The F16’s And Modern Mafia Perform At HRC, Andheri

Modern Mafia. Photo: Monisha Ajgaonkar

Over the last year, the North Mumbai suburb of Andheri made a mark on the city’s gigging circuit with old and new venues hosting regular gig nights. The first floor pub, Kino 108 resurfaced with ennui.BOMB’s fortnightly series, BOMB Thursdays, metalheads found a new haunt with Bombay Asylum’s gig venue, Club Escape, The Little Door opened up for acoustic nights and electronica fans had their weekly fix courtesy Chez Moi.

Andheri’s tally of venues shot up recently with news of Hard Rock Café opening its second outpost in the city in this suburb. The music diner, which opened shop for the public on Monday, will host its first public gig on Wednesday featuring Mumbai pop rockers Modern Mafia and Chennai’s alt rockers The F16’s.

Modern Mafia, who are known to harbor deep hatred for sheep, last played in Mumbai as part of BOMB Thursdays in July. At the  gig at HRC Andheri, the band will perform songs from their debut EP, Random Sheep, as well as some of their new material. “We are working on a new album, so we will play four new tracks from it, just to gauge people’s reaction,” says frontman Varun Das. Taking off from where they left [the band’s EP featured a song inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger], Modern Mafia’s upcoming album will feature songs about the badass Jesse James [“Gun Slayer”], Star War’s hairy co-pilot [“Chewbacca’s Revenge”] as well as Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy [“42”] among others. “It’s (the album) got a pop culture feel. There’s also a song on Jean Grey from X-Men. Since we were kids, we always found her to be the hottest superhero we had access to,” says Das adding that they are looking for a December release.  

Chennai’s The F16’s, who return after their Mumbai debut at Live From The Console in May, will be playing tracks from their recently released EP, Kaleidoscope. Last month, the Chennai electro rockers released their EP at a beach house party in their home town. “We we didn’t want to do a conventional launch. It’s always nice to do club a  beach house party and a gig. No one will say no to that,” says the band’s keyboardist Harshan Radhakrishnan.  At Hard Rock Café in Andheri, the band will also debut songs such as  “Drop Kick” and “Palladian Park.” Adds Radhakrishnan, “The new songs are different from those on the EP, which we wrote when we first formed the band. I think we went a little mellow with our new songs. We’ve  toned it down a little so it’s not as heavy as the EP,” referring to songs such as “Ausenberg”, “I Hate Early Morning” and “Lest you Forget,” which they will perform as part of their hour-long set.

The F16’s and Modern Mafia perform at Hard Rock Cafe, Andheri on September 4th, 2013. Entry Rs 150. For details, click here