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Thermal Power

In spite of multiple lineup changes through their 17-year long run, Bengaluru favorites, TAAQ, are ready to take Bangalore Rock to Europe this month

Aug 26, 2013

The band's new bassist Leslie Charles (left) also sings, so TAAQ is now complete with two vocalists. Photo: Harmit Singh

The band’s new bassist Leslie Charles (left) also sings, so TAAQ is now complete with two vocalists. Photo: Harmit Singh

Moving on to 2013, Thermal And A Quarter have on their shelf a discography of five quality albums. (That does not include the 1997 collection called the Brick by Brick Demos ”“ it’s a little hard to come by even now.) While 2000’s Thermalandaquarter.com started getting them noticed, it was really 2002’s Jupiter Café and 2005’s Plan B that got them nationwide recognition. Suddenly, everyone seemed to be speaking of this band from Bengaluru who were marrying exceptional musicianship with intelligent storytelling. It was hard to box the music into one particular genre ”“ one could hear everything from rock to jazz to funk to the blues in it. Here were three guys playing western instruments ”“ Mani on guitars, Rajagopal on drums and Rudolph “Rzhude” David on bass ”“ and singing in English. Yet, if you listened carefully, the songs were very much rooted in Bangalore, as it was called then. That led to Thermal And A Quarter starting to call their music Bangalore Rock, which incidentally is also the name of the upcoming Europe tour. This entire period also saw the band members quit their jobs to concentrate on TAAQ fulltime, and then going back to jobs.

Mani used to manage and run A2G.Music, a music store in Bangalore, from 2000 to 2003. He then quit working fulltime for two years before taking another shot at the corporate world at Bengaluru-based digital marketing company, Regalix from 2005 to 2010.

Rajagopal was a programmer until 2002 when he quit and tried to pursue music fulltime. After about a year, he joined Intel Corp. in 2003 and later ST Microelectronics and drew a corporate salary until he decided to hang it up for good in 2008 to concentrate on this band.

But at no point during these difficult times, was quitting the band an option. “Playing music and being in a band has always been in a separate compartment than questions like ”˜Are we making enough money?’, ”˜Are we getting recognition?’, ”˜Are we winning competitions?’. Even when we got into jobs, the focus was always the music,” says Rajagopal. Both of them also turned mentors ”“ Mani began conducting guitar lessons in 2003 and Rajagopal kicked off his teaching stint in 2008.  It’s this experience that led to them to set up Taaqademy last year.

Their fourth studio album, This Is It, which released in 2008, was also David’s last album with the band before he quit in 2010. He was replaced by Prakash KN who played on their last album, 2012’s 3 CD set ”“ 3 Wheels, 9 Lives. Close on the heels of that release, Prakash quite unexpectedly quit the band. “Praky decided to go sessions after the 3 Wheels, 9 Lives launch. He wanted to go back and do his jazz thing,” explains Rajagopal. TAAQ quickly got in a young bass player, Leslie Charles, to step in for the live gigs starting October 2012, before they announced him as a fulltime member of the band in April this year. “This time, the transition was long. Leslie had already played some 30 gigs with us before he was announced as the new bass player,” says Mani.

“So this is the new lineup,” says Rajagopal. “The sound changes again. You will hear a lot of new things with the old songs.” The day I met the band at the jam-room, I also got to see them rework some of their older songs. “Leslie also sings, so we have two vocalists now. And both of us have vocal processors,” says Mani, “and I have this new guitar synth. So we are going into newer technological realms, with a lot of new equipment. It’s a process of rediscovering some of the old music, and through that process, sort of trying out how to write the new stuff.”

While Leslie Charles is younger to Mani and Rajagopal by well over a decade, his demeanor belies his age. He realizes that he is filling in some really large shoes in a band that is so integral to the narrative of independent music in the country. “It’s a good feeling but comes with a lot of responsibilities, especially since I am following two tremendous players, Rudy [David] and Praky,” says Charles, “Learning their stuff is another trip. And when I get into composing new stuff with these guys, I will have to maintain that quality.” 

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