Take a stiff shot of the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Add some more grit, grime and edge. Shake it up well in an old cocktail-shaker and serve it straight up. What you’ll get is what a band called Drive-By Truckers serves up. I first came across the Truckers when I heard their two-CD epic, The Southern Rock Opera, released in 2001. A concept album that explores southern rock music, the album is themed on Lynyrd Skynyrd, the rock band that Ronnie Van Zant founded in 1965. Van Zant and two of his band members were killed in a plane crash in 1977 but not before Lynyrd Skynyrd garnered a huge following—even in India. On my infrequent visits to some Delhi bars I still hear their anthemic song, Free Bird, being played by DJs.
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Sometimes when the party is over, everyone has left, the empty glasses still stand about and I’m sleepy yet want to listen to one more album, it is Slanted & Enchanted that almost invariably comes out. Instead of on the audio system, increasingly these days, in deference to the others that I live with, it is cranked up on the iPod. I find Pavement’s first (and may I say, classic) album’s fractured music, esoteric lyrics and the entire low-fidelity quality of sound a perfect way to top off a night of excesses.
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I first heard Pete Seeger on a mono record player at a friend’s tiny flat in Calcutta. It was sometime in the early or mid-1970s. My friend, with whom I have long lost touch, along with his entire family, was a deep supporter of the Communist Party of India and a huge fan of Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson.
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I’m not a huge fan of original soundtracks (OST) of films. Not because OSTs don’t have good music; many of them do. Just that listening to a compilation of disparate tracks isn’t the same thing as listening to them while watching the movie in the context of its screenplay. Read more

Some bands you discover late. But if they are really good, knowing them late doesn’t prevent you from becoming a huge fan. Like ‘The Smiths’ and ‘Morrissey’. ‘The Smiths’ released their first album in 1984 (Here’s ‘The Charming Man‘ from that LP). Read more

I was talking to a friend about how I’d been listening to Bob Dylan’s ‘Together Through Life ever since it came out and how I quite like the bluesy touch that most of the tracks have, including my favourite, Shake Shake Mama. It had lyrics that were simple yet the song could have complex meanings, I told him. “Who do you think wrote that song?” my friend asked. Read more

When a friend sent me a disc loaded with Leonard Cohen’s much acclaimed Live In London album in mp3 format, I immediately knew the provenance of those 25 tracks (26 if you count the one track by Cohen’s long-time collaborators, the Webb sisters — Charley and Hattie).

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A friend called up the other day to say he remembered me because he was in London and had just gone for a concert where Seun Kuti and his Egypt 80 band had played. “You wrote about Seun, remember? I just caught his concert and it was fabulous.”

I’m sure it was, I thought to myself, sitting here in the sweltering heat of Delhi where the mercury routinely hovers above the 40-degree mark during summer. Read more

Going by what’s been happening thus far this year, 2009 could be a remarkable year. No, I’m not referring to the election results and the formation of the new government — about which, perhaps justifiably, everyone, including the inexplicable stock market, has been upbeat. No, I’m, as usual, talking about music. Going by the new music that’s been in heavy rotation on my playlist, this year’s looking good. Read more

A couple of months back when I wrote about the powerful vocals of Shilpa Ray, a second generation Indian-American who accompanies her songs with an unlikely instrument for a rock band, the harmonium, I did toy with the idea of exploring other musicians of Indian origin who might be making a mark on the contemporary western rock and pop scene. Read more