Gaurav Joshua Vaz (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} derherr) wrote,@ 2006-08-20 13:14:00 |
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Not for the money ... not for the pride ...!
continuing from where I last left off ...
Phenom became a regular at the different inter college events and used to play a different set compared to many of the bands around then. I mean we never tried 'smoke on the water', 'hallowed be thy name', 'breaking the law' ... we never played any Metallica or Iron Maiden and at that time, it meant a lot!! and those songs were sure shot winners, you could get the audience with those songs everytime! but we never played them!
And instead we played songs from the Cranberries and Alanis Morrissette and CCR and Collective Soul and the Eagles and believe it or not, we did gather quite a following! We weren't the best ... (not until much later ;)) but we weren't that bad either! It was all about getting the songs right note perfect and we would be at it hours on end. Sometimes jamming way into the wee hours of the morning in college. Those were the days when it was still possible to do that!
In retrospect, the one thing that kept phenom going was Noella! she was the star and atleast for me, the reason we kept going! There were millions of times when she would make excuses at every other place she was supposed to be at and every other thing she was supposed to do and squeeze in that hour of practice and come sing so beautifully for a show! And the number of times, phenom would have just been an obscure band in the competition if not for her coming and winning the best vocalist award. There were times when we convinced our selves the competition was rigged coz she din't win the best vocalist award. The perfect mamma of the band, she was and we had one person with whom we could clarify all those things we always wanted to know but were too scared to ask!
Lala - you inspired us to get to where we eventually managed to go and it would have never been possible without you!
The other guy who played a stellar role for the band was Deepu who played bass for the first year of the bands existence. He had by then passed out of college but made a fake ID which showed him as a student still and continued to play for us at all the competitions! This was the time when I din't even know what the purpose of a bass guitar was in a band and had no idea what to do with one! That horrendous purple fender rip off tinted tulsi bass guitar was a nightmare to play on but he just managed somehow! His presence itself was the coolness factor we needed! at one show, he forgot to remove his shades all through the show and was later wondering why it was so dark from up there!!
The next year started off with a shocker! Deepu couldn't play for us anymore, he had landed himself a job which kept him away during our free time and free when we had classes, so we couldn't practice with him anymore and Noella had landed herself in an internship which would keep her away most of the time also. That meant two things, we needed a new bassist and a new vocalist! and we din't see anyone else in the college at that time who could fill in either because they had the time but din't play any instrument/sing or because they din't have the time to spare!
But then, that was how my foray into becoming a bass guitarist started. Over the next few months, I began to grapple with doing both the vocal and the bass guitar duties for the band and even now I felt that I was not doing justice to either! I was an average bassist with a sucky voice!! both of which improved over time but it started out BAD!!
The four of us .. Mrinal, JD, Sashi and I were the most jobless people on campus ... well not Mrinal and JD but atleast Sashi and I, Mrinal and JD were into building this funky robot thing and would end up discussing design issues for a robotic arm or pattern searching algorithms during jams when Sashi and I would just wonder what to thulp them with!
In the midst of all this, we wrote 'Unbound' originally called song 2. It was inspired and based on a poem by Kavita and it turned out to become such a beautiful song. It still brings a tear to the eye when I play it live. Infact, one of our most cherished moments, in my memory was when I looked up from stage and saw people I din't know singing along with that song!
Unbound inspired us to write more and 'Resurgence' was written to be this answer to the heavy metal boys and to satiate all those who kept asking us to play some 'heavy' stuff. We were trying to so hard to come up with lyrics for a heavy metal type song which we could never eventually do. The night before the college fest Aatmatrisha where we wanted to play this song for the first time, we struggled to come up with vocal lines even but realised it was too tough to do and decided to play the music the way it was without the vocal line as an instrumental. We loved the way it sounded!! and it has stayed an instrumental ever since!
The next song we wrote was 'A little step' which was to be part of a compilation of songs about peace and love for the Asian Youth day or some such thing that happened in Bangalore. One of my friends who was an organiser of this meet asked me if Phenom would write a song and we said yes!! (at that time infact, we used to say yes to everything! almost like shreyas :P )
Sashi had this wonderful intro chord sequence ready and we just started writing, Noella started helping out with the lyrics process and took off on a tangent about some mother and an estranged child (I still have that sheet she wrote on somewhere here at home!). She was originally supposed to sing the song but couldn't make it to the recording or even the practices before. So I was forced to sing it! :D
Kavita infact suggested the title 'A little step' after going through half the lyrics for the song. I say half the lyrics because, the second verse was written 5 minutes before the recording! After all the instruments had been recorded, it was time to record vocals and I suggested we go for dinner before we record vocals and completed the song at the dinner table! But that song turned out to be such a beautiful song! I still prefer the version where Noella sang it during our final recording!
Atul - put out that version please!
Our final year of college was the most fruitful for us and we were placed in top 3 at almost every competition that we took part it and it was a given! The best of those achievements being the victory at NLS Strawberry Fields! 2 years before, Sashi had mentioned to me when we went to watch the competition that he will be happy with all the time put in the band etc if we could win that competition and 2 years after that ... we did!! That night I will never forget!! when we were the only college band to be announced as finalists which meant we won the college category! that dinner at casa picola was the best ever! There were tears of joy all around!! It din't matter who won the finals eventually ... nothing mattered infact! I even won the best Bassist award that year at NLS!
During this time, we knew that Sashi was planning to go back to Nagaland and settle down there, do his civil services etc and the band was to take a break. Everything was uncertain and it was a wierd time. This was when I decided we had to write a song about the band and how it has been and what it will be ... the working title I used was called 'the Phenomenon'. We sat and tried to collaborate on the lyrics! I remember asking Mrinal, JD and Sashi to give me situations and lines and where to take the song etc ... We based it on being somewhere in the woods in Mrinal's green car and then just try to figure out the song from there. Then suddenly someone came up with using the registration number of the car CAP5101 as the title of the song and that just stuck! it was just the best tribute to the band! 'Not for the money and not for the pride' became the most famous line we've ever said!! Everyone was shouting it during our shows!
And then we played our most rocking concert at college, we opened for Antaragini (with a lot of chaos from the college administration as usual) and we gave it all!! it was so heartening to see the entire college jumping and dancing to us playing! The most fitting finale we could ever get from college!
And just like that .... it was done!
continuing from where I last left off ...
Phenom became a regular at the different inter college events and used to play a different set compared to many of the bands around then. I mean we never tried 'smoke on the water', 'hallowed be thy name', 'breaking the law' ... we never played any Metallica or Iron Maiden and at that time, it meant a lot!! and those songs were sure shot winners, you could get the audience with those songs everytime! but we never played them!
And instead we played songs from the Cranberries and Alanis Morrissette and CCR and Collective Soul and the Eagles and believe it or not, we did gather quite a following! We weren't the best ... (not until much later ;)) but we weren't that bad either! It was all about getting the songs right note perfect and we would be at it hours on end. Sometimes jamming way into the wee hours of the morning in college. Those were the days when it was still possible to do that!
In retrospect, the one thing that kept phenom going was Noella! she was the star and atleast for me, the reason we kept going! There were millions of times when she would make excuses at every other place she was supposed to be at and every other thing she was supposed to do and squeeze in that hour of practice and come sing so beautifully for a show! And the number of times, phenom would have just been an obscure band in the competition if not for her coming and winning the best vocalist award. There were times when we convinced our selves the competition was rigged coz she din't win the best vocalist award. The perfect mamma of the band, she was and we had one person with whom we could clarify all those things we always wanted to know but were too scared to ask!
Lala - you inspired us to get to where we eventually managed to go and it would have never been possible without you!
The other guy who played a stellar role for the band was Deepu who played bass for the first year of the bands existence. He had by then passed out of college but made a fake ID which showed him as a student still and continued to play for us at all the competitions! This was the time when I din't even know what the purpose of a bass guitar was in a band and had no idea what to do with one! That horrendous purple fender rip off tinted tulsi bass guitar was a nightmare to play on but he just managed somehow! His presence itself was the coolness factor we needed! at one show, he forgot to remove his shades all through the show and was later wondering why it was so dark from up there!!
The next year started off with a shocker! Deepu couldn't play for us anymore, he had landed himself a job which kept him away during our free time and free when we had classes, so we couldn't practice with him anymore and Noella had landed herself in an internship which would keep her away most of the time also. That meant two things, we needed a new bassist and a new vocalist! and we din't see anyone else in the college at that time who could fill in either because they had the time but din't play any instrument/sing or because they din't have the time to spare!
But then, that was how my foray into becoming a bass guitarist started. Over the next few months, I began to grapple with doing both the vocal and the bass guitar duties for the band and even now I felt that I was not doing justice to either! I was an average bassist with a sucky voice!! both of which improved over time but it started out BAD!!
The four of us .. Mrinal, JD, Sashi and I were the most jobless people on campus ... well not Mrinal and JD but atleast Sashi and I, Mrinal and JD were into building this funky robot thing and would end up discussing design issues for a robotic arm or pattern searching algorithms during jams when Sashi and I would just wonder what to thulp them with!
In the midst of all this, we wrote 'Unbound' originally called song 2. It was inspired and based on a poem by Kavita and it turned out to become such a beautiful song. It still brings a tear to the eye when I play it live. Infact, one of our most cherished moments, in my memory was when I looked up from stage and saw people I din't know singing along with that song!
Unbound inspired us to write more and 'Resurgence' was written to be this answer to the heavy metal boys and to satiate all those who kept asking us to play some 'heavy' stuff. We were trying to so hard to come up with lyrics for a heavy metal type song which we could never eventually do. The night before the college fest Aatmatrisha where we wanted to play this song for the first time, we struggled to come up with vocal lines even but realised it was too tough to do and decided to play the music the way it was without the vocal line as an instrumental. We loved the way it sounded!! and it has stayed an instrumental ever since!
The next song we wrote was 'A little step' which was to be part of a compilation of songs about peace and love for the Asian Youth day or some such thing that happened in Bangalore. One of my friends who was an organiser of this meet asked me if Phenom would write a song and we said yes!! (at that time infact, we used to say yes to everything! almost like shreyas :P )
Sashi had this wonderful intro chord sequence ready and we just started writing, Noella started helping out with the lyrics process and took off on a tangent about some mother and an estranged child (I still have that sheet she wrote on somewhere here at home!). She was originally supposed to sing the song but couldn't make it to the recording or even the practices before. So I was forced to sing it! :D
Kavita infact suggested the title 'A little step' after going through half the lyrics for the song. I say half the lyrics because, the second verse was written 5 minutes before the recording! After all the instruments had been recorded, it was time to record vocals and I suggested we go for dinner before we record vocals and completed the song at the dinner table! But that song turned out to be such a beautiful song! I still prefer the version where Noella sang it during our final recording!
Atul - put out that version please!
Our final year of college was the most fruitful for us and we were placed in top 3 at almost every competition that we took part it and it was a given! The best of those achievements being the victory at NLS Strawberry Fields! 2 years before, Sashi had mentioned to me when we went to watch the competition that he will be happy with all the time put in the band etc if we could win that competition and 2 years after that ... we did!! That night I will never forget!! when we were the only college band to be announced as finalists which meant we won the college category! that dinner at casa picola was the best ever! There were tears of joy all around!! It din't matter who won the finals eventually ... nothing mattered infact! I even won the best Bassist award that year at NLS!
During this time, we knew that Sashi was planning to go back to Nagaland and settle down there, do his civil services etc and the band was to take a break. Everything was uncertain and it was a wierd time. This was when I decided we had to write a song about the band and how it has been and what it will be ... the working title I used was called 'the Phenomenon'. We sat and tried to collaborate on the lyrics! I remember asking Mrinal, JD and Sashi to give me situations and lines and where to take the song etc ... We based it on being somewhere in the woods in Mrinal's green car and then just try to figure out the song from there. Then suddenly someone came up with using the registration number of the car CAP5101 as the title of the song and that just stuck! it was just the best tribute to the band! 'Not for the money and not for the pride' became the most famous line we've ever said!! Everyone was shouting it during our shows!
And then we played our most rocking concert at college, we opened for Antaragini (with a lot of chaos from the college administration as usual) and we gave it all!! it was so heartening to see the entire college jumping and dancing to us playing! The most fitting finale we could ever get from college!
And just like that .... it was done!
