Turn Up, Tune Up, Tune Out, Sound Bad

“I can’t $$$^$ing hear myself. Get the sound right or we aint #$%$#%ing playing.”

With that expletive-laden line and few more choice words, Eddy, Seth’s vocalist brought the first song of their set to a sudden, premature halt. His wrath was aimed at the sound mixer on the night or the shocking lack thereof. The Rafi Peer management had, after selling off tickets by the truckload, not hired a half competent professional to mix the sound in the always acoustically difficult Alhamra Open Air Amphitheatre; essentially they had taken the money and run. Perhaps if only more bands had stood up to the management and for themselves, the well-anticipated Rafi Peer Festival ending event would not have turned into a fiasco. Instead, most of the band just milled around after the concert blaming the management. For the very same reason, the blame for the debacle must also rest with the bands: they seem to complain only after the fact.

In fact, what seemed like a mouthwatering bill of bands on offer, performing to mark the end of the Rafi Peer Group’s Theatre Festival, ended up in shambles due to poor management, horrid sound system (or was it just horrid use of the sound system?) and even worse sound mixing.

Punch, DJ Kash (Kashif Sadiq), the Shahzad Hameed Band, Cell from NCA, Paradigm, Incision and Seth were all slated to perform. Each act seemed promising. Punch and Cell were new acts and the word on the street was that they were exciting. Shahzad Hameed was the rocker at the heart of the fabulous Blue Buzz and any performance of his and indeed of DJ Kash is always eagerly anticipated. Paradigm has recently become a band of note, but the highlight of the night was always going to be the battle of the two death metal bands, Incision vs. Seth or more precisely Atif, the ex-lead singer of Seth going up against his old band-mates with his new band, Incision.

The crowd came in in droves, the largest in ages. Sadly, along with it came the irritating elements, catcalling the ladies, jeering the guys. Nevertheless, once the preliminaries were out of the way (this was also meant to be a prize giving ceremony by the Rafi Peer people), the rockers came on.

Actually, first one had to sit through Punch. One was curious to see what sort of a band Punch was. Could it be a heavy metal band, a la Pantera (cue the Vulgar Display of Power album-cover, with a clenched fist smashing into a man’s face), a brutal amalgam of rock and power? Punch would be such a nice name for a band high on aggro. But no luck like that. Punch turned out to be a dance music/ bhangra act and not a very good one to boot. Clad in shiny fake leather pants and black t-shirts, they more or less danced off of DAT recordings and did not sing much live. They were more performance artists acting as musicians than proper musicians. Still, the band at least had gall and attitude and the singers (lip-sychers?) danced up a storm. The tracks, if one could have heard them clearly, were probably strong, and one can see that Punch can be a good band to check out at an indoors club. But out of doors, they were simply not good.

DJ Kash then came on. To anyone who is aware of him, Kashif Sadiq is a rocker through and through. He looks the part and writes brilliant rock songs. His song Morning on Coven’s Not In Your World e.p. was one of that e.p’s highlights and he duly played the song on the night. Sadly, the performance, hindered by bad sound, was simply not very good. His supporting band seemed under-rehearsed and Kash seemed a bit ill at ease. His booming voice was too loud to be melodic and not clear enough to allow the words he sang to be made out. Coming on with a few hired hands, Jamie on guitars and the always game Abid Khan on bass, Fahad on drums, Kash outstayed his welcome with the last Rage Against The Machine cover. Before doing so, he did however have the excellent taste to bring on Mehreen Zaidi for a duet on the white-soul classic Cruisin’. While, the bad sound mixing and Kash’s own restrained vocals did the song in, Mehreen Z’s voice and performance however were excellent. The usual lafontar crowd was hushed to a silence when she started singing as she truly possesses a unique voice.

Kash was followed on by the best performance of the night which came from the Shahzad Hameed Band. The sound mixing seemed to somehow improve for the SH Band (Farhad Humayun take a bow) and in any event, weak sound mixing is not often fatal to their type of music i.e. ‘70s hard rock (consider records by the Stooges, Velvet Underground, etc.) The performance actually against all odds rocked. It is nice to see that he has moved on well after the implosion his last band, Blue Buzz. The new lead singer Azhar Rana is a great find and Javaid Rehman on rhythm guitars, Mahmood on Bass and Hashim on Drums are well-accomplished. A couple of more performances and the Shahzad Hameed Band is likely to take on the crown of the most fun band in the city, if not the best. As ever Shahzad’s taste in music was superb: With cover of Sunshine of your love, All Right Now, a hard-rocking original even, there was nary a mis-step and this dive into ‘70s rock was everything the recent Power Trip show was not: hard rocking, tight, intense and most of all fun. With the last cover of Satisfaction the Shahzad Hameed Band gave notice that it had arrived on the scene and it had now erased from memory the below-par performance at the Green Gig Night.

Cell came on next and were a sight to see. Fronted by a shaven headed Danyal, the band’s performance was menacing and kinetic. One cannot say much of how it sounded as the bad sound mixing once more did this band in. Nevertheless, the throat shredding screams and growls by Danyal seemed to cut through well enough and were impressive. The crowd did not seem to mind not being able to hear the band: they seemed partisan (there were a lot of NCA students around) and they supported their College band with good voice.

The head of steam built up by the crowd was however lost by Paradigm, up next and who were horrid. One can only partly blame bad sound for their problems: quite a bit of the problems were of their own making. Paradigm have once more lapsed into their intensely irritating habit of tuning up for ages, with their backs turned to the audience, before playing their music. Moreover, a prime problem now seems to be that they are now too interested in doing weak originals (?) or playing covers of songs that they perhaps like to hear, but no one else seems to respond to. All the best covers they have ever done (Creed, U2) have one by one been dropped from their set-list and most of the songs they now play are third-generation (poor quality) angst rock anthems that are not really anthemic or effective.

Paradigm made way for perhaps the most anticipated performance of the night. Atif D’s new band Incision was the band to check out. There is a lot of bad blood in the local underground over Atif and his band. Some people have insisted that he has no band, only a number of hired musicians who may or may not be available on a given day. That was one of the grounds cited by Ahmad Ali Butt when he kicked Atif off the bill of the last Gig Night. While the band was all present on this night, the chemistry necessary for a band it seemed was not. The so-called band is more of a group of ultra-competent hired hands who all back the intense and passionate Atif. Atif does and did scream his guts out on the stage, but even had to concede at the end that ‘this is the worst f&$^$ing sound I have ever had in six years.’

While Atif soldiered on and then complained about the sound, Seth came on next and last and stopped the performance dead cold, waiting till the problem was gotten right. One could not really tell which was the better strategy. The result from each was quite unsatisfying.

Seth’s performance was shot through with pauses: pause to tune up, pauses to get the sound right. Eddy nixed the first song with an explosion of expletives and made everyone wait. And then wait some more. As the audience tuned out, Eddy attempted to keep all present involved by baiting them and they responded with jeers. Finally when, the band got going, it was an ugly performance. Yet Seth was still competent: still the performance lacked the punch they are reknowned for and was an anti-climactic end to the night, yet another performance falling apart due to unprofessional management and horrid sound. Faizaan & Saadan Peerzada’s please get your act together.

Kindly direct flames, shoutouts and rants to maqsimillion@hotmail.com. Plus two erratas from the Money For Nothing article dated 16/02/02: (1) One of the two vocalists for Power Trip was Tauseef Dar and not Yousuf Dar as previously reported; and (2) the Trip, is not ‘long-defunct’ as previously thought and reported; Power Trip points out that they performed in July 2001 at Alhamra and earlier in the year at one of the Rock Festivals.