Gig Review - Taxiride @ Velocity

With Mr. Monsoon tucking himself blissfully in the clouds, I was thankful for an equally blissful evening minus the soggy shoes and the disheveled hair on the first evening of June. After gorging ourselves with the divine Noorani butter chicken (have to admit the divinity was to a certain extent caused by my wallet being spared of a strip-tease session :D), me and the-artist-formerly-known-as-the-vocalist-of-Sledgehammer headed our way through the red carpet. Now agreed, we are not your average red carpet material, but hey – this ain’t no average red carpet. For one, it made its way through the ground floor of a dilapidated building in the middle of Tardeo and during the course of the few yards that it was spread over, it presented us with a glimpse through translucent doors to the ghastly world of the living zombies. No, no – we didn’t sign on any ride through some simulated Horror House thingie- That probably measures nowhere near as scary as the sight of the graveyard shift team making up the back office call center for some shoe company in Wisconsin. Yanyway, the point to be noted is the weird setting of the once-happening club in Bombay. Two storeys up – we are there, almost on time – 10.30 to be precise.


The place was pretty packed there when we got there – almost armed to the brim with a predictable blend of people considering the music/band at hand – 1. The omnipresent Poseurs – who can be caricatured on a average as Limp Bizkit Tee clad high-schoolers, trying desperately to sport Newsted-ish goatees, as if to announce vehemently that they have indeed crossed puberty 2. The disc-hopping “I-bet-Taxiride-is-a-once-were-boyband” dhinchik crowd playing peek-a-boo(b) in halter tops, bought with that allowance that Daddy gave them 3. The rollicking expats hoping to do a l’il Melbourne in Mumbai (uuuggghhh..that name!) – they possibly would have been the only category of people hitting the bar (Safe bet – don’tcha think? The first set of people are probably broke enough to count the chillars for the train ticket back home, And the second lot wouldn’t want the extra 10 calories that their Breezer would contribute to their 24 size waist..) and of course...4. The “remind-me-once-again-as-to-why-we-are-here” folks – which I would like to think comprised of only the two of us!! (Thank God for that gift called blatant categorization, eh?..)

Now, moving to the actual gig – we nudged past the aforementioned ( :D) set of people to get a coupla spots near the stage. I soon found myself in the best seat in the house – on the stage! Yeah – there was a small projection to the main part of the stage to the right – they had luckily placed the monitor a little ahead, giving me just enough and more room to rest my ass. The DJ, right now, was spinning the usual suspects for filler tracks at a rock gig – generous sprinklings of RHCP, Nirvana and the likes. You get the picture.

The speakers then blared an announcement, that I had been dying to hear – that Taxiride would be up first (And that I didn’t have to endure a full set list of Pentagram first…).

And then they got on stage – the lads from down under. They opened the set list with “O yeah” – which has consumed enough air share (on VH1) and hence ear share of the audience. We were hooked on from the word go – the attitude of everyone on stage was extremely casual – that in no way means, that they were slack. They were relaxed and at ease. We sorta joined in on the fun cooing along the chorus and for most parts the actual verses of the track too. What struck me immediately was the fact that the stark contrast in my perception of their music when seeing them alive as against hearing their record. I had totally thrashed their album (you can read it here ), but I gotta say – they have to be given at least some credit. True it isn’t some earth shattering stuff and what’s more true – I will probably not be a regular at spinning their record – But that’s only because their music is not the kinds which are right up my alley. These guys were very tight – they worked within their scope of the musical territory and they were actually good. What sounds as simple and commercialized pop-rock turned out to be a quite complicated conjugation of some solid bass grooves, some intense drumming and some brilliant stuff on the guitars both by the lead guitarist (Tim, I guess his name is..) and Jason Singh – not to mention the quintessential harmonies forming the backbone.

They were probably quite pleased at the kind of sing alongs that the track “O yeah” received. They launched into some tracks of theirs – most of it I hadn’t heard before, considering I just own Axiomatic. The tracks out of Axiomatic that they did play and which I did manage to recognize were – everything + nothing, (possibly the pick out of the CD for me)stone etc. Jason did utter some niceties on him coming back home or half home or whatever, on India and Bombay ete etc. Bleh! It was quite lost on us actually – possibly because either I was exchanging notes with the boyfriend character about their tracks or I was little distracted by the antics of the aunties standing next to me or I was much more distracted by that dude of a bassy that they have. (I was sitting right under his nose – I think I manage to extract a couple of smiles from him…Okay, okay – I did say “I think”!!!).

They also happened to catch themselves on the mounted TVs thanks to the marketing whiz kids at VH1 and Jason acted quite surprised by it. If only he knew that their two singles out of Axiomatic have, in all likelihood, been aired much more in the past few months than all the music videos of the all the other Australian rock bands put together…(Actually, maybe we should leave INXS out.. I do remember the repeated show casts of one of their singles when the band was making fools of themselves on that vocalist casting show..). He, half-rhetorically, questioned whether we have seen their new single – "What can I say?" Boy! Have we?! Anyway, what ensued was another round of karaoking with the stars – which seemed to get the band quite enthused. They did a coupla tracks after that and before we know it, the intros of the band are going around and they are walking off stage!!! I joined in on the naatak of the “one more” chants – except that it turned out to be a collective half whimper. The guys returned though – visibly embarrassed for having to go along with this ridiculously mundane tactic. This time, I felt I owed them a proper encore/track request – so I did belch out one of the tracks that I do remember out of their album. But they would mostly mistaken that for another “woohoo” from my end. I did a lot of that during the evening – consolidating my position as first-liner!!

As for the story of my crush on Jason Singh, that predictably came to a screeching halt. My first impression of him when he walked out on stage was that he looked like an un-bloated version of that dude Sanjeev Kumar (out of the Kumars at No.42). Your next door Punjabi Munda kinds – with the gelled hair combed back and with not a hair out of place, adorning one of those V-neckers showing the cleavage of his clean shaved chest. So I shifted gaze and base to the bassy – one of those rugged rugby playing types with curly locks and all. Didn’t quite get his name though and the internet also seems to be dry regarding the band and their background. In any case – Jason was actually very good as a vocalist and did put up fantastic show. (I did manage to draw his attention for a fleeting moment during the course of a track and got a very cute smile as an acknowledgement). The drummer, who I did not pay much attention to, was pretty amazing and that’s the least that can be said of the lead guitarist. T

he one thing that appealed to me the most about the band was the fact they seemed to be genuinely enjoying themselves. There was no rockstar attitude bullshit, no barefaced attempts at telling us to go pick up their albums, no over-the-top “I love this country” stuff . They were constantly talking to each other and having fun during the entire gig. And this was very infectious on us too!

The evening took on an bipolar turn when the Dadlani dude came out with the rest of his Pentagram Puppets. Dressed in a doctor coat proclaiming “Youth for equality” and the clenched fist symbol, his stage act was filled with a anti-reservation message manifesto that turned out to be quite hilarious. Wouldn’t you also wanna laugh when a being reminiscent of a full grown gorilla appeals to young monkey zombies by uttering some profanities about the political parties? They did pass out a subscription form for supporting this cause, which took the comic quotient up by a notch. We decided it ain’t worth to stick around and then end up paying a fortune in cab fare. So we left and caught the 12.42 back home.

All in all...quite a memorable evening!