Most overlooked Indian Soundtrack albums of the past decade:- (One)
Bandit Queen OST
Label: Big B Music: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Roger White I believe this was Big B’s first release. Interesting story behind how I got the cassette. There was a Quiz I attended when I was a kid, a pretty swanky quiz and the QM was giving away free cassettes for every audience question answered. I got one, something to do with the Batmobile, and the QM calls me onto the stage and gives me a Bhupen Hazarika album. Ugh. So the next day I go to a music store and spin some C&B about my idiot-of-a-sister buying a cassette I already have, and that it hasn’t been opened yet, so could I exchange this one, please.

Maybe the “please” did it. He asked me to take my pick , and I asked him for Nusrat’s Sangam. “Hmmm.” he said, “Sangam might be little difficult for you to follow. Why don’t you try Bandit Queen instead?”

So Bandit Queen it was, and when I got home and listened to it and listened to it again and the goosepimples just wouldn’t go away, I decided he was right, after all.

The Indian version of the Bandit Queen soundtrack had four Nusrat songs, three on side A and one on side B. The rest of side B was background music, or rather, a part of the background music, with a song called Chottie Si that plays during the titles.

Ankhiyaan Noon Chain Naa Aawe – the most popular of the tracks, the only one that was aired on TV, with scenes from the movie. There’s a bass and synth line leading the tune, with synthetic drum-beats for the percussion.

More Saiyyan To Hai Pardes – very upbeat, almost frisky at parts. very passionate lyrics. the tabla complements Nusrat’s voice extremely well. a little long, though, with the female voices repeating the same choral line over and over. which is a complaint generally associated with Nusrat songs. I mean, c’mon, Dum Mast Kalandar is almost eight minutes long, with no variations.

Saawnrey Tore Bin Jeeya Jaaye Na – “Haunting” would be the word an average reviewer would use, and since I am not any better, I will do the same. A throbbing bass-line. Nusrat’s voice, with just the right amount of reverb added, sings the first part. The female voice sings the antaras, with Nusrat weaving aalaps, and yes, he does that in a higher scale than the female singer.

Sajnaa Tore Bin Jiya Mora Naahi Laage – A little kitschy. Uses the Sarod (or is that the Mohan Veena?) and something that sounds like a bad Casio keyboard. But the lyrics and the voice make up for the bad beginning. There is a line where Nusrat actually has to take a breath in the middle, and you can make out that part. Amazing composition.

The cassette mentioned that the female voices were Sunita and Humera Chana. A look at the credits of Bandit Queen shows that Sunita is the name of the kid that plays the role of the young Phoolan Devi in the film. Dunno whether it’s the same girl who sings in the OST,and even if she does, it’s just that bit of Chottie Si….

All four are, well, love songs. All about pangs of seperation and what not. Most likely it alludes to the doomed affair between Phoolan and the character played by Nirmal Pandey. None of them feature in the actual movie, of course, not even in the background – Shekhar Kapoor would have been a complete moron to use songs in that movie. So I kind of wondered if Nusrat had composed them specifically for the movie, or were they just add-ons for us song-loving Indians.

Once Big B went bust, I couldn’t find the cassette anymore. I specifically remember buying one for a friend, but that was a long time ago. The hiss on my cassette, of course, increased exponentially with time. And none of the mp3s could be found, except Ankhiyaan Noon. So I waited, and hoped….

Last year, something wonderful happened. I discovered the virtues of Amazon.com. Bandit Queen was listed there, with a very low “Used and New” prices. Thanks to nevermind1980 ( old friend and senior), it was delivered to me last December.

Now this was interesting. The cd had 26 tracks, all background music, and the credits read music by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan(with Roger White). Ah HA. So the dark, brooding background music wasn’t by Khan sahab alone.

Even then, I missed the songs, those three songs that came with the cassette and I searched high and low for them.

Recently, I was on a cursory trip to Music World with Mons. She was looking through the Nusrat cd stack, most of them 60 rupees reissues by this new company called Nupur music. My usual predictable ramblings about Bandit Queen and the lost three songs followed. She asked me the names of the tracks. I told her. And whoa! One of the albums, Ahista Ahista had them, the three songs together.

Thus, for sixty rupees, a major item in my Want List was ticked off.

Lessons learned:
1) Get Mons to accompany me to every Music Shop I go. (Which shouldn’t be too hard.)
2) Tell everyone about what’s on my Want List. Never know who might find what, and help me out.

P.S That’s exactly what I am doing right now.

What I need to do today:-

1) Get envelopes for dispatching stuff. Jay, am sorry, someone booknapped AG, I got it back yesterday. Rulinian, you will get your stuff sometime this week, too.

2) Dispatch stuff.

3) Get plane tickets to Guwahati for myself and Psasi.

4) Apply for the PAN card.

5) Go and check if Daredevil:Yellow has finally arrived.

6) Send a crossed-cheque to my sister. (Now what on earth is a crossed cheque?)

Plus coding and Perf tests. Man……………

So there was this Cowboy Junkies track playing on Radio Paradiso yesterday morning, and it was so good that I couldn’t resist myself and went ahead and bought the Trinity Session album by the Junkies. And since there was a sale on, I got to pick another CD, and it was Sarah McLachlan’s Freedom Sessions. Not bad, eh? The Junkies album was recorded in a church, it seems, and it contains some haunting numbers, which sound awesome not just because of Margo Timmins ( What. A. Voice) but the…ambience, yeah I think that’s it, the songs have this ambient, laidback gospel-countryish touch to them. Haven’t listened to Sarah McLachlan much, but the songs are promising. Especially Plenty, a song that’s only vocals layered over one another.

Lara Croft:Cradle of Life sucked bigtime.

I couldn’t go to sleep last night, and I got tired of playing the same mission in GTA:Vice City over and over again – yacht racing’s just too tough, boss – so I decided to go clean the toilet. Which was beginning to resemble a…er….garden, with mineral deposits and all. Oodles of enthusiasm and much hard work later, I dropped off to sleep, It was 3:20 AM. The commode and basin weren’t exactly gleaming, but it was clean! Come by and tell me how you like it. ;-)

Woke up at 11:30, with absolutely no interruptions!!!! A modern-day miracle! Rishi made me breakfast at 12, as a token of gratitude. Possibly for not waking him up to indulge in my nocturnal enterprises.

Did the word “Frig” originate from Frigga, the Norse goddess of Love and Fertility ?

Waking up at eight in the morning, when you have promised yourself that under no circumstances you will do so before noon, is definitely not good cricket. (Good Cricket. Hah. Oxymoron!) Not on a Saturday. And I have this weird thing about sounds – I can sleep when there’s loud music playing – AC/DC, Sepultura, anything goes. Maybe I tend to wake up for a second if the music changes, you know, like when the Fleetwood Mac album just ended and Audioslave came up. but I cannot sleep when an alarm bell rings. Or my cellphone. Or the doorbell. Oh, yeah, those cars that play monophonic beeps of Fur Elise or Vaseegara when they are backing up.

Nothing much happened this week. Translated, this means – no, I didn’t buy anything, I didn’t make any major finds, I was working hard. Unless, you count GTA:Vice City, which has been keeping me awake until 2 AM every night. The only interesting thing that happened at work was the NFS tournament on the office LAN yesterday. I had insisted on a Q3 competition, but it seems racing attracts more participants. C’est la vie, and all that. I didn’t play. Was too busy configuring the pirated copy of NFS3 on the machines.

I seriously love my LJ-friends’ page. It’s like getting mails in my mailbox every morning, only the other person won’t stop mailing me if I don’t mail back. It’s kind of a selfish way of looking at blogs, I know, but what can I say? You guys give me my daily fix. Neil Gaiman chips in. So does Wired Magazine, with it’s daily RIAA-bashing.

Realisation of the week: Historical Fiction is so much better than Biographies. I never trust biographers. It’s usually somebody recounting the life-story of a person based on research and findings. OK, so if the person is somebody contemporary, the writer might actually go and talk to him and come to all kinds of conclusions that make him write a book about his conclusions. So eventually, the biography turns out to be not “an account of a person’s life”, as is the dictionary explanation, but a collection of conclusions based on available facts. That is, if the writer is a good writer.

Autobiographies are slightly better. You at least know, right, this is where the guy is fudging things a little to make himself look better, or – this is where he is in preachy-mode…..the problem with autobiographies start when you have a byline in the title. Something like “Why I am God” by Lucifer with Mephistopheles. You know what this makes me feel like? Conversations like –

M: Ok, so tell me something about your childhood.
L: Umm, well…..I ….umm…nothing too much..I remember school…a little bit of it….i was a good student…..er….I loved my parents….and….umm…..yeah, that’s about it.
M: (scribbles furiously) Rebel at school. Anti-Establishment. Problem with authority. Add Anecdotes.

That’s about it. Ghost-writers make me feel like the writing is all a dressed-up parody.

Actually, I was reading two books this week – one being a biography of George Lucas by a guy named John Baxter, and the other was Valerio Manfredi’s Alexander: Sands of Ammon. I absolutely hated the first one, but I think I will read it anyhow, I need facts, boss, and when I need facts, I can ditch writing styles and concentrate on facts. This book reminds me of the godawful things I have read or tried to read – the Biography of Lata Mangeshkar by Raju Bharatan, I kind of remember falling into a mindless stupor after the first 4 pages, the bio page of AR Rahman on every other fan website, in particular, an essay by some Cine Blitz writer.

The Alexander Trilogy is ab-so-freakin-lutely White heat. Ok, so maybe I am a little hysterical about books I like. I enjoyed the first part, and even though this wasn’t as compelling as Child of a Dream, it managed to get me to stick around. Inspite of being a translation. No pretentiousness. That’s pop culture for me. I hope I get the third book soon.

I am listening to this Winamp3 Radio station called Radio Paradise that’s playing one good track after another. Somehow, my office firewall doesn’t seem to block it. Bands like Counting Crows, Mandalay, Placebo, African Rhythm Hunters, Chemical Brothers, with Mark Knopfler, Janis Joplin, Inda Eaton popping up from time to time. Or the other way around.

Oh man, the song that’s playing now was the original of the Viju Shah number Halle Halle from Aar Ya Paar.