The musical extravaganza
organized to mark the JPGL takeover of the
What made it even more disheartening was that the promise of three remarkable bands on offer was not fully realized in performance. Strings were headlining the show. Barre (pronounced ‘bare’) Chords, an underground superband featuring the cream of local artists such as Mekaal Hassan and other players from Entity, the Mekaal Hassan Band and Powertrip were up in support. And then there was possibly the most anticipated band of the night, noori (they insist on keeping the ‘n’ lowercase), Ali Noor’s new band which was having its first major public performance.
The weather was humid and hot but the setup at the street was excellent. Pedestal fans were all around and waiters were there to assist the guests - the event was invite-only: all present were truly pampered with delightful food and service. Unfortunately, it appeared little attention had been paid to the sound system and all through the night, the sound suffered.
The event was launched by Natasha
(sounded like she said ‘Welcome to
Barre Chords started off the festivities. They are normally a fun group which delivered one of the most memorable performances at a recent Gig Night, so anticipation was high.
They started off with what was essentially a Powertrip segment: Powertrip members Tauseef Dar (Vocals) and Cecil Chaudhry (Guitars) played a Powertrip regular cover In the flesh (Pink Floyd). Fahad Khan was on drums and Sammy was on the bass. The performance was competent but the material was inappropriate. If any irony was intended, one missed it as the rendition was much too earnest. The utterly desolate and bitter In The Flesh has lyrics to the end: ‘So you thought you might like to, go to the show./ … If you wanna find out what's behind these cold eyes /You'll just have to blow your way through this disguise.’ The cover was totally out of place as singing angsty songs to suited booted tied up executives and denizens of Gawalmandi is rather pointless.
However, the performance really caught fire with the next song, Loser, a song by Powertrip with Cecil on lead vocals. It was possibly Mekaal Hassan coming on stage to contribute a searing solo which upped the ante. Yet it was Tauseef Dar who really shone the brightest on the number as he put his pipes - he is an award winning backup singer- to good use on backing vocals. His falsetto and ad libs were remarkable.
Mekaal then played Pantragruel,
an original instrumental tune of his, with the band. Fahad Khan really
shone on this number which is truly monstrous sounding and as epic as the
subject matter which draws inspiration from the Francois Rabelais epic about
the giants Gargantua and Pantagruel. His playing which tends to be bombastic
benefitted from playing in a large venue such as the
Mekaal was excellent but he was on for too short a time. The order of the night seems to have been to get as much exposure to as many friends as possible. So next on was crowd favorite Ahmad Ali ‘Jutt’ Butt. He sang a Limp Bizkit cover from the MI2 soundtrack (was there a point to the most loved actor cum singer singing ‘Why you wanna hate me?’) which suffered from band sound production and was bad background music for dining to. No one seemed to care and Butt sahab did his bit and left.
While individual performances were great, this night the band seemed more like three bands than one. The personnel and type of music kept changing and this gave a disjointed feel to the performance as each of the members seemed to be grabbing this opportunity on a larger stage to promote themselves: Power Trip, Entity, Mekaal Hassan Band. Mekaal translated well to above ground, however Ahmad Ali Butt and to a lesser extent Powertrip did not. It was just not Gawalmandi type of music.
noori was on next.
Ali Noor’s band noori is easily the hottest thing
coming out of
Thereafter he and his band which was next ushered onstage went down in a huge and bad way. Ali Noor seemed to have exhausted himself with the one song and thereafter he sounded nasal and like a singer who was nursing a cold: his singing on the night was well below par. With their leader all over the place and struggling badly, the rest of the band (Mohammad Ali Jafri on bass and Farhad Humayun) made a racket which sounded worse with the bad sound mix. Mohammad Ali Jafri was animated, bouncing around with his bass. Overcompensating he did too much. Farhad Humayun was powerful if at times stuttering to keep up with Ali Noor. The wheels truly came apart for the noori bandwagon and all other songs which were, barring one, electric, sounded bad with a horrid sound mix.
Suno Kai Mai Hoon Jawan was plain bad. It was bereft of energy and was a mellow stroll when the lyrics require an attitude laden snarl. Jaana Tha with its big choruses showed up the shortcomings of the trio setup: three people are much too few to make noori songs, which are often anthemic in nature, sound big. The dead crowd did not help much too. Sari Raat Jaaga was done in by horrible guitar sound as was the new single Tum Hans Diyae
Ali Noor struggled to play guitar and sing at the same time as one seemed to suffer because of the other at various times. Noor clearly needs to choose singing over rhythm guitar playing and to get another guitar player to play rhythm. His ability on the guitar is undoubtedly superior and it showed in his spectacular solos on the night: the reason for the ability coming through in the solos was clear: he did not have to sing while playing guitar solos.
To his credit Ali Noor attempted to tailor his material to the event, even airing his song Gawalmandi Kai Siri Pai: but the same was played a bit too fast and failed to work up the audience. A much better version was previously rendered by Ali Hamza at a LUMS show recently.
noori seem to be on the ball with their video making, website designing and their albums that are fast approaching completion, but it is where it really matters, in live performance, that they fell down. They have been good in the past, and no doubt they will soon pick up, but on this night they ended up being plainly poor.
Strings of course can never be poor. They are today much too professional a unit to mess up. For live performance, the group grows to six in number and each player is professional to the core. They were at Gawalmandi well before they were supposed to perform (before even noori came onstage) and were onstage on cue. Musically, their performance was spot on, even though it seemed to lack much joy. They were fine and they played all their hits: not animated or exciting, just fine. It was only occasionally that their performance caught fire. It was perhaps down to the late hour or the lame audience interaction or just that most of the people had left by now or were sated and drowsy from the various heavy foods and heavy shots of lassi. Either all that or there is something in the nature of the band that makes one feel that there is a an edge missing: they are after all a pop band and are so in nature meant to be pleasant, not hard rocking. To their credit they tried out the harder rocking songs from their oeuvre, but the songs barring the last Anjanai were rather ineffectual.
The performance also cleared up another misconception for me: One has often wondered if Strings in its latest incarnation is merely the Bilal Maqsood show with Faisal Kapadia playing Andrew Ridgeley to Bilal’s George Michael. This performance certainly put that silly notion to rest. Faisal has the voice in the band and it showed on the night. Bilal Maqsood’s voice was a little too shrill in performance (Sar Kiye Ye Pahar) and one sees why Faisal Kapadia with his bass heavy voice remains an essential part of Strings.
Overall, the organization of the show was in most aspects excellent: but it was found lacking in the most essential of elements: they seemed to have skimped on the sound system and getting a really good person to mix the sound. Moreover, for security reasons they had set up the stage so far removed from the audience that the crowd interaction turned out to be pretty much nil. And finally the organizers were guilty of starting the show elevenish (invites said eight) and with three bands lined up to perform they were always going to suffer in completing within time.
Just one more qualms off of the topic of music: the commercialization of Gawalmandi is rather sad. There was a time when one could slink off to Gawalmandi to get away from advertisements and get a taste of real Lahore. But even that seems to be a part of the past. Mr. Kamran Lashari for all his tireless efforts to promote Lahore has much to answer for for uglification of the city through permitting ads to pop up all over town and selling off the best parts of the city.
In conclusion, the event was a bit of a disappointment: Excellent service but disappointing music. The event could have been better and more acceptable the other way round.