When I went to Guwahati last year, I remember listening to Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill day in and out. If it had been a tape instead of a cd, I would have had to throw it away.
This time, it was not just one album. Maybe because I was travelling so much, instead of staying at home and listening to the mosquitoes humming Jean-Michel Jarre tunes in my ears. The first part of the journey was dedicated to Evanescence. Bring Me To Life hooked me to the point of insanity. Listening to My Immortal, Tourniquet and Whisper(which is sung with a full-scale choir) in a speeding bus, in the middle of the night – quite an experience. Amy Lee’s voice reminds me of Vasundhara Das ( or is that the other way round?)
Some part of the trip, I put Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced inside the discman, and whoa momma, is it good, or what! The sneer that accompanies every line of Foxy Lady, the jackhammer guitars of Purple Haze and Hey Joe and Are You Experienced… of course I had heard them all before, but the pleasure of listening to those songs on a journey was kind of unparalleled.
Tehzeeb and Boys were always there, at the end of a tiring trek or a long train ride.
My R.AT (Rahman Acknowledgement Time) has soared up! I don’t believe this!!! It happened this way – I was on the train and I had put on my ARR-mp3 cd, and set the playback to random. It took me TWELVE seconds to figure out that the song that started was Ennavale from Kaadhalan. TWELVE seconds. It felt like twelve years, every year being a racking of the brains, as invisible neuron-charges mapped flute-sounds to songs, and songs to time-periods, and time-periods to movies. (I am trying to give an explanation of how R.A.T levels normally work ). Sigh. It was only when the female humming that gave me the answer. I am mortified. I need to go take a break from normal life or something….and listen to nothing else but ARR for the next few weeks.
Literature: I re-read the wonderful Tad Williams story The Gypsy Prince from Tales of the White Wolf, which is a tribute to Michael Moorcock’s Elric by various authors like Gaiman, Williams, Nancy Collins. The specialty of this story is that it features a Fantasy version of Jimi Hendrix ( yep, him again! ) – in his incarnation of Shemei Uendrijj, the gypsy prince, who wields Cloudhurler ( a word-play on Stratocaster ) – the entire story being told from the point of view of a stoned hippie, a Hendrix fan, who gets transported to Elric’s world while on an acid trip, with the uncanny power to shapeshift into a giant or a dwarf, depending on his mood. Hilarious!
Began Anne Rice‘s The Witching Hour, which, I must confess, has got to be the best Rice novel I have read in a long time. It’s history, myth, horror, erotica blended to make a heady concoction. It makes me, among other things, want to go to New Orleans and drink in the atmosphere of that city. It actually gave me the creeps to think of The Talamasca, the enigmatic group of paranormal observers. “We watch and we are always here.” It’s a whopper of a dynastic saga, and, oh-my-god, I would hate to finish it. (Yes, I still have a hundred-odd pages to go, and I am going at something like 2 pages per night )Thank you, Ms Rice, for the experience.
Interesting note: Two of the scarier books I have read were both on trains. Stephen King’s The Shining was one, which I finished on a journey from Delhi to Guwahati, and I remember shivering on the upper berth, and closing the book from time to time and looking down at my friends just to ensure myself that there was no snow outside and there was no hotel and I wasn’t trapped in a bathroom and there wasn’t a rotting body in the bathtub. This book was the second of the two. Boys was the saving grace this time.
I chanced upon William Buck’s version of The Ramayana in Gol Park, Calcutta. Things have changed a lot there with a new fly-over near the park, and a new ( and lousy!) Planet M outlet nearby, but the old bookshops still stand, and the collections remain as eclectic as they were five years ago.
The last couple of days were hectic, what with a trip to Warangal for TriviumMMIIIAD, where I conducted the Music’n Movies Quiz. Met up vrikodhara and all the other juniors. Thankfully they liked the quiz. Heh. Again, nothing much has changed in that place…even the rags they write at all the fests are full of the same half-baked puns and semi-literate ego-bashing. Funny, but I have never come across any REC “bulletin” that praises an effort by someone.
Man, I sound so bloomin’ sanctimonious.
every year being a racking of the brains, as invisible neuron-charges mapped flute-sounds to songs, and songs to time-periods, and time-periods to movies. (I am trying to give an explanation of how R.A.T levels normally work ).
Good god.. that’s precisely how the RAT test works for me too, although I’ll admit, other varibles, like a semi shallow knowledge pool of Rahman Associated Movies or..tamil movies in general for that matter, tend to skew the results away from reaching any terribly important conclusion..
Have you listened to Tehzeeb, his latest?
Are You Experienced? used to be one of my all-time favorite albums. But I’ve suffered from overkill — I’ve just heard every song too damn much. It’s in constant rotation on the radio stations I listen to — I can’t get away from it. If I could be completely unexposed to it for, say, a year, and then listen to it again, I think my love for it would be reborn.
Same goes for anything by The Doors.
Overkill – Now that’s a very common thing, I guess. Nirvana, The Doors, Dire Straits, Deep Purple – their songs, or rather, their most popular songs keep playing at all these pubs. And like they say, familiarilty breeds contempt.
I have actively stopped listening to my favourite bands ( the ones I used to listen to in college ) unless the occasion is a special one. the drawback – my RAT has soared!! :-(
but I have never come across any REC “bulletin” that praises an effort by someone.
*bows* thank you for all the wonderful things u’ve done in RECW, the quiz’s were spectacular, the music was stupendous and RECW wouldn’t be RECW without you. Infact they’ve changed it to NITW after you left.
*bows*
ASSHOLE
ahahahahahaha.
dude, i wasn’t talking about me ( for once!), it’s just that both the CS association and the Quiz Committee had two fests going at the same time, and both of them were organised superbly, but it was all mudslinging from both sides, each side looking to criticise the other. Why can’t they ( or for that matter, why didn’t we ) appreciate an honest effort?
thanks for all the kind words anyway, man. you shouldn’t have signed your name at the bottom, though.
so Trivium materialized after all. i know all that crap disguised as bulletins are not fun, especially if you are at the receiving end. but when i look at some of them now ( yes! i have them for posterity), i can’t help smiling.
Well-written stuff is good. I enjoyed the Spring Spree official SnB stuff, what irks me is all those illiterate morons who try writing meaningless poems with atrocious puns just for the heck of it…
You know what I mean. :-)
grrrrrrrrrr
illiterate morons who try writing meaningless poems
I WAS ONE OF THEM! #&^%@$&^%$@*&
no you were not. you wrote some pretty good stuff. i mean really illiterate morons.
limp biscuit, eh? :)
i would take that as an compliment.
though i had so little to do anyway.
mow-desty, young lad?
eh heh heh heh.
12 seconds for Ennavale? That’s bloody long, man! I’m currently at 2-3 seconds, hoping to further improve it…
BTW, have you seen The Shining – movie? Jack Nicholson is very very scary.
Don’t rub it in, dude. It’s not going to happen again.
Nope, haven’t seen Shining. I have heard rave reviews of the movie, but seems the storyline is different from the King book. Hmmm…..
Scary? You want scary? Watch any of those Tusshar Kapoor movies. Now that is one scary guy.
Dude, “scary” happens to run in Tusshar Kapoor’s family.
you should see my face when I wake up at 4:00 in the morning to pick up relatives from the airport… if that doesn’t sacre a grown man, nothing will..
Scary blue? Sacre bleau!
Oui, monsieur ! Désolé pour monsieur d’erreur.
:-)
Off-the-topic question, since you seem to be online – did you buy the latest Marvel Manga special? what about Ultimate X-men and Spiderman/DD superspecials?
I bought the Marvel Manga Spl #2, but didn’t yet read it. Yesterday I bought the Ultimate X-Men Superspecial too, but not the Spidey-DD superspecial. Hows it?
I also bought Hush#4, Uncanny Xmen#2, and FF Imaginauts#2, among others. Really, really engrossing.
You know what else I bought yesterday? Heh… read my post tomorrow. All I’m telling you is that Bullet Time 2.0 rocks! (oo-er)
WAAAAH! IT came out????
A pirated copy or an original?
Waiting for the post, dude.
Oh, it came out a long time back. Available in India as of yesterday… and I got my grubby hands on it. Of course, you’ll find it in the booty that I’ll send you. It is AWESOME!! Slightly deja-vu-ish but I think thats intentional. Oh and Master Chief also found a place on my hard drive to rage his war against the Covenant. (wink, wink)