Friday, April 4, 2008

my first split gig ever

since all the bloggers here are getting really old and have nothing interesting to talk about other than the usual "split hit the stage and it was their best show ever" crap, i'm going post something that's smart.

it's about the first split gig i ever saw.

i walked out of the shower, the water was running down my legs, my manly muscles glistened.... erm... okay, sorry. so, i had a shower and got ready for the gig. tauraez (a rather shy split fan) and another friend were waiting for me at the door. remember, this was a long time ago, 2004 i think, and i had to ask my mom to "please give me some money so i can go to watch a rock band play rock music and i promise i won't do drugs and waste my life". my mom agreed this time. so, i left the house with exactly 110 rupees in my pocket. with 10 extra rupees, i thought i'd buy a lighter so we could play lighter-fight while suffering the nightmare of having to listen to the opening bands. (lighter fight is when you try and burn the opponent's lighter bearing hand with your lighter, yes, i invented it)

just as we were walking out of the colony, this fat chick fainted. we didn't really care, you know... because she was fat. but then we thought that it would be insensitive to let the fat girl faint like that, so we picked her up and waited for some nice person to come along so we could let him take care of her. and her boyfriend did come running, so all was well i guess, but noooooo, we had to take her to the hospital. so, since we are indeed really caring and sensitive guys, we reluctantly did that.

so, we took her to the nearest hospital and looked at our watch (only one of us had a watch, i lost mine in a gutter) and ohmyfuckinggod! it was 6:30! the fucking gig was fucking supposed to start at fucking 6:00 fucking! aaaaaaaaaaah! i didn't want to miss the gig. so i started running towards koregaon park (5 km away) when i noticed that the ric guy was running right behind me. apparently, we were supposed to pay him. wtf?! we said "bhai-saahab, woh ladki se paise le lo?" to which he said "woh to behosh hai". and suddenly we realized. we had to pay the ric guy 40 bucks and we only had 210 (for two gig entries)

you know what sucks? missing a gig. you know what sucks even more? missing the gig because some fat chick fainted and you had to be mr-nice-guy and carry her to the fucking hospital. and there was no way we'd let society treat us like that. so we waited like pansies for her boyfriend to come along who then paid for the ric fare (and for our ric fare to the gig) but then we scolded him, said "you fucking lund, we were supposed to reach the gig at 6:00. it's 6:45 now". but then we decided not to waste too much time and left in the same ric, without the behosh-ladki.

we reached abc farms at 7:00 and we were pretty sure we had missed the "cool band from bombay" and we were really pissed off and promised each other that next time, we'd kill any fainting fat girl at sight. but we tried getting into jazz garden anyway. our third friend had made it comfortably without having to deal with what we just had dealt with. so, i reached the ticket counter and told the guy "three tickets for split gig please?" and he said "sure, 450 bucks".


*heart breaking sound*


me: "what?!"
he: "450, man"
me: "but the pamphlet says 100 per ticket"
he: "yeah, 50 bucks for cover charge"
me: "what's cover-charge?"
he: "you can drink something for 50 bucks inside"
me: "what if i don't want to drink for 50 bucks inside?"
he: "then you waste 50 bucks"
me: "can't you give it to someone else? i'm sure someone's going to drink more than me, i don't drink"
he: "sorry man, 450 or bust"

we weren't going to pay 450 bucks for half a split gig, no way! no way in hell. so we tried to picket the show, we stood at the entry telling everyone that they were ripping us off and that we didn't deserve it. the third friend being a girl started chit-chatting with other girls instead and we had to ask her to get to work. but the whole concept of "cover charge" which was rather alien to us, seemed to be perfectly fine with everyone else. so we couldnt' gather much support. (read: any support)

by now the ticket dude was kinda pissed off and he said "okay, get someone to buy your cover charge and we'll let you choots in". that was the first time i felt really happy when someone called me a "chut" and i said, "sure". then we started trying to convince people to buy our cover charge for us. there were very few people entering jazz garden at that time, probably because the show was over and they were just groupies trying to get some. the third friend was still having a great time chit-chatting from "hey, please buy our cover" to "ooh, what lovely shoes". we had to unfortunately loose a member of our trio when we asked her to sit in one corner and let us do the work.

finally, a bunch of firangs said alright, which was kinda sad because one of them was a really cute brunette who smiled at me. she was probably thinknig "oh, he's cute but if he can't buy cover charge for himself then i don't think he'll be able to support a gamily". i was in love by the time i got in and they handed us these hand rolled cigarettes and i said "fuck, are you kidding me? i don't smoke" and he looked at me like "pansy" and asked me to get in.

something was seriously wrong with the venue. the stage was empty and the girls were unlike what they tell you about rock-chicks in movies. in the movies they're skinny, tall, wearing black, hot, messy hair and all. here... i saw girls wearing flowery skirts and pink tops. and what was even-wronger was that it was 7:30 and there was no band on stage, so we asked the chutya ticket guy again.

me: "dude, you lund, where's the band?"
he: "they'll be on stage soon"
me: "what?! weren't they supposed to be on stage at 6:00? that's what it says on the pamphlet"
he: "yeah but when it says 6:00 it never starts at 6:00"

what kind of fucked up logic that was, god only knows. but we waited patiently inside, playing lighter-fight. the first band was so lame i wanted to stuff mud in my ears in an attempt to put and end to the agony that was their music. i could have made better musing banging my head on a piano. i don't know what the band was thinking, seriously. i'd give them a grammy for NOT EVER PLAYING MUSIC EVER. this dude wearing a cap was playing the acoustic guitar was within reach and i swear i was going to hit him on the shins or something.

but the pain was soon over. and on came the band...

i'm not sure about who was on stage at that time but here's the lineup from what i can remember
guitars - vishwesh
vocals - garreth
bass - shekhar
drums - nigel

gary got on stage and his first request was "could we have all the lights off? except for this red one right here". his demands were met.

there was something about the mere presence of the band on stage that made us move to the front. the girly-friend of ours had been asked to not sit in the corner anymore and move ahead. we got to stand right in front, within reach of the monitors and split burst into their first song from the set.

i don't remember the own comps that they played but i distinctly remember pig society. either that or an old version of it that started a moshpit where i was beaten the hell out of by this sardar guy (revenge will be mine). the covers were what got me to really like the band. since these are the only songs that i had heard before. minerva (deftones) you know you're right (nirvana) i stand alone (godsmack) and an incubus song whos name i can't recall.

gary then took a break and this blonde guy, robert plant lookalike took over the vocals with, what i recall, were a couple of rage covers. if they were then bullet in the head was one of them. very very nicely done, vishwesh did some backup vocals here and there.

they got an encore too, mostly by guys yelling "sabbath! sabbath! sabbath madharchod!" but the rest wanted the band to play a little more. the encore happened, i said "job well done" to vishwesh, talking to him like i was malmsteen going "yeah, i liked the way you played minerva but it's actually done in a different way".

my neck was officially fucked, i couldn't hold it up and the ticketguy went "oh, you don't drink ha?" and i said "yeah, i was headbanging man, if you know what that means".

i got home at 2am and i wasn't allowed to go watch rock bands play rock music for another month or so. but it was worth it. fond memories of split.

cheers!
kalhan

3 comments:

mr.pot-atohed said...

kalhans alive!!!!

hes alive!!!!

Bombay Girl said...

Yellow,

Trackback for music related mention here.

Rock On!

Sosha said...

Oh my god, are you hilarious, or what! I was guffawing through the entire post, man!
“So we picked her up and waited for some nice person to come along so we could let him take care of her.” At this point itself, I think I died laughing.