Riot Act

What: Riot Act 2010, St. Francis Institute of Technology
Who: Them Clones, Blakc, Rosemary, Tripwire
Where: St. Francis School grounds, Borivili
When: 28 March 2010

College gigs are always fun. Period. I’ve been a part of rock shows in Kerala where drunk kids do bhangra while the band plays Iron Maiden. Like Sehwag’s approach to batting, there is no respect for reputation, and each band will be judged on merit on that day. Extended soundchecks are greeted with raucous anthems featuring mothers and sisters.

St. Francis, I’m told, has a legacy of hosting memorable gigs. So it was no surprise to find a gathering of black tees in the northernmost point of Mumbai’s suburban area. The soundcheck took awfully long and the crowd, after 2 hours of waiting, could hold it no longer, even Them Clones faced an assortment, from ‘Start the f**in’ music!’ to more colourful local banter.

Tripwire had the advantage of the crowd on their side because they were actually playing, but a few sound screwups (including unfunctioning mics) led to a further delay. Crowd, not amused. Didn’t help that when Tripwire started, they played, and I’m trying to be as diplomatic as possible, below average. Infact, a lot below that. While drummer Jackie (yes, the gent from Radio) was quite good, the compositions were poor and delivery as bad (or was it just an off day?). But what was worse was the crowd handling - heckling crowds are something each band should expect, and abusing the crowd / sound guy on stage is the first no-no in band etiquette. Sadly, each member violated this, and sticking around for one more song when the organizers asked them to leave just made things more sour.

Needless to say, Tripwire left the stage incensing the audience, pissing off tense organizers and didn’t look too amused themselves. Given this, Rosemary, a psychedelic-punk band who previously opened for Blakc, had an enormous challenge when taking to stage. I was wondering how the crowd would react to the almost Floydesque array of sounds. Guitarist Achint had a pedal collection that could rival a display at Furtados’. Plus, from what I’ve seen, their songs are mildly long and psychedelic, not exactly college fest-mosh pit material. But the crowd actually seemed to lap up their sonic experiments. Rosemary were fantastic and to me put in the performance of the evening. They totally got the crowd back to life (think of what the solo on Stairway did for the song), were fantastic on stage and even used a Shruti box (!!). Sadly, the set was too short and along came…

Good ol’ Blakc. Chordvine readers might be fed up with my Blakc reviews (cough cough cough) so let’s just say that they were energetic as always, just 4 songs they did. Anish looks less like a rocker everytime I see him (in short hair and shirt this time. Next you know, he’ll be in a suit. Oh wait, he’s done that already?) and Roop’s basswork was phenomenal as usual.

Them Clones were the most anticipated band in Mumbai since, uhm, Avial 4 days back. Last time they were here, this foolish reviewer called them average and was told by a commenter that they respond as per the crowd. So at Borivali they had no excuse and did not disappoint.

The set was, again, sadly short. Two new songs (one, interestingly named Riot Act, and the other named Jealous Seed or something like that – I was never any good with lyrics) made their way into the list. Stunningly, neither In The Name of God or Zephyretta were performed, and my personal Clones favourite, Awaken, wasn’t either. The Bomb Song opened the set. Power-packed, hard-hitting sounds are Them Clones trademarks, and vocalist Prithwish is a livewire on stage. And did anyone else notice bassist Clarence was playing with his fretting hand over the neck (no really! See this)? Like a friend said, ”Either too easy or he’s just plain bored”. They ended with My Life, they didn’t have a choice, the audience would have ran, uhm, riot. By the way, is Prithwish really Suresh Raina in disguise? And here’s Gucci Singh asking ma’am if he can be excused. Don’t kill me.

Overall, good gig. The soundcheck should have started and finished much earlier, and we could have got to see a longer set from everyone. And like I said before, Rosemary were the band of the evening for me. I hope to see a fully-blown performance from them sometime.