Iris 2009 - Musical Evening & The Riot Act

Do you think Junkyard Groove is freaking awesome?! Its freakin awesome-er than awesome! I, however, shall get to JYG’s mindblowing performance tonight at St. Francis Institute of Technology’s IRIS ’09 Riot Act (no, I couldn’t remember the entire name all by my little ol self, I refered to the pass. See picture) a little later. The other concert definitely deserves its share of applause.

This awesome college festival began exactly one week and one day ago, with Anuradha Pal and Indira Nair’s “Musical Evening”. Moreover, I got “free” passes :D (thank you Amal Nicholas, I owe you!). Anuradha Pal was divine. People as dumb as moi, knowing head nor tail nor flea about Indian classical music, had the time of their life. Ah! Cut out the ‘classical’ part. The music was electrifying! No wonder her new album’s called “Recharge”. Despite the whacked up sound system (yeah, sound people, this better NOT happen next year), the evening was magnificent. The artist on the sarangi played to perfection. Dammit! Can’t remember his name right now. Then again, you don’t need people to remember your name, when you’re talent is your true identity.

The sound improved by the second half of the evening. Indira Nair’s melodious voice had us swaying to soothing sufi sounds. The crowd went insane with “Jhum Barabar Jhum” and the original version of “Allah ke Bande”. The night ended with the police playing spoil sport, but the overall experience was beautiful.



One week and one day later (29th March, ’09) and the Riot Act was all set to blow us all to bits!! The concert began by 06:15pm and we got there no sooner than 06:45pm, so we had already missed Zodiac. Black was awesome, but got a poor response from the crowd, since it wasn’t in the mood to play covers. “Field of Thought”, however, was better than any cover any day! Their originals may do better next year.

Rock Water began with a big bang! From Pink Floyd to Jimmy Hendrix, they had most of the audience swaying to their tunes. “Comfortably Numb” was covered really well. Barring one ‘throw-socks-on-stage’ incident, the entire Rock Water experience was good. Then, unfortunately, John Hegarty took the stage and the crowd went cold. Not that we doubt his singing skills, its just didn’t work for this audience. During his performance, we got a glimpse of a mini-mosh pit, as my friend Rohan Naravane described it (who came to my rescue or I’d be stuck way back all through the concert).

Rock Water’s lead singer took the stage again. The crowd gathered again, and it was Junkyard Groove time!!!

If you were there, you could hear the anticipation in every “WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” that must have echoed through the entire school. Nobody budged as bands changed and Junkyard Groove took the stage. The lead singer, Ameeth, skipped his usual 5minute chit chat before the performance and got down to playing some insane MUSIC! From ‘Imagine’ to ‘Thank you’ to ‘Let You Go’ to ‘Rock & Roll’ to ‘Feel Like a Knife’ (my personal favorite), they had the crowds screaming their lungs out in excitement! This was sprinkled with a few jokes between songs, requests to buy their CDs up for sale on our way out and sound checks. This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say, “Ah! Buy it, download it, share it, do what you want!” I guess that line must have sold more CDs than the awesomeness of their album!
Craig was heavenly on bass. I stood hypnotized by the way his fingers moved on that gorgeous musical machine. The guitar is worth a mention too. There can’t be a sexier guitar in existence unless its still part of someone’s imagination. Sid had the crowds screaming everytime his fingers moved across the strings. Leaving the concert was the worst part of the evening :( If only last night could have lasted a few hours longer. Then again, there’s the 10:00pm deadline and we don’t want a police performance, so all the little black sheep had to return home after a fun filled evening of crazy music and crazier head-banging.

Overall, Iris ’09 was a huge success. Sure we missed bands like Zero and P.D.V but we weren’t complaining after Black and JYG either. Looking forward to Iris 2010. Keep up the great work guys!

Funny Bits:
CDs from Black weren’t exactly accepted by the crowd and some of them made it back to the stage.
Ameeth’s ‘twinkle-twinkle-little-star’ performance before the actual song began.
One of the event co-ordinators, Melwin Chiramel, was seen doing a little air-guitar jig backstage, while JYG played its last song for the evening.



The Team that made it happen:

Staff Co-ordinators - Mr. Sunil Pansare, Mrs. Prachi Raut

Joint Event Co-ordinators - Melwin Chiramel, Flevin Marattukalam

Joint Heads of Publicity - Pratik Chitre, Rufus D'souza

Joint Heads of Marketing - Vernon Mathias, Karen D'souza, Vaibhav Gupta