Four shots

'Its more fun headbanging when you have long hair.', she says. A grin, bordering on maniacal, lights up her expressive features, cast into sharp relief by the flickering lights, before turning away again. Her body moves in perfect synchrony with the music. The light streaming through the volatile tangle of her hair frames a halo around her head.

I look at the stage, the crowd, feel the heady, inebriating atmosphere, laden with notes resounding and notes unsaid, with memories of laughing with good companions, of better times, of times alone, memories, some real and some false, of how it was, and how it could have been, of concerts past, and pubs, and singing off-note in the middle o' the street in the middle o' the night, of celebrations and consolations, of unexpected achievements and bitter disappointments, of melodies, moods and moshpits. As the music lifts me up, jerks me around, and clouds my vision, and invites me down a path I'm intimately familiar with, I let myself go.

----------------------------------------------First shot.----------------------------------------------

We sit at the restaurant, the sole guitarist plays jazz, a saxophonist beside complementing him, both of them going off into odd little solos in the middle, while the other one, with impeccable timing, drops into the role of the rhythm, both of them keeping the beat without the aid of any percussion, a telltale tapping of the feet all that shows the effort behind mastery.

Utterly mesmerised, we watch the tight pair, our drinks untouched, as they go on playing, in their own world, unhurried by the whirl of life moving half tilt, full paced, around them, drawing all of us along with them with the gentle tug of their music. I notice an elephant outside the window, deeply in thought as it listens to the performance. As the piece comes to a close, it trumpets. The time blurs, I jump again.

----------------------------------------------Just getting started.----------------------------------------------

'Breathe out into my mouth', the dude with the badge. I start, involuntarily, and step back. I've been standing in a line so long that temples had begun to sit up and take notice. All right, maybe not that long, but conventional virtues like patience had long since been worn to nonexistence in our quixotic crusade for international music, tinged with uncertainty of whether the promised land shall indeed be ours, and expectations shall be lived up to.

The fans that were initially so full of eager talk of past concerts, the foreign ones especially inexperienced of indian lines, have sullenly retreated into their music players, as the opening bands start their performance for the night, and heads jerk up. It appears as if the organisers have taken a note or two from the temples after all, as a television streams proceedings from the inner sanctum. Everyone crowds towards the entrance, and they finally start letting people in, but if you thought this was the start of something beautiful, then think again..

'I'm sorry, what?' I'm still taken aback.
'Breathe. You are drunk. I know.'
Me? A strict teetotaler, and drunk? How dare he? All right, I need to bluff now. Think, think.
'I've got a nasty cold. You know, red eyes, runny nose. You don't want it.'
This point seems to strike home. His resolution of my inebriation seems to waver. 'But you are drunk?'
'Nothing but cough syrup, bhai.'
The crowd from behind is pushing and jostling, and somehow this lends credence to my sincerity.
'Ok, ok. Go.'
In as close to a straight line as i can manage, i walk in, triumphant. The band up on stage performs a drumroll in my honour. I bow, to nobody in particular. I decline a joint from a passing acquaintance, for the time in the line has made us like brothers, and run up to the front, as much as i can manage. The scene changes, the time changes, with the song drawing to a close, to the dawn of a new day.

----------------------------------------------Second shot.----------------------------------------------

The bass starts the set. The guitars cry out, wail, scream, sing, and carry you through a bewildering multitude of vicarious emotions. I'm on my toes one moment, and on the ground the next. The crowd sways gently with the music, as the undercurrents in the music translate themselves into a surge of emotional release. Mobile phones and cameras light up the backs of the sea of heads. The set grows tight, leading up to the highlights.

The tempo increases gradually, the band does not speak much, it does not need to. The beat grows erratic, true to its progressive genre, and suddenly the calm crowd loses its serenity, its sync. Two concerts merge into one as the song gives way to a rougher tone, choppy and forceful, as the crowd begins to push and shove. Gentle nudges push aside the more passive observers as a rough circle begins to form in front of the barricade. Some people are already in there, their heads going up and down, fists clenched, oblivious to their surroundings. I stumble forward, my head dipping and weaving, and come to a stand, feet spread apart, From outside the circle, a form hurtles, clad in a metal t-shirt, and tackles one of the headbangers with his shoulder, rocking him around, and he responds in kind, a lining of people now separates the emerging pit from the outside, and tries to make sure that there are no unwilling participants. The pit is violent in its absorption, people push and get pushed back, fall down, and get right back up, the music being the sole object, perception overloaded to an extent that nothing else matters. The master of puppets increases the tempo to a climax, and slowly brings the song to an end, wherupon the enervated moshers gather their wits upon them, and raise their hands in the only salute that the situation demands.

The next song is smoother, softer, like the caress of a lover after the more passionate lovemaking has come to a sated close.He leads up to the solo, the crowd is awed. I am awed. I remember the solo that followed, but not much else. The lights psychedelic. The sound refined to a point where it cuts you like a finely honed rapier, leaves you utterly drained after the song. 'so now where?'

The lilting melody of the opening riff of Trains lifts you off, into utter bliss. You do not talk, you aren't capable of it. Your eyes are open. Or maybe they're closed. This experience is as ephemeral as an out of body experience now. You cycle through emotions you didn't think you were capable of. You reach dizzying heights of elation, then abjectly feel depressed, not knowing the source of your grief. you pine for the love of your life, or not. You sing along. You stumble forward, and realise you have a foot, on the ground, at that. You're a bit surprised. They start playing the interlude. The crowd's clapping, en masse. You look up, and find that you're clapping too.

----------------------------------------------*Hic, where were we?----------------------------------------------

It finally takes a jam session to get us started. Us of the timeless continuum of music. The keys go wild, bodomlike, the guitar acoustic plays ubiquitous. Silence reigns as a drum solo is attempted, and pulled off. For a moment there is silence, a warm, anticipatory silence, waiting for the first notes to float in the air. And it begins. Albeit a few dozen hours late, thank the soundcheck, not that they're to be blamed. Its a day of firsts. The small enclosure is packed, well, as packed as it gets.

The tracklist warms up slowly, with the food stalls demanding a desultory visit in the space between two songs, or one that isn't a personal favourite. As the evening progresses, and some metal finds its way into the audience's ears, a lone wolf goes to the centre, and begins to headbang, unmindful, unheeding of the eyes 'pon his back. Emboldened by his misplaced bravado, some more go and join in, and soon enough, the spiral does its work, and the whole place is a raucous, stoned, motley of jumbled bodies, arms around each others shoulders, as a single organism that breathes to the sound of the music, including the ones in front of, and indeed, around the players themselves, who are as much a part of it as the audience is.

As the song comes to an end, and the encore after that, the sweaty, pulsating, out-of-breath revelers disentangle themselves, and settle down on the grass for the ending credits.

----------------------------------------------I think i losht count..----------------------------------------------

Its chilly, and depite the warm clothing, there's a nip in the air. We rub our arms as the band, if, indeed you could call them that, for they're no more than schoolkids, frankly, get up on the small platform that serves as stage, and strap their guitars into the tangle of wires that seemingly impossibly leads to the assortment of old speakers behind the stage, the whole setup looking as if borrowed from the scrappers for the night, the ancient stage oddly at odds with the youth of the performers.

The kids start with style, they might not know tricks to woo the audience, or using the lights, but they know their stuff. They start with covers from the golden ages of classic rock, and go on from there, and most of the crowd hums along, the young, the old, the street peddlers, the cap sellers, and the little furry dog that always seems to turn up at these gatherings.

----------------------------------------------Third shot.----------------------------------------------

A concert in the land of cheap booze, I had thought. Why not? How bad can it be? And here we were, on a beach, a bottle in our hands, singing the chorus of Hey Jude. I try to recall what had happened in the evening, and skip back a few hours.

I'm at the entrance to the venue where the gig's at. I notice a few people sneaking into the stage from under the barricades without paying the customary tipple for entry, and full of righteous indignation, I approach the authorities, who show me the error of my ways, and the beauty of being in a miniature utopia like this,'Dude, look. If they're desperate enough to sneak in from under the barricades, then they deserve not to pay the entry fee. Chill, enjoy the show. Have a beer.' There are couples sitting on the grass, and a gathering crowd near the stage, the music is folksy, but not quite. It has a bit of rock in it, and a bit of jazz, and a whole lot of interesting stuff that the mind ventures to identify. Sitting down, standing up, that day, this morning, the tune is catchy, infectious. With a start, you realise that you're singing the lyrics of the song, a minute earlier you didn't even know you knew them.  The first band's a three piece instrumental affair, with the drummer supplying the occasional vocals. But its the second, who come on stage and blow everyone away. Who knew so much could happen with three guys and a quart-er?

----------------------------------------------I swear i'm not high.----------------------------------------------

I seem to have landed back in the present. As the blurry shapes resolve themselves, I realise, that the frontman's climbed up the scaffolding. A solo of epic proportions is going on, so much as to seem a jam, laying bare the essence of their unique style as a band.

----------------------------------------------Panic.----------------------------------------------

The band bows and walks off stage, before the crowd has time to react. A collective gasp. Hushed whispers, are they coming back? They can not be done so soon. They're yet to perform their big ones. Or do they not intend to do it at all? Is it really over? The collective cranes its necks to look at the stage, to see if they've missed anything, imploring it, in its blankness, to reassure them that its not over yet. Everyone's on their feet, and crowding near the stage. At the height of the suspense, they walk back, without a word, pick up their instruments, and start. You discover that the world spins. In addition, it also rocks. Hard.

----------------------------------------------Fourth shot.----------------------------------------------

There is a pause. The silence is defeaning. You close your eyes. A single note is played, it hangs in the air, as if unable to fade away. Another joins it. And one more. The crowd goes wild. The song finishes, but its not over yet. The band'll play halo next. You skip back to the present, as someone collides into you.

I'm tired. Bands, artists, entire philharmonics have rendered their performances, and it goes on. And at that one point, your head heavy, feet leaden, your neck stiff, the drummer caresses the hi-hat with a drumstick, and the bassist slaps his thing. The beat worms its way into your consciousness. You know this song, even if you don't. The music starts again, and you forget the heaviness, the regrets, the burdens of mortality and its attendant worries, as your body resonates to the rhythm of the song. All concerts are same, and different. The good ones, the bad ones, the small ones, the large ones. The ones playing metal, and the ones playing jazz. The sophisticated functions, and the hippie gatherings. They call out in you that primal component that has remained dormant under eons of evolution, and yet reaches out to the furthest tendrils of your sensibilities. Everyone is in their own personal universe, and connected to everyone else at the same time. In that one moment, music transcends genre, region, and indeed, time itself.

Its a little past six in the morning, and I can barely stand. I look around at familiar faces, all of them worn out, all of them content. As the first rays of the sun reach the stage from the distant horizon, the band plays Fear of the Dark.

----------------------------------------------

'thank you so much, we had a wonderful time playing for you guys.'

This extended rant is essentially incomplete, taken from my experiences at the concerts of the past four years. all resemblances are intended,
Dedicated to her, who happened to utter the line that got this article started.

The Filthy City

timestamp: 8:52am 23 Jun 2012
title: the filthy city

   I checked my hands. Yep, two of them. Still attached. Legs? Present and accounted for, too. Torso? Still holding it all together. Other assorted appendages? Internal circulation mechanism? Ocular, acoustic and olfactory equipment? All in a working or at least workable state. So far, so good. One can never be sure with these mass manufactured goods. I then looked at the shitty cycle, wheels high on air, rust in all the right places, and checked my footwear to see if the brakes were fine. It all seemed fair enough, and I set off.

   The city is a big place. Big, at least, for those who actually walk, or cycle, and look around you while doing it. Its Its a huge, winding, rambling, ramshackle organism filled with so many varied elements that it is impossible for a scrap of paper to describe. But then there are those who simply roll up their car windows and drive from point to point, ignoring the traffic, the crowds, the beggars and the eunuchs, the flower sellers, the kids peddling pirated copies of popular books and cheaply manufactured toys, the chana and shingdana peddlers, and the filth. To them, the city's just as big as the map tells.

   To a cyclist, the city seems to be in limbo. The petrol, diesel and other decomposed animal and fart powered vehicles whoosh by, not deigning to notice the humble two wheeler. The pedestrians, on the other hand, seem to be frozen in mid stride, as you pedal past. Occassionally, you slow down, sometimes by choice, as you see the sun go down between two enormous cranes busy creating yet one more floor for a high-rise skyscraper, or a kid struggling to climb a wall with one hand, a mango in the other. 

   You gaze, dumbstruck by any of the million things that make the city the place it is, a recalcitrant elephant urinating all over the sidewalk, splattering pedestrians, the poor mahout poking ineffectually at it with a blunt stick. You look at beggars pulling a rude passenger out of an autorickshaw, for in the city, they can be choosers. At a temple in the middle of a slum, surprisingly clean despite the surroundings, the idol gleaming yellow, bedecked with small sparkly scraps of colourful cloth. At the roof of the slum, where hundreds of digital television antennae receive the evening's prime time entertainment, so many, that they could all be interfaced to form a giant radio telescope, probably. At the trains. At the rains. 

   Sometimes, though, the choice to slow down is taken out of your hands. The highway is treacherous, to all those who attempt it under their own steam. It goes up, and you cycle up the incline, huffing and puffing, while tempos try to run you over and bikers make weird faces. You reach the top, and gloriously start the downward journey, determined to build up speed till you can breeze by the next incline, but no, at the bottom, where you're fastest, lies a fiend, cunningly disguised to look like a signal, that waits till you coast down and then turns red. Poof goes your speed, pop goes the weasel, and you look at the next upward slope and feel like your sphincter burst. Another antagonist in the general scheme of things for a cyclist, is the bus, the great equalizer. But that's a story for another time. And there are times when pedestrians exist solely to jump at you, as if suicide was the plan, but if not, a damn good fight will do just fine.

   But you sense that i'm not telling you what you need to hear. Only what you want to. I praised the city and insulted the buses, fueling your patriotic ego and giving you something to bitch about. But there's more to it, and this is the pill that's usually difficult to swallow, especially since you've got so many troubles of your own, so many worries. 

   There is a point where cycling is no longer possible. When the shanties are clustered so closely together that there's barely enough space to even walk by. These are the parts that you walk by every day, the parts that you pretend do not or should not exist. For once, imagine, that you park your cycle, and go in. These are grim, gritty surroundings, and by subconscious intent, you pat your pocket just to make sure your wallet is secure. You see the piles of garbage, and imagine that there once must have been a bin underneath it, if you look hard enough you can even see a corner sticking out. Dogs and crows scavenge among the litter, unmindful of the broken bottles and other pieces of glass. If there was a walkway above, people would throw their trash right off. There are kids playing nearby. The smaller ones run after tyres and sticks, making sure they don't fall with a surprising dexterity, the slightly older ones have already begun paying homage to what will most probably be a lifelong devotion to cricket. 

   You go in, and a riot of smells assail your nostrils, already overloaded from the stink outside, so thick you could scoop at it with a spoon. They say, that in the really big slums, you'll be able to find anything under the sun, ranging from imported car parts to women claiming to be your grandfather, to convoluted political propaganda. I don't know which is worse. A lot of stuff is cooking, fish is being fryed in cheap reused oil, vada's emit their particular scent, so does garlic, somewhere. Someone's using some cheap cologne, clothes are drying, they've been starched too much. There are a thousand cheap television sets and transistors playing, their individual noises blending in to the combined din. Traffic blares on, unheeding. You wouldn't hear a person screaming to death in this place, you realise. The thought makes you uncomfortable, and your initial curiousity begins to fade. But you feel that this is something you have to do, and you push onwards.

   Some housewives are washing clothes, and the entire ground is slippery. Others are taking a bath. The handpump has a well cared for look about it. You climb up a rickety spiral staircase, and come out on an asbestos landing, among some television satellites. You see where the cable lines are spliced together, where the phone lines are tapped from the mains running along the road, ditto for electricity. Although authorities are cracking down on this, its not really helping. Where one wire is cut off, ten others will spring, like the far reaching effects of an underground revolution. Or the hydra. 

   From here, you see some of the older children from up here clustering in groups, openly suspicious of your presence, yet not with the fear of the hunted, but with the desperation of the hungry. The ones who begin to realise the effects of being born in a country like ours in a place like theirs. The rapid disillusionment setting in, the way one feels that some doors are closed before they could get a chance to even reach them. That good and evil are but words and at the end of the day, one still needs to fill one's stomach. The thought that morals are only for the rich, and the poor need to do whatever they can to get by. The thought that all the childhood ideals are precisely that, stuff for children, the thought that there's nobody out there who cares. 

   There's one thing you need to realise before you get out of here, climb on your cycle, and go back to your life. This is real, all of it, and poverty is not going to go away just because you pretend it doesn't exist. But that's not even the worst part. The worst is the indifference. You may have realised a lot here, but unless you hold on to it, unless you cherish the thought of your well being, of your incredible luck, you will forget. If you do, come back and read this again.    

   The city needs help. Whether you choose to help it is your decision.

Fakebook Wisdom

timestamp: 10:33pm 20 Jun 2012
title: Fakebook wisdom.


The internet is the mother of all lies, and the social network popularly, and unpopularly known as facebook, is its lovechild. It is the gorgeous, ravenous, filthy, irresistible creature that grabs you by the neck and shakes you till you're to dazed to do coherently think of anything else. Most of you agree with this. To the people who think this is utterly, completely wrong, facebook is a website that you make an account on, and sit and wonder what to do, because you have no friends. Not even artificial, grown-on-the-pot ones. And to people who don't know what facebook is, well, its just one of the things 'this arrogant new generation' chooses to drug itself with.


Well as far as introductions go, i'm not sitting here to do PR, so you'll have to make do with that much. And if you need more, for god's sake just Google it. (Ah, Google, another of the net's lovespawn, but I'll come back to privacy infringement another time. I'm afraid you'll have to wait.) And as it stands, i can't afford to sit and write about facebook as a whole. There's simbly (imagine a Malayali accent) too much to cover. I won't be touching on how good, or bad, a publicity agent it has turned out to be, nor the meme culture, because that's way older than an upstart like fb, not the pron groups, or the hate groups, or the i-am-a-depressed-goth-kid-who-would-like-to-be-alone-because-nobody-cares groups, because by definition, those shouldn't exist, and as for those of you who post the pouted-lips-short-skirted-self-shots, you just wait, i'm getting my whores-of-babylon column ready. Today's just about those small snippets of valuable knowledge that fb-users so liberally dispense, in the manner of a monarch distributing his largesse among the needy crowds.

The world's grown smaller, and there's a new set of cool people in town. The new set needs new rules. It goes by a new dress code, one apparently aimed at uniformity across the globe. It has a new language, where messages are shortened, unnecessary vowels cast aside like vestigial appendices, and flowery turn of phrase scorned in the manner of the black plague. But above all this, it has a new playground. A social one, a virtual one, where the players and occupants learn the wisdom that will serve them for the rest of their life.


What better way to illustrate this than with stuff straight from the source, the spring of perpetual horniness, er, knowledge. Let's start with everyone's favourite, relationship advice, 'Son, someday you'll make a girl very happy, for a short period of time. Then she'll leave you and be with new men who're ten times better than you could ever hope to be. These men are called musicians.' or, 'Dear god, please turn me into an asshole so that i can be attractive to women.' or, 'friends are like potatoes. when you eat them, they die'. Moving on to ethics and conduct, we have, 'why kill them with kindness when you can use a hammer?', 'smile, listen, agree, and then do whatever the fuck you wanted to do anyway..'(Robert Downey jr), and a billion others. On every conceivable topic.


It takes all kinds to make a world. Some are doubtful in nature, some are misleading, some are blatantly false. These, i need not go into, it comprises most of what's out there. Some are political, ''First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.'(for Anna Hazare)', some are aimed at pop culture, 'i think lady gaga just puts glue on herself and rolls around in random items'(Orlando Bloom), and others at religion, 'Retards. We all know one'. Some are lame, 'wanna know what makes me smile? face muscles.', some are corny, 'birthdays are good for health. studies have shown that people who have more birthdays live longer.', and some, plain crazy, 'the ocean gets its saltiness from the tears of misunderstood sharks who just want to cuddle.'. Some turn up the corners of your mouth in a wry grin, 'destroy racism. be like a panda. he's black, he's white, he's asian and he's chubby.', some are so true they leave you feeling awkward 'the moment when you have so much shit to do, you decide to take a nap instead.', and some are truly inspiring, 'the important thing is not to stop questioning. curiosity has its own reason for existing.'(Einstein).

For a generation that increasingly seems to display the average attention span of a baboon on shrooms with a rectal infection (or, as i've been told, Bill Clinton), the only true knowledge is that which can be summarised in a hundred and sixty characters. That being said, there still remains the minority of the populace (this being you and other similar minded people who could at the very least read this entire column) who appreciate that there just may be more to it than that. Look for it, that elusive bit that completes the picture, that goes beyond the 'lol' that etches itself on to your keyboard after a funny message, the bit that makes sense. It lies just beyond the page.

You don't need to leave facebook and exile yourself to a cave in the misty mountains. You don't need to go on a world-changing-candle-march demanding that facebook make sense. All i ask, is that, at least some of the time, use your brains.

Writers' blok #1: It writes once again.

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One piece at a time #1: Far-Out Fuzz

(A series of disordered thoughts on music)

I was listening to a rather diverse collection of songs today, slightly different from the music I've been listening to of late. I swung up and caught the handhold as the train pulled into yet another station and a stream of humanity rushed past. The song was Paper Puli, by Bangalore rock band Thermal and a Quarter. The song starts off with, "Frank Zappa once said, 'Rock journalism is all about people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.' " The train pushed off again, with the stream of humanity, now a pool of humanity crowded into the half the space of a multiplex washroom, with one gentleman who was trying to facilitate the fostering acquaintance between my face and his elbow. I kindly declined, but getting back to topic, if not anything else, I could read. Couldn't I?

Paper puli wound up its act and Deep Purple started off with Highway Star, remarkable how much the starting riff resembles that of Sinbad the Sailor from Rock On, but ah, well, it must've been 'independently composed'. I wanted to sing, but knowing my voice, I'd probably have joined the railway casualties list had I done so. The song was superb, the vocals scratchy, rough, and typical of that period. What period? The 70's of course. Wasn't that when it all happened? Well, yes and no. The seventies were an amazing time to be in, if you were a music lover. There was something for everyone. Rock, pop, metal, grunge, reggae, blues, you name it. Not that these genres didn't exist before that. Hendrix was wrapping up, he passed away in 1970, John Petrucci was three years old, and there was this new band that called itself Led Zeppelin, formed in 1968, in the same year as this other band called Black Sabbath. And the people of our world seemed to have rediscovered new and extremely inventive ways of using a variety of trance-inducing substances for both recreational and inspirational purposes, and would forge ahead and produce realms and genres of music that would then proceed to blow the minds (whatever fragments remained). It was to be an amazing high, er, no, amazing journey.

After Deep Purple came Iron Maiden's Blood Brothers. And good song though it was, I was rather distracted by two strikingly beautiful ladies who were engaged in the rather un-maidenly act of striking down an unfortunate soul who happeneth to glance rather lecherously in their direction, going by their version. The poor victim, er, pervert was mutinously complaining that it had simply been something in his eye. A crowd was in its nascent stages around the spectacle, for our people are never ones to turn down wholesome free entertainment, and were gatherin' 'round with the satisfied expressions of one who's platform ticket has yielded its money's worth. Unfortunately, the train had a schedule of its own to keep up with, and with a clang of the gears that amounted to a mechanical sigh, it set off once more, bearing me with it.

What surprised me, as my playlist progressed, playing Edwin Starr's War, Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over troubled water, and Rolling Stones' You can't always get what you want, was the sheer amount of variety that emerged from that period. I thought back of how people were stereotyped now according to what kind of music they listened to, Rock artists are dumb. Satanic Metal Punks. Gay pop loving freaks. And those days, when everyone was a brother, food was cheap and music was peace, how would they have been like? (Again, I have no idea weather the seventies were really like that, and they most probably not, but what the heck, why can't people dream?) The train went on, with its assorted clangs and rattles providing background accompaniment to the subtle nuances of an ever effective Pink Floyd' Comfortably numb, which was followed by the Eagles' Tequila Sunrise.

I had almost reached, and AC/DC (visit Edocsil's wall, no, not facebook) was playing Back in Black. I waited for the song to finish, and wound up my earphones. There was so much I couldn't cover, the Who, Queen, Alice Cooper, KISS, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bruce Springsteen, The Doors, The Ramones, Presley (deserves a special mention for cult-ishness, hats and wierd hairdos off to him.), Lennon, Marley, and god-knows-how-many-more-bands-I'm-forgetting, so much more I couldn't write about, about the experimentalism, about the feckless, reckless nature of the bands, and their individual personae, the stories, world reception, styles and the emergence of the sub-genres that classify music today, (and how dare I forget them, the groupies), and of course, Hindi music from that era, and how it influenced / was influenced by its western counterparts. But I leave all that for a later date, and end with an excellent dictum from the age of psychedelia. Peace, bro'.

ps. One interesting piece of information that puzzled me, though. Deep Purple once occupied a position in the Guinness Book of World Records as "the loudest pop group". Er, pop. How?
Theories and answers are welcome at mail.ltgtr@gmail.com, on our facebook page, or at sahihaiyaar.blogspot.com.

Also, this site, whose address I happened to find on wikipedia, happens to have a wealth of information on the 1968-1976 period, do visit it if you feel like. http://musiccollectorsite.blogspot.com/

Disclaimer. All the songs mentioned are the sole property of their respective artists, this article is not part of any promotional propaganda or publicity material, and may be shamelessly copied, lifted and reproduced in any form, with the cognizance of the author. He'd feel good about it.