Happy Birthday Rory Gallagher

Wikipedia tells me Rory Gallagher was born on 2nd March, 1948 in a place called Ballyshannon, Ireland. They talk a lot about his guitars, alcoholism and music career that peaked in the 70s (apparently he's sold over 30 million albums and was also approached to replace Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple after Jeff Beck refused....I would've never guessed). What they don't say is, where did this man born somewhere in southern Ireland get the blues from?

I had come across some Rory Gallagher numbers about a couple of years back. I remember being taken in by Moonchild and Tattoo'd Lady. Great rock tracks. But I didn't pursue him as an artist then. He was a great rock guitar player, but those were the days when I was discovering the sweet melodies of Southern Rock/Blues of Skynyrd, Neil Young, and Allman Brothers. I didn't have the time for Mr. Gallagher then. However, recently a friend picked up the entire Rory Gallagher discography, and since then I have been hooked to what this man can do with the six strings. He's fast, he's raging, he's got some Irish groove in him that makes him sound like nothing I've heard before, and he can play the blues. Without making any comparisions, I think Rory Gallagher's sound (in its entirety vocal+guitar) is closest to Jimi Hendrix's, in his own Irish way.

I don't think too many people have heard of him outside Europe. I once joined a Rory Gallagher community on Orkut and it had 5 members including myself. So if anyone's interested they ought to look up Tattoo and Calling Card. They are his commercially most succesful ventures. My personal favourites of the little I've heard have been The Cuckoo - Live FM Radio Jam (great acoustic blues covers in the first half) and his live album Live in Europe which contains some of the best live versions of his own studio work. Its his live albums that bring out the great electric blues artist whom I have come to revere. Eric Clapton cites Rory Gallagher as the reason he returned to playing the blues in the 80s. But it was Brian May of Queen who paid him the highest tribute. He was quoted saying, "So these couple of kids come up, who's me and my mate, and say 'How do you get your sound Mr. Gallagher?' and he sits and tells us. So I owe Rory Gallagher my sound."

A must listen for any music lover.

Happy Birthday Rory. Rest in Peace. Cheers.

Wnndrrrs of my life

Yesterday a friend and I were sitting in his room sheltered from a bloody hot sun, smoking and listening to an overheard Canned Heat album. Their number On the road again came on when my friend suddenly reached the conclusion that he wants to go to Pondicherry. It was 37 degrees outside and it seemed like we were in a deserted settlement with the classes having been called off. So my friend decided that this is not where he wants to be right now, he wanst to be in Pondi. I could not walk with him since,
a) I didn't want to go to Pondicherry. It was going to be fucking hot; besides I had just visited the beaches of Goa and didn't want anymore beaches in my life right now.
b) I'm broke. Absolutely.
So we finished the joint and I left him to get his packing done. Half an hour later I hear his music turned off and wondering whether he was leaving, I went out to see him. I found him sitting in his red Bon Jour Puducherry tees, with his bags, at the bottom of the staircase looking dead. He was feeling tired and wanted to sleep. So he swiftly proceeded to put his bag back on a top stair and lay down on the incline and dozed off. His sleep lasted from 3 p.m. till 10 p.m. (not on the stairs all the way though, after half an hour he came into my room on the ground floor and crashed before waking up and dragging himself back to his own room where he lay till he woke up). The trip lasted about an hour which included him packing, getting dressed, and walking down one flight of stairs from his room on the 1st Floor to the Ground Floor. Talk about living in the moment. I would've gone insane in this college had it not been for such characters.

In other news I got a SMS from a certain TM-SAVE AP that reads, "Satyam has lost Rs.7000 Cr. CM's son Jagan got Rs.500 Cr. in Sakshi, Rs.6000 Cr. in Reghuram Cement, Rs.500 Cr. in Sandur Power. Truth is all money in AP goes to YSR. SaveAP" . I say truth is a random funny thing.

*YSR = YS Rajashekhara Reddy. Congress CM of Andhra Pradesh.

Ramble Tamble

I don't think Slumdog Millionaire deserved 8 Oscars. I think the Oscars are a goddamn feel good party, just like everything else these days. No matter how much the shit stinks, people are still gonna make believe that the air freshener is working. Well its not, and I'm sick of people trying to make it work. I mean look at us, we are so dependant on a romantic notion of an artificial happiness/goodness that we laud the most mediocre works to heights which they do not deserve; when we want to fight terror we look to the same people who created terrorists to help us, in a job crunch situation people are still looking for jobs in the same system that went bust, and the world around us won't stop fighting just cause its broke. We still got 'em bullets baby!! Here they come.

I wonder why we humans find it so hard to accept the fact that things are just the way they are, which is not always the way we expect them to be?

Of Nobility

He's been recording since 1949 and is still going strong with regular appearances at the annual Crossroads Guitar Festival. BB King had the blues early on in life, and he had them bad. His sound is a tone royal blue, his guitar is a fine edged knife slicing through warm butter, and his face is priceless. Long live the King!

Of Attitude

While growing older I have been influenced by certain things around me that have helped me deal with and shape my new self after shedding the former skin of innocence. Of all these 'things', music has cast the most profound and everlasting shadow upon me. I have worshipped many artistes and lived through various phases of tastes in music. However, certain artistes have bled certain characteristics/perspectives in me, that I find today governs most of the choices I am asked to make.

In my college most of my time is spent listening to music/blues in different states of conciousness. For someone who's made most of his mistakes because of some stoned rocker's lyrics or some drunken Texan's guitar playing, my blog reflects too little about my musical inclinations.

In this post I thought of showcasing an artiste whose life (whatever little I've read off it) and guitar playing have shown me the meaning of the term 'Attitude'. Above is Keith Richards, then & now. Its not to say that its the kind of attitude I like to portray or rather that it in itself is the "right" attitude. But rather this is to say that amongst all the people I have heard or met, this is the man who defines the word for me.

He had to say the following on hearing the news of his bandmate and long time friend Mick Jagger recieving the knighthood. "I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the Establishment ... It's not what the Stones is about, is it? ... I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a f*****g coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, 'It's a f*****g paltry honour".

One of my acquaintances once commented that rockstars have this weird ability of making something incredibly stupid sound incredibily profound and cool sometimes. I don't know but somehow the image of a 65 year old showing the finger brings a smile to my face. Cheers.

Ventilator blues

When I was young, my maternal grandparents used to reside in their old house in North Calcutta in a place called Paikpara. Paikpara is a quintessentially middle-class bong locality full with all the para-club adda/nuisance, CPM posters over all houses and windows (which my late grandmother would particularly detest) and skinny kids playing football barefoot in the various wiry gullies.

We would visit my grandparents atleast once every week, especially when I was really young. The visits were a medley to chaos with us leaving in the morning after numerous calls from my grandparents to hurry up and through another set off calls checking "Kotho duur pou-chiyecho?" (How far along are you?). I remember my father cursing through it all having been "put under stress" by his in-laws on a Sunday, my mother patiently bearing my father's outburts and my tantrums (I recall myself being extremely irritating, but ofcourse I was just a kid) trying to keep us all in one piece till we had navigated our way through the North Calcutta traffic and pollution to reach Mamar-bari where I would be greeted by the fragrance of cooked meat through the door.

My grandparents had left that home and come closer to our family by the time I was in 9th or 10th std. And with it ended my weekend visits to Mamar-bari, which was now 5 minutes walk from my place.

Yesterday I was travelling to the city from college by a bus, when I noticed the houses fleeting by outside the window. Towards the roof on most walls visible to me were these various crudely carved designs. The designs took form due to the shapely holes made into the wall. Ventilators. I hadn't seen such ventilators since...well since my visits to Mamar-bari had stopped. The old house at Paikpara had such ventilators and they would be a life saver in the few summer nights that I would spend over at my grandparents.

I felt a little sad and now cannot really pinpoint why. I don't remember what I was thinking except that I fell alseep soon after.

List 25

A few days back a friend sent me a random Facebook request to make a note of 25 random things about myself. I don't like Facebook, matter of fact I hate Facebook. But everyone I know is on it and being the slut that I am, I am on it too. So anyway, today I see my batchmates faffing over the same thing and all the aforementioned individuals being amongst my closest friends and me being THE SLUT, I decided to pen down the list down for myself. However, Facebook is not getting its hands on this one. This stays here.

ps: If someone thinks I am a wannabe-that-person, then that person can "shove it" (Monster voice)

1. I think I look too weak, physically.
2. I've generally been a very insecure person. Getting better at it.
3. I like getting high. I like staying high.
4. I like my friends.
5. I daydream and I like it.
6. I want to have my own business someday. Like a pub or a restaurant.
7. If I had a pub I'd call it How blue can you get?
8. I like to travel. I want to walk to Tibet and Bhutan someday. I want to have walked the length and breadth of the Himalayas before I die. I want to bike along the entire coast of India. I also would like to visit Antartica and Africa someday.
9. I like mountains.
10. I like listening to the blues.
11. I have an impossible dream of performing Stevie Ray Vaughan's cover of Little Wing live before a respectable audience.
12. I'm extremely lazy. I like being lazy.
13. Sometimes I'm too proud for my own good.
14. When I was really young, I used to want to slap my maid. My parents would keep me away from her; but when I was left alone in her care, she would let me slap her till I fell asleep. I think she took care of me till I was 3 or 4 years old. Haven't seen her since and I vaguely remember her face. I just remembered that I don't know her name.
15. I have no siblings. I wish I had siblings.
16. I want to sleep with a lot of women. Hot women.
17. I don't trust women as easily as I do men anymore.
18. I am very impulsive. Getting better.
19. I am sensitive to the sight of blood. I faint.
20. I like reading comics.
21. I wish I had a superpower. I'd like to be able to make anything out of nothing.
22. I want to quit smoking in the next five years.
23. I want to try Cocaine.
24. I want to live in Mumbai for a while, while I'm still young (pre-30).
25. After my death I'd like to go whereever Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan went.