I really hope that the people behind this website have sent A. R. Rahman an invitation for the Bacardi NH7 Weekender festival. Rahman, reportedly, has yet to see a “true rock star” from India. He told the Hindustan Times, “Culturally, we are a family-bound society and rockstars are known to do all sorts of odd things.”

He does not specify, nor does the reporter clarify, exactly what was meant by “all sorts of odd things”. Presumably, Rahman meant the “sex and drugs” that traditionally accompany “rock n’ roll”. Or maybe he just meant the tendency to throw TV sets out of hotel windows, or the need to demand bowls of M&Ms without the brown ones. We don’t know.

His comment, nevertheless, has both saddened and enraged me, for many reasons: first, because to me, Rahman is a musical genius (but hey, even musical geniuses say stupid things from time to time – for further reference, just see Morrissey); second, because this shortsighted remark comes from someone who was himself in a rock band; and third, because it comes around the release of what has been pretty much universally regarded as Rahman’s long-awaited return to form, Rockstar, a new Bollywood about the life of an Indian rock star.

When Rahman was in a rock band, as we have learned from his conversations with author Nasreen Munni Kabir, the Indian rock scene was very different. Back then, as most of you reading this know, the quality of a band was based on how well they could cover other people’s songs. Rahman is clearly a busy man and it pains to me to know that he has apparently not kept track of the very scene he was once a part.

Because even if we were to go by his myopic definition of a “rock star” being more about the lifestyle than the music, then he should know that Indian rock is not without its fair share of sex or drugs. But he fails to see the biggest aspect of rock n’ roll – that of rebellion. Up until maybe three years ago, any Indian who decided to make a career out of writing and performing his or her original rock music compositions, was by default a rebel. By going against the mainstream – which on one level meant choosing not to become a banker or engineer, and on another, choosing to work out of the Bollywood realm – they were giving a big, fat up-yours to the “system”. If that’s not “rock”, I don’t know what else is. To become a “rock star”, you need success, and if Mr. Rahman would like to learn the names of a few Indian rock stars, we suggest he carefully read the names of all the acts performing on any of the three main stages at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender.

To give him the benefit of doubt, maybe Rahman made his comments on the basis of what he knows – the Hindi and South Indian film soundtrack worlds. And the idea of rock there is bound to confuse anyone. I find it mildly amusing how many writers refer to the emergence of rock in Bollywood soundtracks, citing mainly two films Rock On!! and Rockstar, presumably because the two of them include the word “rock” in their titles. Poor pilfering Pritam has such a bad rep that people forget that he laid claim to the first Bollywood rock soundtrack back in 2007 on the basis of his work in Life In A…Metro. But as some have pointed out, Rockstar has in truth only two actual rock songs, ‘Sadda Haq’ and ‘Jo Bhi Main’. They are by themselves almost perfectly arranged, melodic rock tunes, but at worst they are the kind of rock one would associate with Pakistani pop-rock artists such as Atif Aslam (who predictably made a foray into Hindi film playback singing), and at best, the kind of rock one would associate with Sufi rock bands such as Junoon.

But even if one were to go by the very basic definition of rock as music made by a band that plays instruments such as the electric guitar, drums and bass, rock has been in Bollywood for almost as long as the genre has existed. Shammi Kapoor played a rock musician – inventively called Rocky – way back in 1966’s Teesri Manzil, and R. D. Burman’s “Western music” inspired soundtrack led people to call it India’s first “rock n’ roll” film.

As you can see from this video from the 1960 film Ek Phool Char Kaante, rock – and Elvis – had already arrived a few years before.

Today, as the lines between Bollywood and indie meet every now and then, it’s important to remember that for artists such as Monica Dogra and Sidd Coutto, both of whom have sung for Hindi films in the last couple of years, Hindi film work is the side gig. But we’ll make things simpler for Rahman. We won’t ask him to check out the dozens of Indian indie rock stars out there; we’ll ask him to see just one: his Bollywood brethren, The Raghu Dixit Project, perhaps the one homegrown act that many people believe can come closest to Rahman in putting Indian music on the world’s radar. Dixit (pictured) has a plan and it involves Bollywood, but when the world knows his name, it won’t be because of his soundtracks. Sometimes Mr. Rahman, rock stars aren’t about leather jackets and tattoos, but lungis and ghungroos.

Amit Gurbaxani is Indiecision’s contributing editor. He writes and edits for the popular city-centric website Mumbai Boss.

The Raghu Dixit Project performs at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender on Saturday, November 19 at 8pm on The Dewarists Stage. Tickets are now on sale.

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.

Music journalism doesn’t enjoy anywhere near the same level of attention that writing about film gets in this country. Well, at least some people are reading. Us hacks can claim to be the inspiration for at least one Indian rock classic: Bangalore band Thermal And A Quarter’s (pictured) not-so-loving dedication to our tribe ‘Paper Puli’.

Sure, there’s a lot wrong with music journalism in this country but at least some of the time, the musicians themselves are partly to blame for the crap that gets written. The most common complaint about music journalism: the journos can’t seem to get their facts right. The fact is, however, a few bands make it so difficult for writers to get hold of those facts in the first place.

It isn’t uncommon for a band’s biography, whether published on their MySpace, Facebook, Reverbnation page or official website, to comprise a long-winded story about how they got together, most often with a few of the band members’ individual quirks thrown in for good measure (“Our bassist loves parathas” and the like.) While this is all good, there are a few essential things that journalists should know about a band to be able to write a complete profile. For starters, your full names; you could include your middle, father’s name or nick name but at least your first and second name would be good. There are many Rahuls in the Indian rock scene. Heck, there are at least two IP Singhs. (And they both are in Delhi.) Ages would be cool too, though I’ve come across a band member or two who are surprisingly reluctant to share this piece of info.

But individual bio-data is less important than the history of the band itself and it often amazes me how fuzzy musicians’ memories can be about their own chronology. I’ve heard stuff like: “We formed eight to nine years back”. To which, I naturally ask, which is it: eight or nine years ago? “Ha… somewhere around then.” If you’re in a rock band (still quite an unusual career choice in our country), it’s safe to presume that the formation of your band is a fairly momentous occasion in your life. Fine, not everyone is as anal as I am about (silly?) things like chronology but at least one band member can be made in charge of tracking the important landmarks in the act’s career: formation, first gig (date, venue, and if I may be so optimistic, rough set list), details of every album released including release date and complete track lists. Since you know that in all probability, the question is going to be asked, you might as well include a list of influences and how those acts inspired you. Of course, bands could make all this very simple by publishing all this stuff on their website, but a shockingly small number take the effort to do this.

And when bands do have websites, often many don’t have the time (or perhaps inclination) to update them regularly. But forget websites, most bands don’t even give out updated photographs to the press. To me, seeing an outdated picture of the band is as big a misrepresentation of the group as an article that gets their names wrong. Sometimes, the photos include members who have left, or include only a couple of the members. Even when the head count is complete, if you’re handing out a pic taken in 2007 in 2011, it’s the visual equivalent of lying on record (check out Picture This for more on kvlt band photography). This is not what people are going to see when they see you perform. In the age of the cheap digital camera, it is not too much to expect a band to take a new picture every six months or at least every year.

If you have a manager/publicist, give them this photo along with your official biography and links to your song clips/videos online to email every time they solicit or accept interviews on your behalf. In an ideal world, a journalist will Google/YouTube you, but doing this will at least spare you the trouble/time of going through the routine of answering the same old questions. If I know you met while students at St. Xavier’s college in Mumbai, there’s a chance I might ask you a more interesting question like “How important was Rang Bhavan to your musical development?” rather than “So how did you guys get together?” It might just make the seemingly tedious exercise of getting interviewed more enjoyable for all of you. If you’ve been around a while, and are now sending out press releases, vet them. If a press release is incorrect or inaccurately represents your band, you can’t blame the journo.

The second, and more serious accusation, against music journos here is that they often misquote their interviewees. If a journalist isn’t recording the interview or taking notes, ask them why. Realise that unless otherwise specified, you are on record. But choose what you say carefully, because no journalist worth their salt will send you their article. Instead, talk slowly so it’s easy for the guy or girl to follow you and jot down what you’re saying accurately. It might sound stupid when you read that sentence, but it makes a big difference. A new method of conducting interviews, which eliminates the risk of being misquoted involved in say a phone conversation, is the online chat. It allows both parties to gather their thoughts, and serves as a record for both interviewer and interviewee of their interaction.

Bands might scoff at these suggestions, and see them as basically ways for them to do the work of lazy-ass journalists for them, but the truth is that if you take your music and yourselves seriously enough, you’ll realise that often taking care of the most mundane things makes the biggest difference. The name of your song is ‘PSP 12”’, not ‘Standing By’. You’re from Malad, not Mazgaon. Your name is Sidharth with a single D. Your band plays funk-influenced rock not psychedelic pop. If you care for the facts, make them available.

• With the festival, Mumbai has got another much needed (at least) potential music venue. The two studio spaces where gigs were held, imaginatively named Stage No.1 and Stage No.3, were commodious and well ventilated. When packed to capacity, they never felt stuffy or crowded.
• The organisers did not scrimp on the sound (Roger Drego) or lights, and after the Bacardi NH7 Weekender and the Eristoff Invasion, this was the third consecutive fest that showed us that when it comes to staging festivals, Indian fest organisers are up there with the West.
• This was the first festival where the gigs started ahead of time. Given that Mehboob Studios can be a traffic nightmare, this was not exactly an audience-friendly thing to do. On the plus side, this usually meant the act played for longer than what was listed on the schedule.
• Organising quality, and affordable, food stalls is something most Indian festivals still haven’t figure out yet. At the MBF, your options were two Barista counters. Given that this was a festival that began in the early part of the evening, and ended near midnight, it would have been wise if the organisers had put up a few stalls where the crowd could have had a substantial bite. After all, not only is Mehboob Studios in Bandra West, the area with the highest ratio of restaurants to residents, surely they know what they say about drinking on an empty stomach?
• People have been saying that tickets for the MBF, at Rs 2,000 per day or Rs 3,000 for both days, were too expensive. While this may have put it out of the range of many college students, we should also remember that tickets for both Bryan Adams and Foreigner are priced at Rs2,000 upwards(!). Say what you want about the pricing but one thing is clear. The organisers were clearly targetting the rich and famous. Why else would be the words “VIP lounge” be a part of your festival? On Saturday, the booze was restricted to only Johnnie Walker whisky and Ciroc vodka. No beer was available and a vodka and soft drink set you back Rs 300. On Sunday, the organisers made two wise moves and one very dumb move. You could buy beer, but you couldn’t take your drinks inside. For some unannounced reason, while people could watch and hear the gigs on the screens in the bar area on Saturday, on Sunday there were visuals but no audio.
• Hiring PR people who know their music is another thing that many concert organisers (festivals or otherwise) can’t get right. Too often we’ve reached a venue a little after show time and found that the PR person in charge has already left. The PR folks handling the MBF reached a new low. It’s one thing to blankly refuse interview requests, it’s quite another to ignore phone calls, texts and emails when all a journalist needs is listings info.
• For Luke: Luke Kenny, you seem like a nice person. You really do. But whoever told you that you make a great host, or that your jokes are funny, is lying. Whether it was telling people to go from Stage No.3 to Stage No.1 when you meant to tell them to go from Stage No.1 to Stage No.3 or whether it was making a lame play on Buddy Guy’s pun-friendly name, you showed us yet again that you are ill equipped for the job at hand. You love the music, we get that. You are probably a very nice person. If you must host, hire a writer. It’s the right thing to do.

• We got to Mehboob Studios towards the end of singer Shemekia Copeland’s set. Copeland was working the crowd dedicating songs to the “ladies”, and saying “shukriya”. We caught her last two songs, one of which she said was for her dad, and the other for her grandmother. The latter sounded suspiciously similar to ‘Come Together’, but the crowd didn’t seem to care. Copeland had the kind of big voice, and personality that both filled and charmed the room.
• While Copeland was a definite crowd pleaser, we did feel that there are other singers out there like her. Jonny Lang, who headlined the MBF on Saturday, on the other hand is in a league of his own. Lang opened his set with some blazing solos on extended versions of ‘A Quitter Never Wins’ and ‘Turn Around’ before mellowing things down for ‘Red Light’ and a slowed down version ‘Lie To Me’. Lang, as some might know, is now as much of a gospel singer as a blues rock artist, and though he seemed to be in good spirits, his facial contortions while singing or playing guitar were hard to ignore.
• The Saturday Night Blues Band from Kolkata opened the festival on Sunday. Their set, which included covers of ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and ‘Red House’ and featured a guest appearance by Ehsaan Noorani, was efficient to say the most. Call us jaded, but their blues-by-the-numbers did little for us. In contrast, Soulmate who followed them were a glowing example of how to make the blues your own. After their disappointing gig at Hard Rock Cafe in October, this was a return to form and how. Tipriti “Tips” Kharbangar, fashionably dressed in a beret and overcoat which she later removed to show off a black shirt and tie, and grey trousers ensemble, put up perhaps her most feisty performance till date. Working with a set list of new and lesser-played tracks, Soulmate powered through a 90-minute set during which Kharbangar showed off her considerable range on Soulmate tracks like ‘I Am’ and ‘Blues Is My Soulmate’ but really let it rip during covers of the Koko Taylor tunes ‘Voodoo Woman’ and ‘Don’t Put Your Hands On Me’. When she wasn’t singing, she danced around the stage, swinging her hips and even getting the oh-so-serious keyboardist to crack half a smile.
• The Matt Schofield Trio was next, but given that Buddy Guy was next and we needed to recharge our batteries (and wrongly presumed we’d be able to hear the gig from the bar), we had to skip most of their performance. Schofield is considered to be among the UK’s best blues artists. The guitarist and singer’s trio featured drums and Hammond organ, and from what little we caught of them, was perhaps the hardest sounding of all the acts on the bill.
• Of course, the reason most people were at Mehboob Studios was to watch Buddy Guy. Those who felt cheated the last time around, when some of his performance time was eaten up by a certain politician, would have been pleased that the veteran bluesman was in the mood to please. He was backed a proficient band of musicians who looked like they could have easily doubled up as his bodyguards. He did everything to keep the crowd happy: from performing such standards as ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and ‘Mustang Sally’ to playing with his teeth and with his guitar to his back to walking through the crowd, to incorporating “Bombay” into his lyrics, and even promising to never get off stage till they forced him to leave. His two pet phrases for the night were “I’m not finished yet” and “I’m gonna play something so funky, you’re gonna smell it”. The worst you could say about his performance was that it was a bit gimmicky but it would be pernickety to criticise a 74-year-old musician with such boundless energy. His two-hour set, included tributes to everyone from John Lee Hooker and Albert King to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, blues renditions of “naughty hip hop verses” and a jam with Lang, Copeland and Schofield. By the end, as cliched as it might sound, you truly believed that Guy was not 74-years-old but 74-years-old young.

Photos of Buddy Guy @ Massey Hall, Toronto by Kasra Ganjavi

So, once again a journalist got called out for bad reportage at a gig. During Pentagram’s set in Bangalore, Vishal Dadlani “dedicated” the song ‘Mental Zero’ to the journalist who erroneously stated the Invasion Festival was happening this week instead of last.

I wondered, was Dadlani being too harsh? Yes, the journalist made the worst kind of careless mistake, but I sincerely doubt that it was deliberate. He or she must have spent time and effort to interview people, and write the article, and then did the one thing that rendered the entire piece useless – got the dates wrong. After all, the whole point of writing about a festival is that you want to encourage people to attend it. And I would like to presume that whoever wrote that piece did it out of interest in the music, and not just to fill column space.

It’s a delicate relationship that musicians and music journalists share. (To remember just how delicate this relationship is, just watch Almost Famous again – repeat viewings of that film are always a good thing.) Some musicians take offence at the very idea that someone would have the temerity to try and condense their blood, sweat and tears into mere words. Yet they recognise that they need the publicity to get those words out there about their music.

Music journalists on the other hand have the daunting task of having to describe, and at times, critique someone’s art, a task that many musicians believe they don’t take seriously enough at all. I cringe every time I read a badly written piece (see Press Charges for examples) but most of the time, it’s not the bad grammar that’s depressing, it’s the blatant disregard for fact checking. Whether it’s the number of albums a band has released, or the subgenre they play, or even something as basic as the line-up (mentioning only first names doesn’t count in my book), most of the errors are the kind a simple phone call would have prevented. The reporters it would seem were just too lazy to be bothered.

How then can we improve the quality of Indian music journalism? I think both journalists and bands need to get themselves a checklist.

Writers – and yes, even the musicians – need to stop being lazy. Journalists need to stop expecting to be spoon fed by PR people, and need to do research that goes beyond browsing the press release (and if there’s one, the Wiki page.) Most Indian indie acts don’t have Wikipedia entries but they have might have (a usually outdated) biography on their MySpace/Facebook. As a starting point, Google and read everything you can about the artist as possible, but more importantly, in case you’ve never heard them before, listen to the music – on MySpace, ReverbNation, YouTube or wherever else you can find them. If you can’t, or say the interview is about an as-yet unreleased album, ask for the music. Too often, journalists go into interviews blind, or more appropriately, deaf. If an act is ready to do interviews for an album, they’re ready with the album or at least some of it. It’s the publicist’s duty to provide you with some of the music, on which to base your questions.

Which brings me to the second most common feature of bad music writing – a lack of context. It’s one thing if you’re writing about a new band; but if you’re writing about an existing act, you can’t not listen to their earlier material and expect to write a quality piece. I know many enthusiastic music writers who do all the right things – attend gigs, ask pertinent questions – who fall short on one front: they fail to say where a band fits in terms of Indian rock history. With a genre so young, you’d imagine that shouldn’t be so difficult to do.

As for getting your facts right, use a tape recorder, and transcribe your interview. Take notes as well, just in case technology betrays you (and it will). As far as possible, try and quote your interviewee verbatim. But no matter what they say, don’t ever send them the article before publication. There are other aspects of Indian music journalism I won’t get into, but those have much to do with the overall attitude towards writing about culture among our country’s editors. These are the things that at the most basic level, a writer can do. Individual styles might differ but it’s important to remember to write passionately. The idea is to excite readers, to make them want to hear your subject, to finish your story, and immediately log on to the internet to listen to the act’s music because they’re so intrigued by what you wrote.

Next week, I’ll write about what musicians can do to improve the way they get written about. Too often, they’re as lazy as the journos and are at least partly to blame for being continually misrepresented.