Re-Rock

Desmond Powell, Deepark Nair and Brennan Denfer of Nirvana

The third edition of the Re-Rock Festival ”“ held on January 8 at the Garden of Five Senses in Delhi ”“ strongly recalled Re-Rock II. The atmosphere evoked the sentiment of an older time when rock & roll was still raw and Delhi’s nascent rock scene was just stretching its extremities. Just like last year, the turnout was in full at the free concert and there were many familiar faces. Members from bands which originated in the late Seventies and early Eighties like Applied For, White Fang and Electric Plant ”“ which played at the previous edition of the festival ”“ showed up for duty this year as well.

While Applied For played as a band, a few members of White Fang and Electric Plant played as part of a new addition to the show, the Re-Rock Remix: This feature mixes it all up allowing members from different bands to jam together. Last year some of the musicians like drummer Abhinav Dhar (ex-Collegium,) guitarist Amitanshu Das (ex-White Fang,) vocalist Tony George and bassist Bann Roy (ex-Applied For) formed a new band by the name of UBiz (Unfinished Business). This year UBiz ”“ which was in better form – came back stronger introducing a fresh flavour of originals which was missing in last year’s show. Giving shape to songs like ”˜Nothing Ever Changed,’ ”˜Nomad’s Land’ and ”˜Say a Prayer,’ mostly written by Das and Roy, in some way these musicians – who started out mostly playing covers at a time when covers were the norm – redeemed themselves that night. The bands also sounded much tighter as compared to last year where they seemed to be tuning up those rusty guitars and vocal chords warming up to a comeback. Applied For made a really good impression this time round, as guitarist Niren Chaudhary fired up on songs old and new, vocalist Atul Chaudhary was the surprise on this one. While they expectedly covered older songs like the Beatles’ ”˜Oh Darling’ and Whitesnake’s ”˜Come and Get It,’ the highlight came in their smashing rendition of the Kings of Leons’ ”˜Sex is on Fire.’ What these old musicians managed to do with this year’s Re-Rock was prove that they can still be relevant.

Nirvana, one of the younger bands, was this year’s new addition to the line-up of reunited bands. “Now we are moving further up in time. You had bands from the Eighties [earlier]; now we’ll have bands from the Nineties,” says Indian Ocean bassist Rahul Ram of the direction the Re-Rock series is taking. Nirvana comprised most of the members of what we today know as the Hindi-rock band Bandish. Dressed in black leather with a spot of dark eye-makeup, the band’s vocalist Deepak Nair looked a close cousin to Alice Cooper. He launched into the set with spunky fervour on Aerosmith’s ”˜Dude Looks Like a Lady’ moving onto to AC/DC’s ”˜It’s a Long Way to the Top’ and paying tribute to Led Zeppelin. The band concluded its set with a few Bandish originals.

On many levels, it still remained a night of reliving old friendships and reuniting bands lost in the tracks of time. Ram stepped in on bass duties for Deep Purple’s ”˜Burn’ as part of the Re-Rock Remix line-up. But he mostly played host and his warm and humorous introductions to some of the bands added an endearing touch to the whole affair which was interspersed with instances of friendly banter and breaking into old Hindi classics like ”˜Bandan Pe Sitare.’ Casually humming a few lines of the Beatles’ ”˜A Little Help From My Friends’ – “What would you do if I sang out of tune/Would you stand up and walk out on me/Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song/And I’ll try not to sing out of key” ”“ at the end of the show, they neatly tied in the sentiment of the affair.