I was at a popular club in Shillong recently. It was well past 10 on a Friday, but there were only a handful of people sitting around the bar sipping their drinks. For a gig night in the “rock capital” of the country, it was as dead as a graveyard. I turned to Rudy, the blues guitarist for Soulmate, and asked him if this really was the Mecca of rock I’d heard about while growing up. He told me it wasn’t, and even his own band did only the odd show here. Why? “It’s so much cheaper to get a DJ,” the club owner told me. “You are paying for just one guy.”
Back in Delhi, things have changed. Well, sort of. There’s a gig almost every night — and it’s not just the lone disc jockey (DJ). There’s been an explosion of bands over the past few years, from the waltzy Peter Cat Recording Co to the neo-grunge Indigo Children. However, if you ask any of them for their favourite venue, you’ll find them fumbling for an answer.
What about all these fancy new clubs opening? Blue Frog has finally opened its fluorescent lily-pad space to Delhi’s music fraternity. But at Rs 700 a drink with an extra Rs 300 to gain entry, the club is clearly targeting the big boys with their big cars. The odd Nitin Sawhney show might get them in, but what about the local troubadours who play to college kids? High on energy, low on cash, aren’t they the ones who really make the scene?
As always, we need to dig into the business model behind this. Most small gigs are done through organisers/event managers who pull in a sponsor or convince the venue to pay for the band and the rental of sound equipment. The venue will try to cover it by either upping the price of their beers or charging an entry fee. This is very different from the scene in, say, Austin, the live music capital of the world. There you have warehouses converted to bare clubs — a stage on one end and a bar at the other, with lots of people in between. The band is given an option of charging their own entry fee or a percentage from the bar sales. The deal happens directly between the venue and the band.
In India, we still look at bands as some sort of a fine dining experience. I still remember the bouncer at a club in Chennai looking disapprovingly at my slippers. It didn’t matter if I was part of the band that was performing. Even at the Hard Rock Cafe (HRC), fans are expected to behave in a certain way. At one of our gigs in Hard Rock Hyderabad, our manager was rudely escorted out of the venue when he was found headbanging by himself. “He was drunk!” the HRC management told us later.
Of course, it’s very different in the case of big international acts. In recent times, many of them have had to be called off for lack of a better system. The Metallica concert in Gurgaon was bound to fail: barriers made of bamboo poles separated the 35,000-strong audience from their metal gods, a disaster waiting to happen. I remember the late Amit Saigal calling me after the Metallica mess, “This is why I have stopped doing these big events.” Amit had pioneered a string of successful Great Indian Rock festivals at the open-air Hamsadhwani Theatre in Pragati Maidan. It’s now unavailable for live concerts, as the administration thinks it’s only wise to have exhibitions here. A couple of years ago, the Jazz Utsav scheduled at Mumbai’s downtown Priyadarshini Park had to be cancelled at the last minute because the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation decided to let the organisers know that non-sporting events could not take place. This was when thousands of jazz lovers had already gathered outside the venue, tickets in hand. The Bryan Adams 2011 concert in Delhi suffered a similar setback when Delhi Police refused to give permission owing to security reasons.
The way out? A one-stop shop. A stand-alone venue, like an O2 in Dublin, that has the capacity for a massive concert. All licences and permits should come with the venue when an organiser decides to lease it out for a concert. And it should include alcohol.
Also Read
People have already started buying into this idea. Mumbai’s Mehboob Studio, famous for many an item song shot in its hallowed space, is now rented out for concerts like the recently concluded Mahindra Blues Fest featuring legends like Buddy Guy and Taj Mahal. Every month or so, the organisers (Orange Juice Entertainment) host a “Live From The Console” show at one of the smaller studios featuring indie bands where entry and alcohol are cheap. This is a great move and will only help the industry grow organically. Back in Delhi, the Commonwealth Games has left behind enough places that could easily be converted into live music spots. The talent is there, so is the audience. The time is right. All we need is the right place.
The writer, a former editor of Maxim India, is lead guitarist of the band Menwhopause