So last night, instead of just sitting on my bed and looking at my phone like the lazy ass I am, I decided to do something different.
The Redbull Tour Bus was in town and a band called ‘Pentagram’ was supposed to be performing. Now, I originally had no plans to go since I had absolutely no idea who these guys were. Heck, I wasn’t even sure if they were a band or a single artist. But for some reason, I went there anyway.
The first thing that greeted me from a distance was a big, shabby tent which almost made me and my friend turn around and leave, till we realized it was just the food stalls. As we walked closer, we saw the large crowd that had gathered and the huge line outside the entrance. If they attracted a crowd that huge, they had to be good, right?
I hoped so.
We wandered about the food stalls and and grabbed a Red Bull each before the opening artist took the stage. I didn’t know this before coming, but the bus doubles as a stage and the artists perform standing on top of the bus. It seemed like a great concept to me.
First up was ‘Gurbax’, a DJ from Bengaluru. Although he wasn’t really as good as I expected him to be, I liked his music The crowd seemed dead and the artist seemed dead for the first few minutes. Then slowly people started dancing and jumping about. Gurbax played EDM and was pretty much similar to any other DJ. He wasn’t extraordinarily great but the show was going fine, till he got some trouble from the electronics. It was pretty obvious things weren’t going as planned or in my friend’s words, “Ye toh LOL ho gaya!”
By the end was his act, all the people around me were just waiting for him to hurry up and finish. They seemed to have come here for Pentagram and they wanted Pentagram. It seems to me that I was the only idiot who didn’t know whp Pentagram were.
At last, the much awaited moment came and Pentagram entered the stage. The crowd went berserk. With all the tall guys jumping in front of my tiny little five foot four frame, I could barely see them at first, but soon they’re faces came into view.
I’m not going to lie, I expected them to be younger. In India, English rock bands don’t last very long and looking at them, I realized they were much older and had been going strong for much longer than I expected. But these four guys had more youth in them than most people in their late twenties or early thirties.
I knew that I made a good decision by coming the second they started with their first song. Vishal Dadlani and his crew really knew how to get the crowd going. Looking at the opening artist, I sort of expected them to do more electo- stuff but much to my delight, their’s was a hard core rock band.
The one thing that I loved about the band was that they were real. They didn’t talk about the same old sappy love songs and their songs weren’t about sex, money or fame, but about breaking barriers and being yourself no matter what happens.
Vishal Dadlani urged the crowd full of youngsters to stay unique and not get pulled into the murder machines of trousers, shirts, office nights and endless, dull, grey lives.
My personal favorite was the song, ‘Nutter’ and the first thing I did when I got back was opened YouTube and listened to it again. This song just spoke to me on a personal level and I felt a kind of excitement and energy in me that I haven’t felt in some time. Their’s is the kind of music you would hear in hard rock Cafe’s in Delhi or Mumbai.
They played an electro song too, and it was so hilarious that Dadlani actually apologized before playing it. All in all, the event was a big success and these ‘nutters’ are now one of my favorite bands. I’m glad I got my lazy behind off the bed and showed up.
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