musicology.........

there is something strange about u2.......the more u listen the more giddily happy you feel.....i mean even the war songs and all.....maybe its the guitaring....the strange unique sound of theirs.......i dont know what. the first time i heard them...back in class 9....i was this metal hungry adrenaline-driven teenager...who wanted to hear great riffs....but then mazum gave me 'joshua tree' ...and i was like...what is this sissy music......................................

I still remember....D came upto me on teacher's day and said-'try this thing man they rock!!'.....it was metallica....and that day changed my concept of music......never had i heard such powerful vocals and such mindnumbing guitar.......then there was the GN'R phase...man i must have heard that 'live era' CD about a thousand times....followed by def leppard,van halen,deep purple etc etc and the metalhead was born......my parents never understood why i needed to listen to such 'violent' music...why couldnt i listen to normal hindi stuff...but they never interfered.....in our play group there were 5 of us who used to listen to rock.me,mazum,the twins and coney...mazum's elder bro was this huge metal/rock fan...and he had an amazing collection of cassettes.....it became our base standard...we used to go to mazum's house open that huge drawer under the tv and do a lucky dip kinda of thing to pull out a cassette.i listened to so many obscure bands like this........then we began building our own collections....i had a few aerosmiths,def leppards and scorpions...meanwhile the twins bought a cd player...and that ushered in mp3s........and we began listening to a lot of stuff very quickly .the only band that i can say that i grew up with is linkin park.......in hindsight i feel it was a bit retrograde for us to listen to rock when the flavour of the day was clearly hip-hop...........

but over the years you tend to become mellow.......you start liking different music for different reasons....like i was surprised that i actually liked 'desert rose' when i came to college but i used to hate that song in school......began liking a host of bryan adams and sting and phil collins songs which i never knew could feel like that.
....and then there is u2......it is such an uplifting experience listening to u2 lying on the lawn staring at the sky watching the moon rise up......my favourite is 'pride in the name of love'...from the album the unforgettable fire...there is this strange magnetism about bono's voice in this song...and the video just rocks!! also 'Gloria' from the album 'october'.......a great example of prodigiously brilliant song-writing...........

lately been listening to a bit of indian classical instrumental(!!)...i always liked percussion coz i have a diploma in tabla...and zakir hussain,sivamani and trilok gurtu just take my breath away......there is something about the tabla which no other percussion instrument can emulate....its as if the tabla has a life on its own...rather that just being an accompanying instrument..........

dont know where this musical quest is taking me........lets see....