It was just a laugh just a lie just a laugh just a laugh

I don’t want to go on for too long about ‘Identikit’ because I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop. So let’s just talk briefly about the one guitar on the side running through the song, mostly picking up steam in the second half. It’s not an angry part, but it follows the trajectory of repressed anger faithfully. Short, sudden jolts of expression peek out from time to time, before the protagonist retracts and retreats, aware that it’s not always a smart idea to be too animated in public. Such as when said protagonist is standing in a queue or in an overcrowded train compartment. She lets out little sighs and other sounds of disapproval every time she gets nudged in the side or smacked in the jaw by a stray arm. Then someone cuts the line so she starts off, measured and composed and rational and balanced and logical. She’s keeping it together — just about.

But then, when that one asshole steps on her foot, that’s when shit hits the ceiling. Which is the last 30 seconds of the song: the guitar solo. It’s an outburst, bursting at the seams with rage and fury and yet surprisingly composed and articulate. It has to be ‘Identikit’. I’ll get to the ‘it’ in a while.

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I’m sick of A Moon Shaped Pool — I swear. Each time ‘Burn The Witch’ starts off with its ratatatting strings — played with a guitar pick, because where’s the fun otherwise? — I feel this urge to shove a pair of tweezers into my ear and pull out the drum. But before we get ahead of ourselves, I feel I should clarify that the fault, as with most things, is entirely mine, and not the music’s. This is an album that, for the past four months and nine days, has been an inextractable (not a word, but it means “that which cannot be extracted”) part of my physical existence.

I have abused the record to a worrying degree. I’ve heard it in autos, rickshaws, Olas, Ubers (which I recently started using because they let me pay in cash now), aeroplanes (because I’m rich), trains (because I’m not rich), on motorcycles and scooters, on bicycles, tricycles, and unicycles — while driving too, until Delhi’s finest suspended my license for being 2 km over the speed limit. And while walking. And sitting/lying down.

I’ve actually literally without exaggeration run through two sets of earphones. One is an Apple and it’s all worn out now, but it still sort of works. The previous ones were these really cool Sennheiser earphones that I had to cremate because they packed up, and now I’ve bought a new pair just like those (because their price dropped). (I think even the MP3 files I have have started crackling a bit.) Further, it may sound like a giant coincidence (but it’s not) but, in addition to the earphones, I’ve also had to get a new phone and a new laptop.

It’s understandable then that I don’t want to see its face again. Just the thought of it makes me wince. These days, after four long months, I sometimes try to listen to other music as well. And I can’t manage it. Two songs, maybe three tops, into any other album I decide to hear, I get separation anxiety. I get real actual pangs. I suddenly develop serious abandonment issues. Which is when I throw away the album I’m listening to (metaphorically), and go back to ‘Burn The Witch’. And then I feel safe and comfortable and content and at ease and peaceful and also a little agitated and unsettled and twitchy. So I take back all that dramatic stuff about being sick of the album and wanting to rip out my ear-drum because I don’t. Apologies. It's a strange kind of limbo I find myself in, where I want to hear it when I'm not, but when I am I want to not. But I also do. 

Anyway, so then just in terms of time spent and obsession indulged, A Moon Shaped Pool ranks right up there in my arbitrary list of greatest-of-all-time albums. I don’t think it’s topped OK Computer or Kid A/Amnesiac just yet, but it’s early days. There are a bunch of other albums on that list too (yes, I do in fact listen to other bands as well). Most (if not all) of those albums are more than a few years old. Which is not to say that there hasn’t been anything worth my time in the last three or four years — not at all; quite the opposite, in fact — or that I’m living in the past.

There’s a slightly deeper point. It’s that, I think, the greatness of an album truly comes to the surface in hindsight. It’s hard to tell how good a good album is when it first comes out (except maybe in exceptional cases). Longevity, then, dictates an album’s status in the imaginary history of music.

Like, you have to revisit an album multiple times, across different moods and life-situations, across different contexts, to really gauge its impact on you beyond just the immediate. And all of that takes time. Last year, I remember falling in love with a handful of albums — off the top of my head: The Demon Joke, Junun, The Best Day (or was that the year before?). But I haven’t yet gone back to that music enough to know definitively. By my own metrics, right now the most recent set of albums on my list are from, I think, 2013. So I guess maybe two-and-a-half-to-three years after release is an appropriate time to make an assessment? For whatever reasons, all that’s happened in express speed with AMSP, or maybe it’s the exception. Whatever.

But this is not one of those self-serving exercises where I claim an album is great and you, the reader, are expected to just believe me. (Well, it is a little bit, but it goes beyond that.) While the year has been absolutely horrid in terms of most other things, 2016 has been great for music. I don’t want to waste time rattling off a list, but there’ve been a lot of very cool releases this year (including these gems). For what it’s worth, it’s re-stoked my interest (which never waned, to be honest) in the fart-filled intellectual concepts surrounding an ‘album’ — what it stands for, how it should be released, how it’s priced, who’s listening, why, the works.  

One important factor in determining said status of an album has to be the difficulty in zeroing in on a stand-out song (although that applies to shitty albums just as well, but we’re assuming a basic level of common sense here). Like: What is the stand-out song from Nevermind? Is it ‘Lithium’, or ‘In Bloom’, or ‘Polly’, or ‘Teen Spirit’, or ‘Drain You’, or ‘Come As You Are’, or ‘Breed’? I don’t know. Apply this to any album you love — chances are, it’ll work.

So there’s ‘Burn The Witch’, with its jittery arrangement of strings gnawing at you, while this huge, glorious vocal melody — that seems almost to follow an altogether different song — washes over the structure. The squeaks get progressively more restless; the words becoming increasingly ominous and larger-than-life. There's a fairly drastic transition into the underwater piano opening of ‘Daydreaming’, which is such an absurdly understated song. The first time I heard it, I kept waiting, kept expecting it to explode into like a bigger, all-out peak of some kind (think ‘Exit Music For A Film’). Ab aayega… ab aayega… ab aayega. It never came. Which was amazing. You know, I was hoping for a crescendo not just on the first listen but also the second, third, and fourth ones. Took me some six tries before I figured out the peak was already there, just that it was buried: the slithering, shapeshifting strings that sound like a truck horn. It grows on you in such an unnatural way, really. I don’t want to sound too gushy (too late), but it has this remarkable quality that very few songs have, where they end and you feel just a little shortchanged. That there should be more — I wouldn’t want to let go just yet. The sadness of something finishing sets in even before that something actually finishes. It is — please slap me for resorting to such low-hanging descriptions — poignant.   

As an aside, sometimes you (I) judge an album’s greatness on just one or two songs. Like there’s this album called Spry From Bitter Anise Folds by Fifths of Seven, a Canadian band from the Godspeed You! Black Emperor camp. I don’t want to start describing a wholly different album now, but it has one song, ‘Rosa Centifolia’, that makes me revisit it every few months. In that respect, AMSP, just with its two opening songs, makes the cut (plus 'Identikit'). As in, it’s good enough. You move on to ‘Decks Dark’ next, which is when you realise that the album has this watery sense of melodic focus — it’s channeled via big, expressive moments, but then each song is packed to the brim with those moments, with layer after layer serving a very real, very critical purpose. Not a note, not a single left-to-right-lilting-reverb pan here, is extraneous.

There’s ‘The Numbers’, which has a panoramic, pastoral sense of openness that reveals itself to you right up front with a very endearing sense of vulnerability. ‘Present Tense’ sounds, to me, like a songwriting synthesis of the two previous songs, ‘Identikit’ and ‘The Numbers’ — a solid enough recipe. Plus it has a playful sense of dynamic movement that gives the song a cat-and-mouse air. Despite its very cool name and broad and unexpected orchestral arrangements, ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief’ falls slightly short for me personally. It gets into a very constrained space that’s often a little claustrophobic so I have to, from time to time, skip it to avoid any onset of full-blown panic followed by full-blown gloom.

‘Ful Stop’ has all its jazz-rocky coolness that’s so blatant in the distant, fade-in, whirring drums, with a vocal delivery straight from the Kid A/Amnesiac school of obscure, mumbly, far-away lines. But, in comparison to the rest of the record, its novelty does wear off eventually, to the point where it’s become a song I (sometimes) skip. ‘Glass Eyes’ (yes, Thom Yorke wrote a song called ‘Glass Eyes’, as another reminder that the band has a sense of humour) seems almost like filler at first, until it stops being so. The song seems, for me, to fall in a space it shares with songs like ‘Faust Arp’ or ‘Wolf At The Door’ in that it resides on a restrained, folksy register — sort of like a calculated lull in the narrative of the album’s story.

Back to D, since the track-list is alphabetically arranged, ‘Desert Island Disk’, again a little folksy in its design, is a song I heard a few months ago, when Thom Yorke premiered an acoustic version of it. I didn’t like it much then, or when I first heard the album. But it grew from being my least favourite song off this new record to not being that at all. It picks out these unexpected notes that transform the song into impressionism repeatedly — whatever that means.

Eventually, though, we must get to ‘True Love Waits’. Here’s a song that’s been around for ages. I heard it like a decade or something ago, after reading about it on fan forums everywhere. It was such a thing. And it never really worked for me. Sure, the words are lovely and Yorke really gives it everything on the acoustic version, but it was always nothing more than a Good Song, and also a song I couldn’t claim to dislike too much because, come on, it’s ‘True Love Waits’. But it just seemed a little bit… pedestrian.

And May happened. I change my mind about things all the time, but I don’t remember doing a quicker about-face in the recent past. Within the first few bars of the song, with its deconstructed chords plunked kindly on the piano and Yorke’s older (on the verge of crackling), wiser, world-weary voice, I was sold. Worth the wait, I’d say.

Which brings me back to my somewhat-submerged sort-of-point, which is that I can’t figure out the stand-out song here. I’ve had six to eight different favourites, all in four months (as detailed painstakingly above), and I can’t make up my mind. I don’t know which ones to skip. If I ever become a playlist-person, I don’t know which of these songs would make it to those Happy Mood/Sad Mood/Pensive Mood/Light-Hearted Mood/Wacky Mood lists. It’s a problem, just not one that I’m complaining about.

As a post-script, I should add that I’m well aware that the rhapsodising here makes me one of those people, the kind of fan everyone laughs at. But it goes further than that. It’s dawned upon me only very recently that I’m not 17 anymore, that I haven’t been for the past 12 years. So I’ve been living with a constant, irrational fear that the magic may be gone. That the thrill of discovering something new will begin to fade and the edges will get rounded off. That the boredom of age will be couched as “personal growth”, where cynicism takes the place of rampant enthusiasm — and Joy. So it’s as much appreciation as it is a giant fucking relief that I haven’t yet reached that stage. 

May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door OR: The Missed Drum Stick, The Story Of Time, And The Nature Of An Abstract Experience

Mogwai were playing a few feet away. It’s sort of a bit like the first few seconds of an earthquake, when you realize you’re actually feeling the thing instead of sleeping through it. The excitement precedes the possibility of destruction. Or waking up while it’s still dark outside, getting ready on Fast Forward, and then leaving the city for a short vacation. Something like the warm, disarming smile of a complete stranger that makes you feel almost exposed. Or when, say you live in Bombay and take a flight to Delhi in December or January. You step out of the aircraft into an unfamiliar cold, one that the body takes a while to absorb into its million pores. In that brief limbo period, the icy waves on your face are liberating. Watching the band live in Delhi last week, I remember how I kept checking my watch every couple of songs, the reasons for which seem no clearer now than at the time. The larger meaninglessness of such instances only enhances their pure immediacy.

See, I rarely wear a watch. I used to own a nice watch three years ago. Then, one of the loops into which the strap settles fell off. Instead of going to a shop five minutes from my house to get it fixed, I abandoned the idea of wearing one altogether. Until recently. A supplementary/backup internet connection was purchased at home, along with which we received a low-quality free watch. It has little threads hanging loose — its innards have become its outards, you could say (don’t go) — but it does a respectable job of telling me the time. Plus, I’m trying to recalibrate my system so that I don’t aimlessly whip out my cell phone to check the time/ponder over some abstract notion of staring into a digital screen every few minutes. So I wear that watch off and on, whenever I can remember to. Like I did during Mogwai’s set a week ago, and kept checking religiously.

Did I want the set to end? No, but in a way I think I did. I was one of the few people in the area up front not begging for an encore. It was also the exact opposite, of course. I kept looking at the time because the more you do that, the more time seems to slow down (as any obsessive person will testify). Or maybe it was something else entirely. I remember years ago, during a spell of reading about sleep patterns and all related material (what?), I read about this trick to help you accomplish the elusive act of lucid dreaming. You stare at numbers on a watch when you’re awake, and will them to change, to the point where it becomes habitual — like biting your cuticles. You concentrate really hard on changing the four into a two or a ‘K’, even though it never does. Then, during a dream, when you automatically will your watch numbers to change, and they do, you become aware that it’s a dream, and you can subsequently control what’s happening. So maybe it had something to do with the loss of control, but that’s something I ceded quite willingly, so maybe not.

Then ‘I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead’ began to play. In my hazy, barely-conscious state, I first thought they’d kicked into ‘Auto Rock’ — I’ve only heard these two songs some tens of thousands of times regularly over the past 12 years or so, so that’s an understandable mistake I should think. It’s when the set truly ‘hit’ — the loss of control became a comfortable state of existence. It’s hard to know for sure if I shed a stray tear or two because a lot of the actions at the time were involuntary.

Like the guy standing next to me, leaning on the railing and literally not moving the entire time. He presumably hadn’t bathed, shaved, or cut his hair in years, so not moving seems the next logical step in the progression — plus why would he? He had the best seat (standing place) in the house. Or the one on my right, who decided to sing along to the instrumental music of Mogwai. I wondered briefly if it was a misguided attempt to impress his ladyfriend (who chose the more conventional method of tapping her foot and bopping her head to the music) but I think he was just an idiot. I blocked him out instantly, and he faded in and out of the screen of my consciousness after. During ‘Hunted by a Freak’, where Barry Burns does sing — heavily processed and indecipherable as the vocals may be — my Not Friend to the right, let’s call him John Mayor, decided to not only sing along but also harmonize to the vocal melody of the song, making up his own lyrics (obviously). It was impressive — I have also never wanted to punch someone quite as badly. But in a matter of seconds, I had blocked him out again. It was OK — I wasn’t actually angry.    

Then I zoned out again. Then in briefly to look at the watch. Then out. I was standing right in front, so it was very loud, and when the introductory guitar riff to ‘Rano Pano’ began, the whole area started to rumble and shake. (How those guys aren’t deaf yet I’ll never know; maybe that’s why John Cummings left the band.) It was frightening. The whole thing — just the one massive guitar part before the other stuff joins in — seemed to have a space-time fluidity, lasting anywhere between three seconds to eternity. Hard to say what time it was.

When you hear a song that really moves you, a profound sense of loss sets in even before the song is over. You start missing the song before it’s finished. That existential sadness had settled in me by the time the very first song of the set was not even half done. The fear of the set finishing was present almost before it even really began. (I should add here a brief moment of self-reflection — since this is MY blog — on the day of the gig, there was something personal that I had to deal with. So maybe the set might have been less meaningful without that, or more fun, or neither — hard to talk in absolutes here.)  

The last song, the really long last song, was, I think, ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’. The moment I’d been dreading for the past 80 minutes was pretty much here. But not quite. In a way, I also wanted the set to end, so that I could fully process it. There’s sadness at the end of a song, but there’s also the space to breathe, reflect, and find meaning. As the circular waves of the song started to dissipate, though, I figured I was wrong. I didn’t want the set to end. It did — it seemed appropriate, and one that didn’t demand calls for another song, so I refrained.

The drummer came forward and tossed one of his drum sticks in my general direction. I instinctively jumped to try and catch it. But it sailed past my outstretched arms to a few rows behind me, giving a tangible shape to my disappointment that it was over. I like the idea of souvenir-collection, but I’m not really committed enough to follow through on it. So I don’t know what I would have done with that drum stick even if I’d managed to catch it. It doesn’t make sense to make sense of an experience that may or may not have been life-changing.

Portishead, Zero 7, and Massive Attack are actually literally the same band

Years of experience have led me to the conclusion that a YouTube spree is the best way to avoid being constructive. On one of those (twice-weekly) benders last night, I found myself watching a video of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood playing a Portishead song called The Rip. For some reason, it induced instant déjà vu; something about the song makes it seem so familiar in an otherworldly way (not a generic one). Or maybe I’d just heard it before — can’t really be sure. (Also, it seems I’ve abused the Radiohead family tree on YouTube so much that the only new joy to be derived comes from covers.)

But that’s not the point of the revival of this fantastic (if slightly pitiful) blog. As I moved on to the original Portishead version of the song (that’s how YouTube trails generally work), a mini-epiphany dawned on me: Portishead, Massive Attack and Zero 7 are literally the same band. I’m sure enough people have thought it from time to time — I have too, in the past — but this particular time came with a shuddering sense of finality and clarity.

They all belong to the same-ish movement of cool, underground trip-hop from Britain that made it big on a mainstream level. Collectively, or if counted as one, they have to be the most covered band in the world (after Daft Punk’s Lucky). (if I hear one more cover of Teardrop, I swear to god…)

Anyway, there are the musical similarities, the vocal delivery, the absence of any happy, major notes whatsoever (Massive Attack do sneak in a couple out of every ten thousand lonely, minor notes though), the restrained, gun-to-their-heads performance style (again, MA have more whimsy and energy, but that just fuels the idea that they’re basically Portishead/Zero 7 after a couple of beers), the tempo and the experimentation with sound.

And then there are the faces. I’m no racist, but it’s common fact that all British people look alike. In this case, the resemblances are uncanny.

It’s just some massive elaborate performance piece.

The Art of Flying Kites and Killing Birds in a World of Men and the Problematic Space Constraints of Newspapers Sidestepped by the Internet

Outside the Diwan ji haveli we were at, just a few metres away, I met a good-hearted chap named Soni, somewhere in his late thirties, who had his own silver business nearby. We were in Manek Chowk in the old city of Ahmedabad, which served as the destination for the final day of the three-day Red Bull Kite Fight competition (you fly a kite and eliminate others by cutting their attached string with your own aircraft, with the last man standing the winner). In between some slightly questionable right-wing views being professed, I asked Soni about the area we were in. Smiling, he pointed to his chest. “This is the heart of Ahmedabad.” Really, the old city has an inimitable charm; hundreds of shops — wedding bands, vegetable shops, silver and gold stores, groceries, street food — are all huddled close to each other, with residential spaces integrated within the same space. (It is apparently one of the largest jewellery markets in the country, a fact revealed by Soni and corroborated by the internet.) Narrow bylanes intersect each other periodically to fashion a mazy map to the area, frequented by pedestrians, cows, scooters with middle-aged ladies riding their husbands around, cows, dogs, bulls, the odd out of place car, and bikes with this thin metal wire thing attached to the handlebars, framing the front of the bike. This, I learnt, is because Makar Sankranti and Uttarayan were just around the corner, festivals which traditionally serve as the kite-flying season in Gujarat. You have the regular cotton string that’s used for flying kites, and the manja, the abrasive string that’s coated with powdered glass for battling other kites. And then, you have the Chinese manja which, according to locals, can slit your throat if you’re riding around on your bike in the city. The metal frame was protection.

Chinese manja was banned at the competition, because the tensile strength of the string used, apparently nylon, provides an unfair advantage. More importantly, this Chinese manja has also been responsible for killing hundreds of birds since its introduction onto the scene, and petitions are on to ban the stuff. Even the regular glass-coated manja has killed many a bird in its heyday, but the Chinese stuff is far more effective. Kite flying is about flying only for the rank amateurs to the sport (such as this writer); the real thrill is to cut another kite. It’s a victorious feeling, accentuated by an emphatic utterance of “Kai po che!” (translated to “I have cut the kite!”), preceded by the war cry “Lapet”, (roll it in) when one smells enemy blood. So should a kite-flying enthusiast stick to the safe cotton-string manja, which is wildlife-friendly, and have a good time maneuvering the kite only to be rudely cut down by A. N. Other still using the glass-coated stuff? Or should he say fuck the birds, let me fly?    

And I say “he” deliberately because, make no mistake, kite flying is a man’s sport, it seems. At the grand, multi-storey haveli which served as the hub of the competition on the final day, there were all kinds of people registering: The bright-eyed young kids with their dads in tow, the dudes with earrings and stylish clothes scoping the scene, the kite-auteurs wearing gym gloves to protect their fingers from the cuts the strings might cause (but fuck the birds, right?), guys with protective doctor tape around their flying thumb and fingers, the nerds with their comfortable clothes and multiple spools. There was even Kaka (a term of endearment for an older person), a man on the wrong side of 60 (or less maybe), on whom male pattern baldness had had its way, leaving behind a trail of shimmering grey hairs, and he wasn’t even the oldest contestant there.

Kaka managed to make the day three finals, and he had an imperial air about him with the kite string slipping gently through his fingers, but he was eliminated before he could make the cut. Each day had a prelim session, where hundreds of kiters were allocated a total of five kites to manage — “Those who come last. Come first.” [sic] was the slogan for the event. The prelims lasted for close to four hours with a lunch break thrown in between. The winners from the prelims would engage in a heated duel to compete in the finals. The first day was held at Manek Chowk — across multiple terraces, 11 in total, in the neighbourhood serving as locations for contestants to park themselves and compete — day two at the open grounds at the H.L. College of Commerce, with the final day again placing the haveli as the axis. So there were all these people registering, spread across a wide demographic. And yet, where were the women? There was one lady who registered along with her two daughters, but turns out they were mostly taking photographs, not competing. There was the very young girl — around five — who was adding to the cuteness quotient. And the lady who was holding the spool while her male companion did the actual flying, and another who was providing moral support. Is that because of the brutal masculinity of the sport itself? Unlikely.

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Kite flying is inherently graceful and complex. Each of the terraces had a couple of big speakers on them, while the haveli terrace had a DJ playing contemporary dance music throughout, music which blared on each of the speakers at the other locations. It’s only then that I noticed the rhythmic elegance of kite flying, as contestants swayed to the music while staring deep into the screaming January sun, peering in to locate their kite, their string. The gentle maneuvering tugs — to ensure smooth flight and remain in attacking positions — started inadvertently getting coordinated with the music playing. The floating visuals of the kites themselves — hundreds of them in the sky — were seemingly scored by the music by the DJ.

Flying a kite is no child’s play. There may be manuals available, but there’s no set method or technique to the craft, largely because it’s a skill that’s acquired on a very local level, each benevolent teacher with his own myths and tricks. Because of the apocryphal nature of the teaching of kite flying, it’s geared towards right-handed people, although a certain ambidextrous ability does seem necessary, although all that went out the window when I saw a guy with one hand — either due to injury or a condition (it’s not a question you ask someone for quotes) — taking part too.

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You have to bend the kite by placing it on your head and then pulling it down toward your ears. The string needs to be tied to the kite a certain way (one of the day three finalists, this young kid, kept intentionally “missing” the knot while the others happily carried on, to waste time; this thing was against the rules and worthy of disqualification and no one seemed to notice but he did get knocked out soon after so justice was eventually served). Getting it in the air and floating requires patience and an understanding of wind and speed. The length of string extended is critical. You can’t just throw a kite down from a terrace and then tug at the string and expect miracles; a lot of precision goes into the process. And then, what do you do with the spool? Some guys kept it behind them, picking it up as required whenever they needed to extend or retract the manja; a bunch of them tucked the thing between the legs which was most ungainly. It has to be close enough for you to use it in a kiting emergency, but not so close that you trip over it. Once the kite is in full flight, a certain understanding of aerodynamics — the wind velocity, the lift- and drag coefficient, the centre of pressure, the angle formed, even if not articulated as such — seems essential to gauge distance between rival kites and the trajectory of your own. A strong spatial awareness is necessary too: you’re focusing your vision on your kite single-mindedly, but swift movement within the cluttered space is essential to maintaining smooth flight, so one needs to trudge backwards or sideways fairly often without running into furniture or another human. Plus, you’re staring straight at the sun, since kiting is definitely a day sport, so your eyes (and sweat pores) naturally take a healthy beating.

One of the terraces was accessible only through an old-fashioned hole in the ceiling floor beneath, sort of like how you enter an attic. This increased the challenges facing the kiters, who now had to also account for that little hole in the floor that they could fall into. It was covered with a metal sheet, but people still kept bumping into it. The terraces which served as locations for contestants actually belonged to residents there. The haveli itself had some four flights of narrow, tiny, unlit, rickety stairs, one of which without the luxury of even a quivering banister. The trick was to walk sideways, hold on to something, and hope. The other terraces had much the same provisions — one particularly challenging railing-less staircase had a little rope running along its axis, which you could grip on to for support or in case of a tumbling emergency. Without making it exotic or patronising, this was the life of the locals there. I passed through several floors of strangers’ houses — greeting them with embarrassment while they were in their regular, easy-going Sunday clothes watching whatever was on on their (non-flatscreen) televisions — but each family, each household was beyond polite. They would guide all the contestants, the media people, the organisers, to the way to the terrace. All the announcements about the contest were made in Gujarati, and the number of locals engaged in the whole thing was fairly high.

In fact, while the competition began across the 11 terraces on the last day, very soon there were at least a dozen more terraces where the residents of the areas began their own kite flying escapades. Some of the residents got on their balconies and started jiving to the very loud music, while others (lots of girls among them) got on to their terraces with friends and families, whipping out their own kites and joining in in the kitefest happening above them. They weren’t eligible for the prize, but they were very much part of the festival, and contestants losing any of their allocated kites to the non-competing flyers was a very legitimate and frequent occurrence. Life went on as usual downstairs, five storeys below, but on the terraces it was a different world altogether. And even on the ground, there was a clear buzz that something was up, something to do with kites.

This was possibly the highlight of the entire initiative — Red Bull may be making waves, here or globally, with an aggressive marketing strategy. They own multiple football teams (Red Bull Salzburg, Red Bull New York, RB Leipzig), alienating fans in the process, a whole F1 racing team, a concert bus that tours India and appears at music festivals, and a very average tasting drink. But such endeavours — where a noncommercial sport/activity, and all the connotations of the local, cultural traditions of the place it brings alongside it — are preserved and encouraged, while also including the locals in the activities without the added gain of “eyeballs” — how many people from across the country would have travelled to Ahmedabad to witness the Kite Fight? A handful, probably. — provide a sense of valid groundwork. This was the first ever edition of the thing, even if I presume many such events do anyway happen locally in Ahmedabad, and as the competition establishes itself, I’m sure many more women would sign up too.  

A draft of this piece first appeared in The Sunday Guardian on January 18: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/artbeat/those-who-last-come-first-a-weekend-of-kite-fights-a-the-kai-po-che-war-cry

I Know You Are But What Am I?

A few days ago, my phone stopped working on a whim. The last time that happened to me, I rushed to the friendly neighbourhood phone- and utilities shop and bought the cheapest phone they had, called the Samsung Guru, which had a photo of Aamir Khan on the box and cost me a grand total of Rs. 990. This time, I was travelling so it was far worse. Turns out my phone battery, barely over a year old, had crashed. So I’ve had to buy a new battery for a shocking 1300 bucks, and it’s not even a Duracell.

But this is not a rant about inflation nor the increasing dependence on expensive technology because it’s something I accept as a part of modern life. It’s useful and I love it. And, this isn’t even about how far behind cell phone battery technology is lagging when placed against cell phone technology. You have twenty thousand things on your phone, but the battery will only last you like a handful of hours. No.

Instead, this time I’m off on SIM cards. I managed to acquire a spare phone, but my SIM card, which has been chopped to half its size, wouldn’t work on that phone. I miss those simpler days when all SIM cards were the same size. Back then, if your phone stopped working, you could very easily pick up an old phone lying around and slot the SIM into the replacement phone. Most of your contacts also stayed intact, since they were saved on the card itself. Today, in an era of iPhone 6 and Samsung S7 and HTC 8+, you have like your full-sized SIM, a mini-SIM, a micro SIM, a nano SIM. They all serve exactly the same purpose, but different phones developed by different companies require a different-sized SIM for it to work. To that, I only have one question: Why?

Isn’t technology supposed to make everything easier to use? Is it like an ego battle between techies that makes them develop their own unique specifications for a SIM card? They’re already doing it with chargers and I’ve learnt to accept that – in my home itself, my iPod charger doesn’t work on the iPad, so if one of them breaks or gets lost, that’s a heavy investment. I get that – capitalism is great and evil and corporations want to maximize profits this way. But readjusting the size of the SIM card and cutting it to fit the design of the phone is a free process. What is the end game here?

I have a Samsung today; what if I buy an iPhone tomorrow? Then I’ll have to go to a bloody Vodafone outlet, deal with their call centre specialists in person, show them all kinds of identification to prove that I am, in fact, me, and get a new SIM card. If a week later that phone packs up on me and I have to get it fixed and use the older Samsung for a few days, then I have to repeat the entire process, and once it gets fixed I’ll have to repeat the whole thing all over again.

Do phone manufacturers have some kind of a tie-up with network and service providers? Did Vodafone make a call on their crackling network and say: “Hey Apple Tim, we have to justify the salary of all these fucking idiots we’ve hired to work at our service centres so why don’t you send a few people our way and we’ll give you a free caller tune for Rs. 35 a month?”

Before I’m shot down, I do realize that you have these cool little SIM card adapter-type things that you can buy at any shop that sells recharge coupons and phone covers and chargers and stuff, that too for like anywhere between 30 and 50 bucks which, compared to multiple trips to a Vodafone service centre, is pretty much the greatest deal imaginable, even if they often don’t work. (They’re a small attachment to your SIM, making it compatible with devices that support a different-sized SIM.)

Basically, you get a regular-sized SIM card, then you get it sliced in half, then you buy an adapter to make your SIM card bigger again. I don’t get it?  

The Big, Big Problem with Jazz Musicians, AKA Fu*k Your Ionian Isodylliac Scales

I remember reading this interview of the fat guitar player from early ’90s punk band Pennywise. He mentioned how his punk rock guitarist friends would laugh at him and call him a wimp because he used such a thin plectrum (the pick you strum your guitar with), while they would pound on their guitars with heavier picks. He would then have to explain to them that he was, in fact, way more punk rock than them even though they used much thicker, fatter picks – the reason being that he had to use super light picks because he would hit the strings SO hard that anything with a thicker density than the kind he used would break the strings so he had to downgrade.

Way, way over on the other side of the plectrum lies a certain sophisticated breed of jazz musicians. A lot of them don’t actually play jazz music. Instead, it’s a crude generalization for those supremely talented, virtuoso musicians who play and understand technique and their instruments really well, way better than anybody has any right to. And they seemingly play music exclusively catering to the tastes of people who like authentic, bland Italian food in five-star hotels and actually know the difference between a pinot noir and a chardonnay. Basically, the kind of music written for and by pretentious asswipes who use words like Confluence and Aplomb in everday conversations without a hint of self-awareness, or irony for that matter.

But that’s just to paint a picture of the kind of people I’m talking about. I don’t necessarily begrudge the music itself; in fact, I happen to quite like a lot of fancy jazz music and a talented instrumentalist is always a delight to hear or watch live. Surprisingly enough, this is not a one-sided debate on the uselessness of skill and its role in writing meaningful music. That’s a subject I’ve gone back and forth on for years and am further off from an answer with each passing year, with a sitting-on-the-fence conclusion likely in 2015. If you like your complex time signatures and exotic scales that you’ve memorized by studying your Big Book of Musical Notation repeatedly, then that’s fine too, as long as the music itself sounds good.

Instead, what I want to talk about is the intensity of the live performance. I’ve come to understand the importance of the performative aspect of music, and the act of playing your music (boring smooth jazz with rehearsed self-loathing vocals or otherwise) on a stage in front of people. As much as I may hate metaphysical psychobabble of any kind, I do believe that there happens to be some kind of an exchange of energy between crowd and performer in a live show. Otherwise we would all just watch YouTube videos all day.

So the other day I went out somewhere. Incidentally, there was a gig happening there. Some super fancy musicians were on stage, and they were playing jazzy-bluesy kind of music and playing it really well. So I made the effort of walking from the outside section to the inside section to check them. Without naming any names, a couple of the songs were quite decent from a non-fan perspective. A couple of others were the equivalent of a maths genius reciting five-figure tables to a clueless audience aka zzzzz. But it was all spot on – not a note out of place, not a pocket missed, almost machine-like in its consistency.

Intrigued and disgusted in equal measure, I moved closer to the stage to see what those guys were doing. This is a fairly packed pub we’re talking about, in the month of September in the city of Delhi. The minor spell of rainfall for the season is done and dusted, so all we’re left with is piercing heat and the occasional bliss of some humidity in the air. Yet, there’s not even a fleck of sweat on any of these musicians. Not even the drummer. It’s like they’ve just finished a heavy breakfast and all that’s left to the day is a nice long indulgent afternoon siesta. I’m not saying they should be soaked in their own perspiration and look visibly uncomfortable or anything, but how about just a little more commitment, even of the feigned variety?

Which set me off on a broader chain of thought. The drummer played every song like his drum kit was made of expensive crystal whiskey glasses and his sticks were steaming hot. All across stage, instruments were treated like they were holy idols, always to be revered and never to be fucked with. Sure, I get the value of intricacy and dynamics and volume control and impact. But fuck your “nuance” for just half a second, please? If I want a whole hour-and-a-half of filtered and controlled emotion where wanking and virtuosity is almost as important as form, then I’d much rather watch a foreign film with subtitles, learn some jargon, and then discuss it with film school graduates who think they’re Kubrick.

A mistake here or there, while not exactly welcome, isn’t going to bring the universe to a sudden halt. People aren’t going to boo and hiss and point and laugh at a solitary error. Maybe, and this is up for debate, it may even add a slight human element to the proceedings. Vulnerability and intensity seems so smoothly and subtly replaced by posturing and pomposity – not in this specific case but generally – that you almost don’t feel it. But when you do, you can’t see anything else. Again, I’m not even saying all fancy musicians do this – just listen to Miles Davis and try for a second to accuse him of faking sincerity in the midst of showmanship or virtuosity – but there is that side to practically every musician out there and it’s almost sad and almost pathetic when they fall prey to it. It seems like the conviction and passion with which the jazz vocalist delivers her/his wandering words in front of the band gives the instrumentalists some kind of license to remove themselves from the spiritual quality (UGH, spiritual quality) of the music, allowing themselves the liberty to be concerned entirely with the mechanics of the sounds coming out of their instruments, and how perfect and gently caressed those sounds are, as opposed to actually engaging with the soul of the music and allowing some kind of openness and vulnerability to creep in. Break a string, drop a stick, miss a key on the piano, hit a bum note if you really must, but just don’t be robots. I wouldn’t call it dishonest, because that would be unfair. But calling it objectively and conclusively pure and honest seems a stretch too, doesn’t it? You don’t have to jump around or be animated – get a chair if you want and do your best Robert Fripp impression – but please, virtuosos across the world, please stop boring us with your insincere, uncommitted wizardry. Or don’t. Because who knows; maybe it's just envy. 

Tool’s Chinese Democracy and an ‘It’s Complicated’ Relationship with the Band

The other day, entirely due to an unfortunate accident and nothing else, I happened to hear the first few seconds of The Grudge, this supposed monster of an opening track on Tool’s something-defining opus Lateralus. I turned it off in disgust – of course – but then I went back to a simpler time in history, a time when I not only loved but harboured an unhealthy obsession towards the band. The obsession reached its peak in 2006, coinciding with the release of 10,000 Days, the last Tool album to have released, before it withered away bit by bit. Incidentally, that album released 10,000 days ago.

In that same time period of eight-and-a-bit years, another one of my favourite artists, Thurston Moore (formerly of Sonic Youth), has managed to release 31 (31!) albums including collaborations, improv, and live albums, with another one due soon. Thom Yorke has released four albums, in addition to hundreds of one-off-or-more collaborations or singles. Four albums plus some other releases for Mogwai. Even Isis, a band heavily inspired by Tool, a band that doesn’t even exist anymore, has two albums in that period. Merzbow has 63 albums since 2006, and that’s not even including live albums or EPs or singles or splits or remix albums or albums he’s written under his real name (although Merzbow may not be a fair comparison). I think even Nirvana got a couple of albums out.  

Our friends over at Tool, on the other hand, have a grand total of ONE album in that period – 11 songs including two which are essentially filler tracks. I’m not saying that releasing music is a competition (if it were, then Tool would be so far behind that it would cease to be so). I don’t think musicians owe their fans anything. Except for one thing. It starts with an M.

Instead of writing 1.375 songs a year over the past eight years to complete a paltry 11-track album (filler included), Tool have instead given this particular frenemy of theirs only shattered illusions. Their super-cool at the time lyrics about evolution and the pineal gland and perception of reality – even “Goddamn, shit the bed” – the mystery and this aura of superior understanding, the irreverent live shows where the vocalist did a weird drug dance and stood at the back in the shadows (WOW, SO COOL), their hypnotic music videos and artwork (3D and everything!); their whole image, as gimmicky and pretentious as it may seem from the outside, worked well for them, giving them critical attention and a cult following and even relative mainstream success. It didn’t seem contrived; there seemed to be integrity to it, maybe. They got briefcases of dollars and street cred too for it – the dream. And it all worked for them because of one very critical element – all their hijinks and gimmickry worked in aid of the MUSIC. There was music, and then there was a bunch of drug-lit/stoner-culture/evolution/philosophy 101 stuff assisting the music in some indirect way. It made sense. Remove the music and the whole thing goes to shit.

And gone to shit it has. Today, we have Adam Jones playing the American national anthem at a WWF event. Fine, so he’s a fan of wrestling, as are the other guys in the band who also appeared on the show apparently. I used to be too (before I outgrew it in my early teens). Oh, he also proposed marriage to his girlfriend at a WWF Summer Slam or Royal Rumble. Cheap little YouTube teasers announcing the potential release of a new album, recorded in a whispering robot voice by associates of the band are “leaked” online leading to deep spiritual discussions breaking out all over the Tool Army forum. Interviews of Adam Jones and Kirk Hammett discussing their everlasting love for each other are made available online. Interviews of band members providing contrasting details of this hallowed release surface, followed by a very amusing blame game between the instrumentalists and the vocalist about why the album isn’t nearing release. By amusing, I obviously mean pathetic.

I get that, apart from the airing of dirty laundry in public, none of those things are good or bad, really. My real problem is that I know these things that I don’t necessarily need- or want to. Especially about a band like Tool. I get that their personalities are not and should not be my concern so it’s fine (although I wouldn’t mind them reeling it back in just a little).

But then I hear about that sniveling little shit, the self-confessed savior of rock ‘n’ roll and all things holy and beyond, the messiah himself, Maynard James Keenan: Hobnobbing with the cultural elite (“I was friends with Bill Hicks, don’t you know?” “Milla? Yeah, we chill often.” “I’m not short; I can kick your ass.”), owning a vineyard and making his own wine because, you know, he’s rich and sophisticated and educated and he knows his way around a spittoon, and just being an obnoxious tool. Wearing a wig with his other band because one’s his anima and one’s his animus (obviously). And then there’s Puscifer. He even snuck the word “pussy” into his solo project band name – he’s so clever, he must be a genius. And with that project of his, he writes experimental rock and pushes the boundaries. One of his albums was even called V for Vagina, which is such an edgy title. Applause.

Maybe they have a genuine reason for this extended period of inactivity in terms of new material. If not, then they can always admit to being has-beens and announce that there is no new album and that the obsessive fan base can move on with our lives. An extended creative block is sad but understandable and no one would judge them for it – they’ve written a bunch of great albums that fans can always go back to. Maybe they should come out and admit that the six or so years of touring after their last release – with roughly the same setlist with the occasional cover or old favourite thrown in – were mostly about filling their pockets with more and more cash and a little about playing the music they wrote live in front of an adoring audience. Or they should just shut their mouths for a while, not show their faces anywhere unless absolutely essential, watch some wrestling and listen to some Metallica, and finally finish this album that they’ve apparently been working on for ages. Even Axl Rose did eventually put out Chinese Democracy. I can guess that they need this album as much as their fans do, possibly even more.