1st day of NH7 Weekender Pune:
All roads lead to Laxmi Lawns, Magarpatta, as the Pune leg of the NH7 Weekender Festival series kicked-off on the 18th of October,2013. Not belonging to Pune, which was the case with 80 percent of the people who attended the Pune NH7 Weekender, these were the things that I was expecting will happen when I reach Pune for the festival:
– Getting ripped off by an auto guy – Check.
– Landing up at a random ‘Friend’s Friend’s Friend’s place’ to spend the night – Check.
– Having an awesome 1st day – Check.
Yes, NH7 Weekender lives up to its expectations of being one of the best music festivals in India. Top notch organisation, beautiful sets and even more beautiful people (ok let’s put that on the top of the list J ).
The 1st day of the festival featured big names like Shankar Tucker, Blackstratblues and Indian Ocean on the Dewarists stage with Reggae Rajahs and Ankur Tewari headlining the Breezer Dub Station and the MTS others stage respectively. The other stages remained closed for the 1st day. What are these stages, you ask?
Well these are just names given to each stage so that the sponsors remain happy 😉 They also helped in segregating the musicians as per their genres but that’s just a side reason J
The artists on my list for the day were: Siddharth Basrur, Shankar Tucker, Blackstratblues, Ankur Tewary & Indian Ocean (I am not a big electronic music fan as you might have guessed)
Sadly the Pune traffic and the sea of crowd wanting to park their cars and to collect their tickets did not allow me to attend the whole of Siddharth Basrur’s gig (who btw is awesome. Check out one of his albums here) but I was happy that I was attending my first Shankar Tucker concert.
Shankar’s set was good, but nowhere was it close to what I had expected. I direct my disappointment towards his sound engineer who turned a possibly brilliant set into a mediocre one. Having said that, it did get better later on as the set progressed with Shankar finishing his set with a very catchy garba song. Tucker’s stage presence and his pleasant smile was enough for the crowd to remember his brilliantly recorded videos and groove to whatever they could get from the sound.
A little disappointed with the sound but stoked to have seen Shankar Tucker live and getting to talk to him about his new album, which is expected to release starting of next year, I waited for my second most awaited gig of the day, Blackstratblues and they surely did not disappoint.
As soon as Warren, the brainchild behind Blackstrablues, hit the first note on his beautiful black strat, the journey began of a guy painting the most amazing mental pictures in the crowd’s minds and taking them on a melodious yet heavy, instrumental trip. His set had a good mix of new material like Folkish Three and Anandamide (featuring Karsh Kale on drums) which will be featured on his new album The Universe Has a Strange Sense of Humour that he is working on currently and old material like Anuva’s Sky and Ode to a Sunny Day which have now become crowd favourites. The set also had its share of funny moments when a cricket decided to perch right on drummer Jai Row Kavi’s chest while he blissfully blazed away on the drums, luckily the crew members where there to help him out while he shouted ‘Oh Fuck! Oh Fuck’ without actually missing ‘a fuckin’ beat in the whole process J All in all, Blackstratblues delivered the perfect set possible leaving the crowd shouting for more.
It was time for Indian Ocean next, while part of the crowd waited for the giants of the Indian Indie music scene to arrive on stage I shifted to the MTS other stage to watch the charismatic Ankur Tewari perform an acoustic set. The set had all the crowd favourites from ‘Mohabbat Zindabad’ to ‘Sabse Peeche Hum Khade’. In my opinion the guy is an awesome entertainer and knows how to get the freaking crowd going.
As he finished his high energy set, all hell was about to break loose when the mighty Indian Ocean decided to arrive on stage. Honestly, I was sceptical of Indians Ocean’s performance today because of a change in lead guitarist, with Nikhil Roa coming in place of their founding member Sushmit Sen who left Indian Ocean earlier this year to concentrate on his solo project The Sushmit Sen Chronicles. But, boy! Was I wrong!!! They were on a mission, they had a new sense of energy in them which clearly showed when they pulled off a song they have hardly played before, After the War. They didn’t stop there but went on to play a bunch of other very old ones which they never used to perform live. Obviously, their set could not have ended without the usual ‘Bandeh’, ‘Maa Reva’ & ‘Kandisa’ with Maa Reva obviously meaning drummer Amit Kilam jamming with the Pune crowd on the Khamakh. Now, I have seen a lot of Indian Ocean performances over the years all over India where the crowd, when asked to clap to a certain rhythm, claps on any random beat and any random tempo, but this was the first crowd which hit me with its rhythm sense. Everyone was so damn in-sync with the beat. The gig ended with Vijay Nair, Founder OML, announcing the closure of the bars, to the utter dismay of the crowd.
All in all, it was a brilliant day with some very good music.
Plan for the next day: Come early and check out the flea market and the other stages as well.
Day 2:
Day 1 was brilliant with great music all around; day 2 was supposed to be my day to experiment, chill out with a few drinks and explore the festival arena with just The Midival Punditz & The Raghu Dixit Project on my must-see list. Having spent the night at a ‘Friend’s Friend’s Friend’s’ place as mentioned in my previous article, I set out for day 2 ready to explore.
Top priority: check out the Red Bull Tour bus. What a beauty that bus is! The bus / stage, parked right opposite the Bacardi Arena, opened with a band from Pune called A Mutual Question performing a bunch of post rock / semi psychedelic songs to a receptive crowd of Pune-kars happy to see one of their own perform. This band, probably playing their first festival ever, just blew my mind off with their sound. The synth, the guitars, the bass – everything sounded so freaking good, I really wish they perform more in the coming years.
Soon after their set, the Dewarists stage, which is probably half a Kilometer from the Bacardi Arena (Now you know why I say NH7 Weekender makes you lose weight ;)) was having Maati Baani perform next. Maati Baani is a Hindustani Classical / folk fusion / world music project spear headed by the wonderful and gifted Hindustani Classical vocalist Nirali Kartik and ably backed by her husband Kartik Shah on guitars and a lot of other very talented musicians on drums, saxophone, violin, flute etc. I was aware they are quite good, having seen a few of Nirali’s videos on Youtube, but I didn’t know they were so incredible. With each song, the set just got better and the whole crowd swayed with whatever Maati Baani had to offer. The set included a bunch of Rajasthani folk songs fused with funky guitars and very groovy bass lines, and also a very peppy French song fused with Hindustani classical vocals. Luckily I got a chance to speak to Nirali after the set got over and I tell you, she is the sweetest person on earth, entertaining everybody with their ridiculous / thoughtful questions and also posing with everyone who asked for a pic. I am sure you guys must have seen the ‘happiness is’ posts floating around, here’s one more – Happiness is to meet a wonderfully humble artist after a brilliant gig J
It was now time for some Metchul Vaani from one of India’s top metal bands, Scribe. Now, I am not a huge metalhead, in fact I am the first one to look for the exit as soon as the growling starts but when it comes to Scribe it’s just not about the growling or the headbanging it’s the complete experience that I like. So, I made my way back to the Bacardi Arena (Yes, Yes the 5 Km or so walk) to experience Scribe. One song into the set and a moshpit starts, two songs in – vocalist Vishwesh orders for a wall of death, three songs in – a circle of death, need I say more! (Need to know what they are Youtube Scribe – wall of death) Amidst all this, the band got ticked off by some guy ‘wearing an AC/DC T-Shirt’ for which Mr. Vishwesh had some very nice things to say. I’ll try and transcript it for you ‘maa @#&*)$& behen %&&((@ beti %*(($$* g@#$%^&’ and it goes on. I couldn’t meet Vishwesh after the gig else you would have known the reason behind those sweet words. There’s one more thing that happened during the set – AN ALL-GIRLS MOSHPIT. NO COMMENTS I SAY 😉
With my head still spinning because of all the headbanging (and probably because of the drinking), I relaxed to the soothing sound of British folk rockers Slow Club. I also got some time to check out the flea market and the NH7 merchandise shop. Basically, I was just loosening up for the madness in store.
I also got some time to watch Skindred killing it at the Bacardi Arena but had to run back to catch the Indian Electronica act The Midival Punditz. The Midival Punditz delivered a near perfect set playing mostly material from their new album slated to come out next year and also some of their old classics. The highlight of their set were the guest artists who were called onto the stage to perform with them from Papon in Naina Lagey re to Karsh Kale and Raghu Dixit in the Train Song to their usual set finisher the classic Bhangra Fever with Karsh Kale on drums.
Talking about Raghu Dixit, he and his brilliant band The Raghu Dixit Project were slated next. Well, this was probably my 12th or 13th RDP concert and let me tell you this; given a chance I can still watch them each and every day for probably a whole year and not get bored. That’s how unique each gig of theirs is. This night was no different with Mr. Raghu Dixit doing what he does best; rock the freaking hell out of the crowd. The new album ‘Jag Changa’ which, as bassist Gaurav Vaz rightly pointed out, has been announced in all the previous NH7s but they never really got the time to release it. The album is finally going to release next month and so it made most sense to play most songs from the album. But, as we all know the crowd is never going to leave Raghu Dixit till he sings his most popular song which shot him to fame, Hey Bhagwaan. What was interesting is that The Raghu Dixit Project for the 1st time in any festival was NOTshort of time and so the crowd’s request to play Ambar was also taken gracefully.
The set finished with RDPs regular set finisher Mysore se Ayi after which Vijay Nair came on stage to announce a secret acoustic gig by Ankur Tewary and Nischay Parekh.
Well if there’s a secret gig I have to attend that so I did and it was a lot of fun singing along to Ankur’s songs again. This set also featured this very non veg song call Naman Saraiya. Listen it for yourself.
This ended another awesome day at NH7 Weekender Pune.
Plan for the next day: At least visit the EDM stages once!
