The Groovebox: Billy Idol

Amit ‘The Groovebox’ Gurbaxani on Indian bands and phoren inspiration.

I can’t think of the last time I read a music review in an Indian or an international publication that did not describe an act’s music by citing references to other bands or artists. Comparisons to similar artists might seem like a short cut to writing about the music but I often find that when reviewers attempt to break down songs into parts, by say detailing the contribution of each instrument, it makes for tedious reading.

To me, a “sounds like X ” reference is the quickest way to roughly gauge what a band might actually err, sound like. In the still fairly nascent Indian rock genre, comparisons are often made with international artists, and if you were to ask most Indian rock bands who their influences are, they will most often cite foreign acts as inspirations. But does this also further the misconception that much of Indian rock is derivative?

I got thinking about this after the recent Live At The Console gig at Mehboob Studio in Mumbai this past Saturday. I got there in time for The Mavyns’s set, and since they were playing a show of almost-all new material, I thought it would be interesting to see what the crowd thought of them. The Mavyns (pictured) is an act that tends to get extreme reactions, and they’re often a band whose technical prowess doesn’t always match up to their musical ideas. If like me, you value the freshness of ideas over the ability to execute them completely, you’re likely to like The Mavyns. Expectedly, the small sample of people I asked about them was divided into groups who loved and hated them. (I should add here that a large part of this tiny group comprised music writers.) Interestingly, the people who didn’t think much of them compared them to The Doors, but said that they didn’t come anywhere close to the sound of that legendary band.

While The Doors are just one of The Mavyns’s influences, they do tap into a wide spectrum of American and British rock from the 1960s and 1970s. My argument was that sure, they look to the past for inspiration but which other Indian band takes that psychedelia-tinged sound and makes it their own?

When I got home, I realised that another Indian rock act that often gets compared to The Doors is Delhi’s menwhopause. And as anyone who has heard both bands would know, The Mavyns and menwhopause don’t sound like each other. While you could easily program them into the same concert, the fact is that both acts have taken a similar set of foreign influences and imbibed them in such a way as to created their own, unique versions of it.

You can say that about almost all the quality, young and old Indian rock acts out there. You might hear people say that Peter Cat Recording Co. has one of the most distinct sounds in Indian rock right now but then you might hear Beirut and have a second thought even though the statement might still hold true (there is no other Beirut-inspired Indian rock band out there). Fortunately though, bands do evolve and do eventually grow into having their very own, very strong identity. Listen to Pentagram’s 1996 debut We Are Not Listening and their 2011 release Bloodywood and you’ll hear how the influence of Rage Against The Machine has gone from something the band wore on their sleeves to something that’s intrinsic to their sound but by no means its defining feature. Of course, this is not always the case. Each of the handful of singles that Parikrama has released sound like tributes, albeit efficiently crafted, to their idols, AC/DC, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, with “But It Rained” being perhaps the notable exception.

The important thing though is that just because a band subconsciously incorporates another more established act’s music in their songwriting, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are derivative. To say so would be like saying every rock artist in the world is essentially a Chuck Berry imitator. For me, the best part of The Live At The Console gig came during the last group’s performance. The Colour Compound (dubiously described as “alternative pop rock”, it’s just pop rock, adding alternative won’t make it any cooler) was reasonably tight and had good melodies but fell short in the lyrics department. But there was something in their songs that made me believe that apart from all the foreign acts in the list of musicians they looked to up to, was another band who were perhaps the last Indian band (we live in a country dominated by electro-pop, death metal and folk fusion) that made straightforward pop-rock: the now-permanently-on-hiatus Zero. Maybe finally, Indian bands are also looking home for inspiration.