Ever since iTunes opened up its store to customers in India, it has been bliss for me. I can now buy music at very reasonable prices – songs for as low as R12 and in some cases, even full albums for a dirt cheap R30. The opening up of the iTunes Store was the best thing to have happened for Indian music lovers but some of us, especially of the grey-haired (or, no-haired) vintage, the real deal is often all about buying the album in its physical, touchable form. There is a certain something about peeling off the plastic and opening up the jewel case of a new CD that digitally downloaded albums just can’t match. Read more

The box set comprising the entire second season of Treme had been lying on my bedside table for months without being watched. One reason for that was, of course, time. Watching a box set can become an addiction and even if you start by watching the first couple of episodes, before you realise it, you’ve spent the entire night, eyes glued to the television screen, watching the entire truckload of episodes and, in effect, killed any prospect of functioning normally at work the following morning. Read more

Outside of Italy, where he is a superstar whom everyone knows, singer Jovanotti is hardly famous. He ought to be. And probably will soon be. Ever since the 46-year-old played at the Bonnaroo festival in 2011, he’s been steadily building up a fan base in the US, a sure sign that he’s on the road to fame outside his native Italy. Read more

My latest obsession is with a brand new, one album old band that I must confess I could have missed totally because of the genre that it has been classified in by many smart-alecky critics. I’m not a huge fan of electro-pop and definitely not a lover of gratuitous use of synthesizers and that other abomination, the drum machine, which belts out meticulous artificially put together beats, with little or no human touch. I mean how can you substitute the thwack of wooden sticks on skin or hand-wielded strikes on cymbals with something that a machine vomits out with irritating precision? Read more

Mud Morganfield and his half-brother “Big Bill” Morganfield play the blues. Sometimes they play together. I have a live recording of the two playing at the Chicago Blues Festival, doing songs such as Mannish Boy, Nineteen Years Old and Forty Days and Forty Nights, all songs that you can instantly recall as being standards sung by blues legend, the late Muddy Waters. No coincidence there because both the Morganfields are his sons. Remember Muddy Waters’ real name was McKinley Morganfield. Muddy died in 1983 but his two sons in their 50s–Mud’s the older one—keep his trademark Chicago blues sound and legacy alive. They play gigs. They cut records and have a considerably big fan following among blues aficionados. Read more

After a rather loud beginning to the New Year, when I spent a week blasting the cobwebs of my mind out with heavy black metal bands (as I wrote last time), things have turned much mellower. I’ve turned to alternative folk, blues-infused rock and even some experimental music.
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