While running through random music clips on YouTube earlier last week, I came across the’ Kennedy Honors’ which featured Led Zeppelin and a whole host of artists who covered their songs. While the covers were not particularly memorable, there was this one cover by Heart who did ‘Stairway to Heaven’ which was so moving that all the members of Led Zep had tears in their eyes at the end.  The video is at the end of this post for you watch and bawl along. (I saw the video multiple times and had tears in my eyes because it was just so well done).

At some point later in the week, probably during a mindless corporate meeting, a question struck me. If a band were to go about establishing themselves, what’s the right way to go about doing it? Is it through playing killer covers of other bands or making original music right at the start?

So how does Led Zeppelin come into this?  I take the example of the folks in the band, who are ‘Gods among Gods’ in my book. It is a known fact that they started out going about mastering covers of other early blues artists from across the Atlantic, probably an influence from Page’s early days as a session’s guitar player. And it was this exercise to sound like them that started the Led Zeppelin saga.  An outcome of this was that along the way, they did have a fair share of covers that found their way into their albums. Take a song like ‘Gallows pole’ or ‘Babe I’m gonna leave you’ which are a folk songs (The latter got them into a bit of a legal soup with Anne Bredon who wrote the original). There’s even the song ‘Trampled under foot’ which sounds a lot like Robert Johnsons’ ‘Terraplane Blues’ (which the band acknowledges was the inspiration).  ‘You shook me’ is a known Willie Dixon number (Thankfully credited by the band). The band has been known to put their twist on a lot of blues songs during their live gigs.

All this said, Led Zeppelin still have their own original songs which are classics and immortal. But the question still remains (much like the song) of whether covers are the path to writing great originals or do originals evolve themselves. I listen to a song like ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and all I want to do is learn the blues. I take the example of another great guitar player - Eric Clapton who shot to fame with covers such as ‘I shot the Sheriff’ (Bob Marley) and 'Cocaine' (J.J.Cale), but still stands out on all his originals. Even bands like Metallica covered Diamond Head, Motorhead and the early metal bands before coming out with their mind-blowing debut album ‘Kill Em All’.  

Now let’s look at those musicians creating a completely original sound.  The first band that comes to mind for me is Nirvana. Grunge was a completely unknown concept until Nirvana, along with Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, broke through from Seattle and gave the world a whole new sound. While I’m not extremely well-versed in rock history, I don’t think there was a sound like Nirvana before Nirvana. Take a band like ‘Rage against the Machine’. I don’t know of any band that dared to take the respective holy houses of rap and metal and put them together and actually have commercial success. I vaguely remember reading of earlier collaborations, but they did not go so well considering I don’t have immediate recall. 

So here are two very distinct approaches to becoming a great band. On the one hand, you've got bands like Led Zeppelin who've tried to emulate blues artists before them and introduced a contemporary sound. And these bands have chosen to blend covers and write mind-blowing original songs. And on the other hand, there are bands like Nirvana who don’t have any known predecessors and yet find themselves being equally revered. So what’s the best route for a band? Start out with mastering covers and blend your feel into them, or start out completely original and uninspired by anything that exists before them.

Being a guitar player who’s struggling to write his own material, I've no answer. I tend to find myself blending bits and pieces from tons of artists I listen to. Hope fully better and more accomplished musicians have an opinion on the matter. Look forward to hearing from you guys.

PS: Here's probably the awesomest cover (yes... I used 'awesomest') of 'Stairway to Heaven'. Much respect to the ladies from Heart