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When we think of ourselves, we think of ourselves as something fixed.
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This is what I am, this is no accident.
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Even if we accept that some aspects of ourselves are contingent, we hold that others are essential.
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One of those, oddly enough, can be musical taste.
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Think of the music you like.
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To like that kind of music almost seems hardwired into you, doesn't it?
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You may discover stuff through your peers or your environment, but what you like feels
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a part of what you are.
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Well, here's a thought experiment.
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What if you were born in North Africa?
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What kind of music would you have liked then?
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It's likely that your favourite artist would have been someone you haven't even heard of
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It's also possible that all the music you take with you to a desert island today would
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be stuff that you'd never discover in this thought experiment world.
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But my point is not that all our tastes are contingent on accidents like the accident
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In fact, I believe the opposite.
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I believe that our brains are wired to find pleasures in certain kinds of sound, and that
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there is something universal in music everywhere, however different it may seem to us.
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We can find rapture in Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Led Zeppelin or Tenari Ven, and that rapture
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is rooted in the human condition, in the effect that music has on us, and it's basically
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It may seem at a superficial level that we are different like our music is different.
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But the point is, the music isn't different, there is a universal pentatonic.
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Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioural
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Scene and The Unseen.
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Serendipity is a strange thing.
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In January this year, I released an episode with my friend Chuck Gopal, in which we riffed
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on the Beatles for a while.
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In response to that, Warren Mendoza of Blackstrat Blues said on Twitter that the next time we
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discuss the Beatles, he wanted to be in on it.
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Warren is a legend of the indie music scene, and while I hadn't even heard all his stuff,
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I loved some of the early work that I had heard, such as Anuwa's Sky, which has been
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on my playlist of comfort music for years.
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So I jumped at the chance to ask him on the show and to go a little deeper into his work
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And because I felt my musical knowledge was not good enough to go as deep as I wanted,
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I asked Chuck to be my co-host for the episode, and I'm so grateful that Chuck agreed.
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He came over to my place so we were both in my home studio, while Warren recorded remotely
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from his home in Auckland.
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I loved this episode not just because of this conversation, but also because it took me
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on a superb journey of discovering that part of Warren's music that I hadn't heard yet.
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I've been driving people nuts by playing Ode to a Sunny Day on repeat.
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Before we get to this conversation though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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One of the themes of this episode is that even though all music has local flavour, music
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Well, you can turn that around when it comes to crime.
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Human nature is twisted and crime is everywhere, but it has a local flavour everywhere.
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This episode is sponsored by a podcast that is all about desi crime.
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Aishwarya Singh and Aryan Misra are the hosts of the Desi Crime Podcast, which covers crimes
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from India, Pakistan, Nepal, basically any place you'd call desi.
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Their show description has this sentence which hooked me right away, quote, crimes that take
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place in the Indian subcontinent aren't remotely similar to western crimes.
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Desi crimes are gory, complicated, corrupt and hardly documented, stop quote.
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Aishwarya and Aryan take us on a wild ride as they tell us these gory and complicated
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They tell us about the most prolific murderer in history, Thug Bairam.
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They give us an inside dope on the massacre of the Nepali royal family.
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We get suicide pacts and police brutality, disappearing journalists and charming serial
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If you like storytelling and crime interests you, you should listen to the Desi Crime Podcast.
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You can find it on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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So check out the Desi Crime Podcast.
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There is no better way to kill time.
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Warren and Chuck, welcome to the Scene in the Unseen.
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And thank you for having me as a co-host.
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Okay, so, you know, in the spirit of how these episodes sometimes go, let's just talk about
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what we were talking about in the moment, which is that we had great trouble getting
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Chuck's mic to work and he finally got it to work.
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And he said, as soon as it started working, that I'm not going to touch anything, right?
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Yeah, something of that sort.
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And Warren, you mentioned you had a story about that.
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So let's start with the story.
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Okay, the story is, I used to be in a bank called Zero and we used to practice in this
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old house in Shivaji Park called Uday Vihar.
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Now being an old house, you know, of like, I think 30s or 40s or whenever it was built,
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the electric grounding was a bit suspect.
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So when we used to practice, first of all, we used to get shocks from each other.
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If one person touched the other person, it was like a severe jhatka.
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So we learned not to touch each other while practicing, you know.
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So the issue then became with distortion, all that noise became amplified.
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So you had to find a way of grounding the amplifiers.
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So me being an electrical engineering student knew that there was a water pipe running outside.
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So we got some sandpaper, cleaned it a little bit, put a wire around it, soldered it in
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place, brought that wire in and grounded the amps.
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Problem became in the monsoon, the connection would become intermittent.
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So Rajeev had to go outside while we were playing our guitars and jiggle the wire till
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And then he was told, okay, leave it, leave it, don't touch anything, it's just fine right
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And then again, if the noise came, he would have to go out and repeat the process.
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Then a few months, I think later we got complaints that you guys are too loud, neighbors are
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So we figured the room we were practicing in was the first room closest to the main
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So we said we'll go to the next room.
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When we went to the next room, the power was grounded over there.
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And we realized we could have just taken an extension box and plugged it into that room.
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Yeah, it's such, you know, such Yugaru lives kind of musicians live with, you know, I remember
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reading somewhere that a musician's best friend is duct tape.
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So this episode really happened when you heard the episode between Chuck and me and you said
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next time we discuss, you discuss, the Beatles kindly call me.
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Now there's a lot we want to discuss apart from the Beatles, but we thought a nice way
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to kind of get it going is actually to talk about the Beatles because I, you know, in
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one of your interviews, I read something moving where you said that, you know, the most memorable
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memory from your childhood, as it were, was when you heard the Beatles for the first time.
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So tell us a little bit about, you know, what they meant to you and what they have meant
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Well, from the moment I was a kid and I could barely talk, like my aunt who used to live
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with us at the time had this big poster of the Beatles.
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So I'd learned all their names, you know, I should say John Paul, George Ringo and everything.
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So you know, that was like the awareness for, you know, who the Beatles were and I was from
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And it was a bit later, I think, when I was around eight after I went through a beef MC
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hammer phase, someone gave me this compilation cassette and there was a Beatles medley in
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that and it was one of those, you know, the now party, whatever, you know, this compilation
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So there was that Beatles medley, suddenly of all the songs that made the most sense
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So I said, what is this?
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And I went to my dad, who's also a musician, and he said, you know, you should probably
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get into the Beatles at this point, you'll kind of, you know, understand a little bit
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more about the, you know, the basics of music and everything like that.
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So I tried getting my hands, we had some cassettes at home, so I listened to that.
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And then my uncle had the motherlode, he had all the albums on vinyl.
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My dad's sister's husband, his name is Carlisle, awesome guy.
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So he used to give me one by one, like a lending library, vinyl, I used to take it to the local
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guy who had one vinyl player and one cassette deck and he would do the transfer because
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I didn't have a working vinyl player at home.
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So all these cassette transfers became then like my textbook, you know.
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So I think between age eight to 13, I literally did not listen to anything else.
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Every single album, everything went into, you know, and I used to sit with my guitar
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and slowly, and then I found out how to slow down the tape, you know, learn solos in half
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speed and stuff like that.
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And for bass lines, you have to speed up the tape so you could hear the bass more clearly,
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all that kind of stuff.
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So then, you know, kind of what I became as a musician, a large part of that came from
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that initial grounding experience, because at the same time I started, you know, sitting
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with the guitar a little bit more seriously.
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So there you go, that's the, that's the Beatles story for you.
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So one follow up question that I'll ask is, interestingly, also, you said that was your
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basic grounding and you have two grounding stories really over there, but two different
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kinds of grounding entirely.
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Anyone who listens to the Beatles now, it's very apparent that there's been an evolution
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right from the early, I want to say boy band phase right to the later psychedelic and experimental
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But how did you react to that as a eight to 13 year old, were you able to track that evolution?
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Did you hear the albums chronologically?
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I'm curious to hear about, you know, something like that.
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The older I got, the more sense the later albums made to me.
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So initially the, you know, the initial, the first early albums, Please Please Me, the
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first two or three albums, that was what I gravitated to most.
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And then obviously there are songs on the later albums like Let It Be and Hey Jude,
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which are very accessible.
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So I used to love those as well.
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But then the first time I heard a song like Tomorrow Never Knows, I got really scared.
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I was like, I don't think I'm supposed to be listening to this music.
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It's kind of like weird and everything.
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So I kind of put that on the back burner.
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And then, you know, as you go closer to puberty, all that stuff starts making a little bit
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So you did listen to them chronologically?
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I mean, I can still tell you like which album comes after what and it's like so well edged
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The moment one song stops, I can hear the next song starting.
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My daughter thinks I'm nuts because I start singing the next song and it starts.
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I read this essay by Ted Joya recently, or I think it was in his interview with Tyler
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Carvin where he mentioned how the Beatles for those five or six years, the significant
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thing about them was they kept evolving every five, six months.
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And the reason, according to him, that was important is that every time you have somebody
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who becomes a breakthrough hit, what they're doing becomes a formula.
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And people immediately rush to imitate that and copy that.
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And they were changing every six months.
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And his point was, look, they do something in 1964.
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The monkeys comes along and does something really similar.
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But by the time the monkeys is out, they moved on and they're moving on over a period.
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So in a sense, would you then say that it's kind of listening to the Beatles discography
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is like an accelerated education in music also, where you're just getting so many different
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styles from your really basic pop song, like the early stuff to much more complicated stuff
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But I mean, even by the second or the third album, you could hear them changing things
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like in She Loves You, for example, that one minor chord comes in like the four minor.
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That's like something that you wouldn't have heard a little while before.
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So you can sense that sophistication coming in really quickly.
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I think also what happens is the moment an artist experiences some kind of mass success,
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there's all this kind of acceptance that comes in, you know, so you feel more you're more
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likely to take risks because you know that, you know, otherwise always wondering will
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But now they've come to a point in popularity where like everyone loves what they do.
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So it makes sense for them to take those risks.
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And you can see the acceleration is really quick.
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By the time they became pop, maybe because by the time I think 63 was the first album.
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Before that, they had spent years playing covers in Hamburg and the repertoire was vast.
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They would have listened to like everything from jazz and you know, whatever top 40 and
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all is going in to the rock and roll and everything like that.
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So huge range of influences already.
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And that's kind of already percolating.
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And by the time the first album hits, you can see it's you know, from 63, Please Mr.
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Postman, 66, your Sgt Pepper comes along.
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Yeah, one of the things that we started our conversation Amit with was I had a theory
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that if the discography of the Beatles was slightly flipped and Sgt Pepper for some magical
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reason was the first album and then Please Please Me, etc. came later, that the history
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of music would have been completely different because the Beatles wouldn't have had that
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initial fan base and then something experimental like Sgt Pepper's wouldn't have had a mass
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audience to be tested out on.
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And that's something we debated and we'd love to know what you think about that.
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Yeah, I think for sure because even if I John Mayer, if you notice his career, the initial
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albums are a little bit more poppy and you know, designed to get into the mainstream
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Once those two or three albums go by and you become a household name, that's when you see
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hey man, I'm going to take some risks and you know, do something different.
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And plus what happens is then the people who are controlling the money supply are less
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They say this guy knows what he's doing, let's let him do it, don't need to get involved.
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So then you have those abilities to do that, otherwise there will always be someone saying
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hey make it more like this or make it more like that or maybe your pants should be blue
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and your shoes should be green, you know, that sort of thing.
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And that kind of gets in the way of a certain creative flow because sometimes when too many
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people make those decisions, the art tends to suffer.
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Yeah, I think that's a great business lesson itself over there for a company who's already
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If they're launching something experimental, then it's likely that that will find acceptance
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with investors as well as audiences.
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But that's just me extrapolating what you said.
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I mean, I don't think it would work in a business context because I think, you know, one day
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you're a startup, you innovate in some way, you're a disruptor.
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But once you become a big company, then you become set in your ways.
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Your incentives are for just keep on doing the same thing.
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But I guess I want to ask a question that, in fact, I ask all the historians who come
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And I think it's particularly apt when you're talking about the Beatles.
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Now there's something, a gent named Thomas Carlyle had come up with something called
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the Great Man Theory of History.
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And there are really two schools of thought on this.
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And Carlyle's Great Man Theory of History really postulates that history is made by
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great man at some point.
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And of course, back in those days, everything was a male gender.
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So therefore the great man and not the great person theory.
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But the idea being that they'll be a great person, they'll do something great and history
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Whereas the counterpoint to that is that no, there are currents in history which are happening
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anyway, and things are going to go where they're going to go.
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And people don't, individuals don't matter so much.
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So in the context of the Beatles, how would you look at that?
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Like, my sense is that music history would have been vastly different if say, if John
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and Paul hadn't met, you know, you know, you can pick your sort of great man equivalent
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You could pick Led Zepp or you could pick Dylan depending on what you can listen to.
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So is that something you'd kind of tend to agree with?
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Or would you say that there are currents which are going in a particular way, even if you
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didn't have that specific group, music would have, you know, continued evolving in the
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I think it's also down to the level of influence they had among other bands, you know.
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There was a lot of other bands that were very influenced by what they were doing.
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I mean, we were the first guys to actually start writing their own songs, if you look
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at it, because there was a lot of that, you know, A&R, we'll get the song from somebody,
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give it to the singer to sing.
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And these guys come along.
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And there's also that class thing which was broken down because they were these, you know,
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Northern England people.
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So in that English sense, they kind of opened up the thing.
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And then the crossover to America, then that cross pollination, which had been happening
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is blown wide open, you know.
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So in that sense, you can't discount like, you know, musically aside, if you're just
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looking at his historically, that would have definitely changed.
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There wouldn't be an Aerosmith without the Beatles or a vast number of other bands like
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I mean, I don't think you'd have the opportunity for, let's say, what's like a not as famous
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British band, let's say Jets Hotel.
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Jets Hotel wouldn't have the ability to be popular in America unless that initial barrier
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So it's not just musically.
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Another way of phrasing Amit's question, and this is something I often think about, is
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which artist, if removed from rock history, would have had the maximum ripple effect across?
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And it's another way of phrasing the question that you asked is the great man theory.
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But any name that springs to mind for you?
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Not just guitar players.
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A lot of other musicians were.
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I mean, Miles Davis was very interested in what Hendrix was doing.
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So that only goes to show.
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So let's start by, you know, where my shows often start, which is kind of your personal
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I mean, you were born in the, you know, right when the 70s were ending, you grew up in Dadar.
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Tell us a little bit about what your childhood was like, because, like, I'm a little older
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Back in those days, just, you know, you couldn't, the stuff people today take for granted, like,
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you can listen to any music in the world and all of that.
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We couldn't take that shit for granted.
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It was such a big deal and such an achievement to put a mixtape together.
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For example, you discovered music by a band, you would have to scrounge high and dry for
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some other album by them, even for information about, like, who are these guys and all of
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So tell us something about sort of the texture of your childhood growing up and, you know,
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what those years were like.
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So I mean, I was, I was very lucky in that sense because I was born into a musical family.
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So I was already surrounded by, you know, music, the act of creating it, the act of
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listening to it, all of that.
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And the access to music obviously wasn't as good as it was now, but at least, you know,
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So a lot of, you know, his cassettes became like part of my education.
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Like when I wanted to listen to Clapton, he gave me all the cream stuff.
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He said, listen to that first, you know.
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So at least I had that.
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And then I had uncles and my dad's friends, other musicians who would drop in, you know,
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and give some, like my uncle Loy, he, at the time I was a kid, he used to live in Delhi.
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So he used to come down once in a while and every time, like he would come down little
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one little nugget of kyaan, you know, my first rock and roll riff or something like that,
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When I was just born, we didn't have a TV at home.
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That came when I was like, say four or five, it was one black and white number.
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And again, you know what TV was like at that time, there was nothing in the English sense.
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It was like basically government messages and some, you know, in fact, I think my brother
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was the one, he started calling everyone to watch TV when the ads came on because the
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ads were in English, hey, the ads are on, come and watch.
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And there was some cool jingle or something or the other.
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So at least that was culturally relevant.
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So I never really got into any of the Indian classical music or anything like that.
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In fact, it was almost like an imposition at times, like, can we please escape from
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Give us something apart from this.
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And, you know, that Sunday morning, He-Man used to come on, that was like one escape.
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Then there was another program, there's this German thing called Transtelle.
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At least it was not in Hindi, so, you know, it was a little bit more understandable.
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And you know, things like that, and once in a while something would come on and then suddenly
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a world would light up.
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And I remember watching like, see that eagle's hell freezes over, they put, that was like,
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you know, more towards the 90s or whatever, but then things had gotten a bit better.
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But just the, you know, the whole retrieval of information became like, you know, every
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little nugget was, you know, treasured and like how they do sugarcane juice, they remove
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every last bit of juice so that that became a little bit more valuable.
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Now the information is so widely available, even in fact, if I give you like the best
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advice in the world, there's a chance that we just get wasted.
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You know, someone will think I'm just another person giving some gya.
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There's a chance like that.
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You know, so it's a very different world we live in today.
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In fact, you know, one of your Black Shad Brows albums is called The Last Analogue Generation.
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And you know, you mentioned about how when your daughter was born, you kind of wanted
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to document what has gone and we are the last analog generation in a sense.
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So when you look at the way that she's growing up, for example, and you think of the way
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that you grew up, what are the differences that you see in terms of how you're discovering
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music, how you're experiencing music or anything else for that matter, like not in terms of
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lamenting the good old days or not in terms of passing a value judgment of one generation
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having a better time than the other, but just in terms of differences, you know, what have
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I mean, at this age, she's still getting a lot of the music from the parents, you know,
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so our tastes, you know.
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But now she is starting to discover her like, I like certain things.
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So she'll make me make a playlist of her favorite songs that is then Bajaud add infinitum in
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So, you know, we're at her mercy.
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Can we please not listen to that same song again?
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But apart from that, I've noticed like as we get older, we get a little bit more judgmental
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about what is good and what is bad, where she doesn't have that, you know, if she likes
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You know, she's not really analyzing it to that extent.
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It's got a good melody.
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The chord changes are nice, weird notes and stuff like that.
#
So I used to be the same way when I was a kid, you know, in that sense, humans are built
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Where it changes when she gets a little bit older and she wants to, you know, like one
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of my nieces, I think is around 14 or 15, oh, no, now she must be 16 or something.
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So she was listening to Thin Lizzy.
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I was like, oh, you like Thin Lizzy?
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And I gave a few recommendations and everything, I called her a good uncle and everything.
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I mean, I think the good music will still find an audience.
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You know, the ones who are ready to look for it, for them, it's easier now than ever.
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You know, you just go to Spotify or whatever and say, give me a best of Thin Lizzy and
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otherwise I had to go to the shop and order the cassette, which took like a month to come,
#
you know, that sort of thing.
#
So you know, I don't know, it's kind of interesting because in a certain way, humans will always
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be built a certain way.
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And in ways, the ease of access is going to definitely be a fully different way of doing
#
There's something I wanted to ask a little later, but it makes so much sense asking it
#
now, which is we will have a conversation on form versus content and all that later.
#
But do you think that in some sense, what music itself is changing?
#
Like when you were growing up and well, when you were growing up, it was audio only.
#
And today it's almost hard to separate out music from say a music video or to a completely
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new generation like your knees.
#
It might be the associated TikTok meme or something like that.
#
Do you think that has a bearing on the music itself that, oh, there's also an associated
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I can't think of, do I want to know without thinking of that, that music, that iconic
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music video, for instance, is that something you thought about?
#
I think with every generation, they'll always be curious ones and they'll always be ones
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who will just follow the trend and listen to what it was dished out to them.
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There'll be ones who are prepared to look and dig deeper and those ones will find it.
#
But I don't know in terms of percentages, you know, how many of them will be one versus
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the other, you know, but there'll always be people.
#
I'm telling with every generation, there'll be someone who's still listening to BB King
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There'll be someone who's, as long as it's there, it's accessible.
#
For example, if his music has gone from all the servers or something like that, then it
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may be a little bit tough.
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Then they'll have to go and dig out vinyls and find a vinyl player to play it and all
#
But as long as it's available, you know, and the ease of access also becomes a big part
#
Because if you notice like the ones whose videos are easily found on YouTube, for example,
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we, you know, getting across the younger listeners more easily than the ones who don't.
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Mike, the question, though I was actually getting at was, is what we consider as music,
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is that changing from only audio to something that is audio plus visual?
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And who knows when in the metaverse, it might be audio plus visual plus how you're feeling
#
That's really what I was getting to.
#
It's always been changing ever since MTV came out, you know, which was what 1981, you know,
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the moment it became visual, there was no turning back from that.
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And then it will only go further from being a purely audio form, you know.
#
I mean, I'm still able to listen to music without any distractions.
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Once in a while, maybe I'll pick up my phone and, you know, if a message comes on or something
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like, which is why I tend to like disable notifications on all devices, like fuck that.
#
If I want to check it, I'll check it.
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Otherwise, don't tell me when to check, you know, that sort of thing.
#
But I mean, it's going to be different for different people.
#
Different people will have the ability to devote their attention span to listening to
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an entire album, A Dark Side of the Moon, for example.
#
And the first time you listen to it, it will blow your mind, you know, but then who wants
#
You have to see how many of them are there versus the ones who, you know, think money
#
is something that you pay.
#
Yeah, speaking of MTV, I actually worked there for a bit in the 90s and yeah, and the first
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video ever was Video Killed the Radio Star.
#
So maybe a more appropriate anthem would be Influencer Killed the Musician Star, which
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might be kind of coming upon us.
#
My other question is that I agree with you when you say that in every generation there'll
#
be kids who'll want to go outside the beaten track in terms of whatever the mainstream
#
stuff is and discover their own music and their taste will take them wherever they do.
#
But could it also be said that the notion of a mainstream has changed, if not dissolved?
#
Like Steve Van Zand of the East Street Band in an interview, he spoke about how rock was
#
mainstream for like 30 years from The Beatles or Dylan Going Electric to maybe Nirvana.
#
And after that, everything kind of just splintered and there is no longer one mainstream.
#
And that is a trend I see happening across everything else, not just music, like in terms
#
of media, you had a consensus on the truth, you had these mainstream outlets and now it's
#
completely dispersed, you know, people get their sort of narratives from all over the
#
There is no more a consensus on truth.
#
Similarly, you know, just in terms of entertainment, would it be the case that tastes are much
#
more dispersed and fragmented, which of course would have the negative impact that musicians,
#
it becomes harder to make money.
#
But at the same time, you could say that it becomes easier to make money in a way because
#
a long tail is enabled, because many more people can form what Kevin Kelly called, you
#
know, thousand true fans and you can reach out to them.
#
So, you know, these sort of conflicting thoughts kind of come to me.
#
So what's your sense of it?
#
You know, I noticed like when we were kids and there were only two channels, there's
#
a bigger chance that everyone watched the same thing.
#
Then when Star TV came and you know, then someone was watching this, you know, that
#
splintering has kept going on with technology as we get to the point.
#
It also depends upon how easily influenced you are by your peer group as well.
#
You know, suddenly someone, I remember one friend, hey, look at this band from the States,
#
Like, you know, suddenly everyone got into that and you know, that's how it kind of spread
#
So I mean, we're still social in that way, we're not kind of isolated from each other.
#
So there's a chance of, you know, at least that kind of spread among, you know, like
#
a social group, for example, with regards to reaching an audience.
#
I don't know, man, because the thing is right now, everything is up in the air, first of
#
all, because you're not competing for, you're competing for attention spans, basically,
#
with everything else that's out there, not just music.
#
You're competing with video games, with, you know, sport, with everything else.
#
Because the thing is, now, whatever you're interested in, you can just go and find so
#
There's no way you're going to get through it all.
#
You know, if I suddenly get into Stratocaster Bridges, for example, I can find like a year's
#
worth of content to watch.
#
Now, I'm not that interested in it.
#
I'm like somewhat interested.
#
I'm just saying the fact that there's one year of content to watch about Stratocaster
#
Whereas if I had to see a guitar on TV, I would feel happy.
#
So, I don't know, man, I think we just live in a strange world.
#
It's kind of hard to predict and say, you know, this is what's going to happen.
#
Because first of all, you don't even know this, the whole metaverse thing, how it's
#
For me personally, it scares the hell out of me.
#
But then I feel like an old person who, when internet came, like, what is this internet?
#
So I mean, you kind of need to adapt and just keep an open mind.
#
But obviously, if there's things that show that they're going to be harmful to us as
#
a society and as a planet or whatever, you know where it's heading.
#
There's a famous video of Bill Gates and David Letterman, I think circa 96 or something.
#
And Letterman's making fun of him saying, what is this internet thing and all of that.
#
And Bill Gates is like, you can get sports update.
#
And David Letterman is like, but I can turn on the radio for that.
#
So, you know, so I really hesitate to be negative about say Web3 or, you know, any of these
#
I don't understand because my assumption is maybe there's something I don't get.
#
Maybe we're the uncles.
#
But just sort of going back to just following up on, you know, what you just said, that,
#
you know, when the three of us mentioned the Beatles, it is immediately understood that
#
we all know the Beatles, that there is a common place in our consciousness that the Beatles
#
holds, that in a sense, you know, Ted Joyer used a lovely phrase where he said that music
#
is like a kind of cloud memory that sort of connects people in this manner.
#
And that's the thing that I wonder if the next generation will not have that one person's
#
Beatles won't be the other person's Beatles because they've just gone on such incredibly
#
Like, for example, when I get into YouTube rabbit holes, you know, I have a regular account
#
and at one point I said that, okay, just to understand it a little better, I need to understand
#
what the Hindutva right-wing rabbit holes are like those extreme guys.
#
But I didn't want it to mess up my algorithm.
#
So I incognito window a different Google account.
#
And the thing is that now those are two completely different YouTubes.
#
Those two different YouTubes that I see on my regular account and my incognito account
#
have no relation to each other.
#
And I think that's analogous of the experience that different young people have today where
#
they're not actually watching a common stream where there is no Beatles as such.
#
I mean, I remember Jonathan Haight once said that you might think that kids today would
#
understand the past much better because everything, all of history, it's available to them.
#
But his point was that everybody is watching content that was created in the last three
#
You know, so we are constantly sort of in this chakra view, as it were, where content
#
We keep watching, but there's no space for sitting back and reflection.
#
Those common connections aren't there.
#
So a bit of a ramble, but any thoughts?
#
Yeah, I mean, we should be actually listening to what these right-wing people are on about
#
just so we understand that they're not crazy.
#
There's obviously something that's going on in their heads.
#
And the only way to reach some kind of a consolation, because at the end we're all humans, we have
#
to share the same planet.
#
There's no point like spewing hate to whichever side of the battle or whatever you're on.
#
The very fact that there's become such a huge divide between ourselves or society is really
#
Everywhere you go, every country, you kind of find that kind of conflict.
#
And if these algorithms are only fueling that further because no one is getting to see the
#
other point of view, that whole us and them happens, you know, you guys suck, you guys
#
I mean, like both sides have got some, you know, bad things about it that you can take
#
If you can go like there are crazy people in the left wing as well, you know.
#
So I guess at the point where we can somewhat understand what each other has to say, okay,
#
I get like you don't like what this does or whatever, but at least let's, you know, eat
#
what we want to eat, wear what we want to wear, do what we want to do without harming.
#
Basically the every religion should just scrap all their books and put one rule, don't be
#
For now, I think this is the only message the world needs.
#
You know, in our own lives, we find the times where we are an asshole.
#
So like let's not be assholes for a little while till things get a bit better.
#
We could form a new religion around that.
#
Just don't be an asshole.
#
There were two strains of other running in my head.
#
One you said that most of the content that we consume right now happened in the last
#
There's another article related to music that both of us read, which is new music is old
#
music is killing new music.
#
And what I'm guessing you saw that as well, because Rick Beato did a video on that too.
#
And one of the astonishing facts over there was increasingly people are listening to older
#
I have struggled to reconcile my head around these two facts at the same time.
#
Maybe there is no answer over here, but I just wanted to know what you thought about
#
Because people are listening to older music.
#
Another video that Rick Beato had done was actually he had compared the following that
#
new artists had along with older artists.
#
And it was quite surprising because some of the legacy artists like Queen, for instance,
#
had a lot of subscribers and are very relevant to even his son's generation, for example.
#
I just wanted to know what you thought about that, that on one hand you have, okay, there's
#
so much content being created and we're consuming everything that's being created.
#
A lot of the stuff that we're consuming happened in the last three days.
#
And at the same time, a lot of the legacy content is also being consumed, be it books,
#
be it music, be it films even.
#
So yeah, I just wanted to get your take on that.
#
Basically the algorithms work like this.
#
Things become more popular as they become more popular.
#
Yeah, that's how it works.
#
So now that Queen thing, for example, I'd trace it to that movie, which was hugely popular.
#
That kind of drove a huge spike in listeners.
#
And then because of that, more people got to listen to it.
#
So the more people listen to it, the more people get to listen to it.
#
That's just how it works.
#
With the Beatles, now this get back thing just came out.
#
So again, I'm just looking at musicians my age as well, more people are talking about
#
And it was kind of like, yeah, everyone knows what the Beatles is, right?
#
Kids also are being faced with that, you know, this is what's coming out and it becomes popular.
#
So people talk about it.
#
So you want to go and check it out.
#
Yeah, that's interesting.
#
This is kind of like stuff from the past is being repurposed in various ways and then
#
There was this interesting thing that happened a couple of years back, the TikTok Fleetwood
#
I don't know if you guys remember this.
#
So the guy drinking that on the skateboard.
#
Yeah, so for those who don't know what this is about, especially since we can't see TikTok
#
here in India, there was a video of a guy, it wasn't a content creator, an influencer
#
He was drinking a juice called Ocean Spray and he was skateboarding down his road and
#
he was humming along to Dreams, I think it was by Fleetwood Mac and he was humming it
#
And for no reason at all that managed to go viral, it became a meme of his own Mick Fleetwood.
#
And I think Stevie Nicks also did their own versions of this and this led to Ocean Spray.
#
It was not a branded campaign by them or anything, but it ended up becoming a huge thing for
#
And the song entered the Billboard top 100 after what 30, 40 years.
#
I guess that's an example of what you're talking about.
#
It is some random accident somewhere or a planned cultural event like a Queen movie
#
or a Beatles documentary that brings a lot of these old things back and makes them relevant
#
again for a younger audience as well as oldies like us who just want to relive some of that.
#
So I guess there's something over there.
#
Yeah, because I guess when I was a kid, I was listening to the Beatles while the other
#
kids in my class were listening to Guns N' Roses because I remember one girl telling
#
me, why are you listening to this old fashioned music?
#
I said, no, no, like, you know, this is like what I want to listen to.
#
And then I learned Sweet Child of Mine on the guitar just to like, you know, shut her
#
It reminds me of that TikToker who had, again, it goes back to Tik Tok again, you remember
#
that Metallica girl from last year, she is an R&B singer and hip hopper or something
#
and she was wearing a Metallica t-shirt and metal fans being metal fans that like hip
#
hop wasn't wearing a Metallica thing, bet you don't even know three Metallica songs
#
and she went on her next video and said, I can, instead of naming them, I'd rather just
#
play them for you on the guitar and she shredded her way through Master of Puppets, the solo
#
of one and a couple of others as well.
#
So yeah, speaking of that phenomenon, I mean, and even before this, I remember a few years
#
back, forget Tik Tok, there was a TV commercial, I think of Volkswagen with Nick Drake's Pink
#
Moon and Nick Drake suddenly became a big for a short while again, which is great because
#
I love the guy, though that's not perhaps his favorite song of mine.
#
But you know, what you said about what is popular, you know, lead that that sort of
#
vicious circle that starts reminds me of this experiment.
#
I don't know if I'll be able to, if I remember the details well enough, but the whole idea
#
of the experiment was that these guys gave an app with a few thousand songs to a couple
#
But they programmed those apps so it would randomly show which, you know, which were
#
the 10 most played ones and which were the most popular.
#
So all of them had different top 10 lists in their apps, you know, like not 300 different,
#
but maybe 30 different 10 people each.
#
And the thing is, that's exactly what happened.
#
What Warren said, the stuff that was already on the charts got listened to more and therefore
#
it kind of spiraled and you had completely separate trajectories for the music in, you
#
know, for each of the control groups, which is kind of fascinating because that also sort
#
of show tells you a little bit about just the role of sheer dumb luck that if you kind
#
of happen to somehow make it, then you continue making it like that whole Billy Joel story
#
about how Piano Man came out and then it was going nowhere and his label was just, you
#
know, had given up on him and, you know, and then this one guy who was passionate about
#
it started taking it around to all the radio stations and somebody gave it a play.
#
And after it was dead, it is revived and Billy Joel becomes Billy Joel.
#
But arguably, luck has played a role throughout history.
#
Right now, our context for that is Spotify algorithms.
#
Back in the day, it might have been something else.
#
What if George had, sorry, what if Paul had never met John for whatever reason that day?
#
So, yeah, I guess we can, all these are what ifs experiments, except now instead of meeting
#
in a place, now it's, did you discover this on TikTok or something like that?
#
I've got a killer idea for a movie, by the way.
#
So there's this band from the seventies, like relatively popular band from the seventies
#
and they're in their tour bus and the tour bus hit some kind of weird wormhole and they
#
get transported to, you know, I don't know what COVID times were at least present day
#
and they have to suddenly deal with this thing called social media and also streaming services
#
Everything is like totally different.
#
So like how they deal with that.
#
And my idea was for these like macho metal guys to meet a band of young girls who then
#
shows them how to do this.
#
Yeah, actually that actually sounds pretty interesting.
#
And that was another thing that Amit and I actually discovered, he asked me a very fascinating
#
question and I'd love to know what your take on this would be.
#
Suppose Waters and Gilmore actually form Pink Floyd today.
#
How would things be different?
#
Man, there's no Rick Wright.
#
That was like the secret, but anyway, yeah, being a purist aside, I don't know, I think
#
they'd still be able to make good music.
#
I wouldn't put it past them, you know, it just depends what time and place they are
#
because musicians are always, you know, always changing, you know, like there's not one particular
#
There's always of 150 things we could be doing.
#
It just depends what appeals at that particular time.
#
Suddenly the wind changes and they decide, okay, it's a good idea to work together, then
#
I think our speculation really was that because like if they were young today and growing
#
up today, the palette of music they would listen to would be completely different.
#
And therefore, who knows what direction they would go in.
#
And in fact, you know, to return to the subject of your sort of evolving years, there is also
#
the counterfactual that if you weren't born in the family you were born in, where your
#
father is a bass guitarist and your uncle is lawyer and all of that, that if you weren't
#
exposed to that kind of music, if you were, you know, in a South Indian family listening
#
to Carnatic or if you were, you know, somewhere else listening only to Bollywood in a village
#
in Bihar, totally different directions, different counterfactuals.
#
But tell me a little bit about, you know, then how you got sort of turned on to playing
#
music, what your other early influences were, like I remember you talking about how your
#
dad, when he first showed you chords on the guitar, he showed you A minor and E, which
#
aren't really the typical sort of standard ones.
#
So tell me a little bit about, you know, that phase of your life where you're into music,
#
you're discovering music, you know, beyond the Beatles, you know, who else were the people
#
you kind of fell in love with and how did that sort of start evolving from there?
#
So let's get to when the Beatles, rather the only Beatles phase was ending.
#
So that was around 13, now the hormones have started to kick in and by this time I kind
#
of started catching up with what the rest of the, you know, peer group was listening
#
So I think Guns N' Roses had done Live And Let Die.
#
So I say, oh, they've covered Paul McCartney, they can't be that bad, let me check it out.
#
So I got that Illusion One album.
#
That was the first one I actually listened to in entirety, I had listened to a couple
#
of songs from Appetite, but this was like the first album listen.
#
So I found it really enjoyable, November Rain came, very lovely melodies, great guitar solos.
#
I was like, yeah, this is some cool stuff.
#
And then we had started seeing their videos also on Star TV around the same time.
#
So it kind of, you know, everyone said, oh, Guns N' Roses, Guns N' Roses became a thing.
#
Then for some reason I got a Kira and I started tracing back further, like where are these
#
Then I got into Aerosmith and then Led Zeppelin hit in a huge way.
#
I think that was around say 15 or something like that.
#
I got that Led Zeppelin Four album.
#
And then the next thing you know, I'm on one huge rabbit hole, as you tend to, and then
#
all my lunch money is going into buying cassettes, you know, that sort of thing.
#
And during this time, the guitar became more of a social connection as well, because I
#
had a friend, Johan, who I've known since I was a child, because our dads knew each
#
Dads were musicians, but both were bass players, so they never played in the same band.
#
So luckily for us, Johan played bass and I played guitar.
#
In fact, actually I started on bass when I was a kid.
#
But my dad said, listen, you're probably going to get a lot better at music if you learn
#
It's more like harmony and everything, quite more open.
#
You can still play bass, but you know, don't forget to play guitar as well.
#
So luckily around that time, I was playing guitar, he was playing bass, so we started
#
And I used to go to his house, you know, we had just gotten out of school.
#
He's one year older than me, both of us in the same school.
#
So we had gotten out of school and I used to go to his house to jam.
#
He used to have this little drum machine that his dad had given him, so he used to program
#
And he would play, and both of us around the same time started listening to a lot of music
#
together, like cream and a lot of classic rock, you know.
#
We had this one cassette, MCA Records compilation.
#
So there was Lennard, Skinner, Freebird, and you know, a whole bunch of songs like Born
#
to be Wild and all that kind of thing, you still remember till this day.
#
So we started listening to music together, started trading cassettes and that kind of
#
I remember one day we were sitting and jamming and he was playing bass along with the drum
#
machine and I was playing guitar.
#
I was so like absorbed in what I was playing.
#
I woke up and I opened my eyes and I went to talk to him and he had left the room, he
#
had programmed the bass line as well in that machine and he had left.
#
I was in an empty room with the guitar.
#
So we had a lot of these nice formative, you know, like just playing with other musicians
#
that became a big thing.
#
And then he had these next door neighbors, Rajiv and Bobby, who then I later on got into
#
But they had a kind of jam thing where it wasn't really like a band where we went and
#
played gigs and stuff where we just get together and just play music.
#
So this kind of went along for like around a year.
#
And then Sid Couto, who was another childhood friend, but he had never lived in Bombay.
#
His dad was always, you know, traveling outside the city.
#
He came back to Bombay after like many years.
#
So my mom kind of made sure because he lived down the road, you know, go be friends, you
#
I remember when she said, you can't go jam unless you take him with you as well.
#
So I had to go and call him and he came with his bright green guitar and everything and
#
he was louder than everyone else.
#
So then that kind of became a thing.
#
And then Sid, Johan and me got into a band together called Wishes Circle and the whole
#
deal with the band was we couldn't play anything after 1980.
#
So anything after 1980 was not on the setlist.
#
So it kind of gave us some kind of a direction, you know.
#
So we played everything from Deep Purple, Zep, the usual classic rock stuff.
#
And the whole thing was Sid was playing drums and singing.
#
So we played our first gig and he was behind the drums and everyone said, you guys are
#
We need to get a singer.
#
So he got really bugged about that.
#
He said, I'm never going to be, you know, doing this behind the drums singing again.
#
We need to get a singer.
#
So we got a singer, a guy called Sean Gomes and he was a big Dire Straits and U2 fan.
#
So some of that stuff also was incorporated into U2, kind of just about got in because
#
like there was like one or two songs that were before 1980 or, you know, 1980 etc.
#
So that became like the first proper band where we actually got together and started
#
practicing and all that kind of stuff.
#
And we actually got pretty tight.
#
I remember we used to play Stormbringer and at the end of it, like we used to look at
#
each other like, wow, did we actually pull that off?
#
And you know, it was like not bad at all.
#
We did our first gig at Raz.
#
And I remember the first time Sid Tony, let's play a gig at Raz.
#
We'll never get to play there.
#
You know, so I was a very realistic guy.
#
Like there's no way we're going to get to a point where we're playing at a proper place
#
where people pay money to come and watch you.
#
And just after that, that became like something that we worked and worked towards and we did
#
pretty well at that gig.
#
All our friends came and watched.
#
Everyone had a good time.
#
We actually made a little bit of money or whatever, which we spent on food.
#
So just after that gig, Johan left to study in the States.
#
So now like back to square one, Sid and me were like, how do we do?
#
So he had the bright idea.
#
The next door neighbors, they have a drum kit, let's call them.
#
So that became, you know, what became zero.
#
And during this time in between, you know, the two bands, Sid and I started writing music
#
together and we found it quite effortless.
#
Like I would come up with a chord progression.
#
He would sing something on top of it.
#
Hey, we've got a song, you know, and we weren't really precious about it.
#
When you're that age, you don't think too much about it.
#
You know, you worry about, you worry later about what's going to happen with this song
#
and everything like that.
#
So I think we had written, not my kind of girl, a song called Dear Jesus, which not
#
too many people have heard and a couple of other songs like that.
#
And it was mainly like, you know, chill out music.
#
No, it wasn't like, you know, loud, heavy rock and stuff like that.
#
So when we finally got together as zero, we tried playing covers, we sucked.
#
And then it was like, if we play our own songs, nobody knows how these songs are supposed
#
So we can kind of get away with it.
#
That was the whole idea.
#
It was a spite from the judging eyes of people who are well versed in the cover music.
#
And at that time, I think there was like a slight trend because you had bands like Indiscreet
#
and Pentagram who were starting to play significantly their own music as opposed to the usual thing
#
is like you play 10 songs and then just at the end, hey, this is one of ours, slip it
#
in that kind of a thing.
#
So suddenly it was like, you know, and it took a while for the audiences also to, you
#
know, to accept that otherwise, first, they would give you a lot of shit initially, like
#
why aren't you playing the music that we want to hear, you know, it's like give it a chance.
#
And the good thing, I guess, is our songs had very identifiable choruses.
#
Because I think I said this before, if we didn't remember it, then the song was gone.
#
So we had to kind of design it in a way so we could remember it.
#
So then because of that, other people found it easy to remember as well.
#
So that kind of, you know, opened up a few doors and then I guess from that, around that
#
time is when Chuck probably started listening to Zio, he can fill you in on the rest.
#
So I have a question about the learning process.
#
Like one of the questions, like I teach a writing course online and one of the issues
#
that some of my students will sometimes have is that, listen, I've written something, but
#
Now, part of the time they are, of course, being too self-critical and overthinking it,
#
but part of the time they're right, it sucks.
#
And the way I look at it is that that is not a reason to stop.
#
That is a reason to continue because you only become better through endless iteration.
#
And all it means when you've done something and you think it sucks is that your judgment
#
is better than your ability right now.
#
And it's a good thing your judgment is good.
#
But if you just continue working at it, your ability will catch up with your judgment sooner
#
You know, putting in the work.
#
Unless your judgment keeps getting better.
#
So, I mean, it's a lifelong catching up process, I guess.
#
But so when you're learning, you know, you've got all these influences, I'm guessing from
#
You also mentioned how you were turned on to the Allman Brothers and to the 70s bands
#
So when you're learning, you've got all these heroes you want to play like this.
#
What was that process like, you know, in terms of what you're able to do and what you want
#
to do, but you're unable to do right now.
#
But you know, you want to do it.
#
What was that learning process like?
#
How do you keep doing it?
#
Or is it just this youthful thing that you're just so enthusiastic, you just keep on going?
#
Because in this, I think also there is sort of a lesson for younger people who I think
#
sometimes can give up too soon and that's dangerous.
#
I think you need to find one thing that you can kind of do well that is going to serve
#
as an inspiration to keep continuing.
#
Like I was pretty good at like hearing inside my head a melody and then being able to quickly
#
find it on the fretboard.
#
I don't know, kind of, you know, it was a thing, I guess a gift or whatever.
#
But I still had to work on it, you know, which is like today I made a lesson like 10 things
#
I wish I knew about playing guitar on YouTube.
#
One of the things I said is work on your strengths as well as your weaknesses.
#
Don't forget the strengths because you have to keep honing that as well for it to get
#
If it's something that you can do, just learn how to do it better and then automatically
#
which goes without saying work on the stuff that you can't do as well to get better on
#
But the things that you can do well should, you know, kind of pull out the inspiration
#
into doing the things that you can't do well.
#
At least that's my advice to it.
#
Because it's got to be some amount of natural, you know, not amount to say skill, but ability
#
that comes into play that serves as inspiration.
#
Otherwise, why would you want to do it?
#
You know, if you're going to cook and like you've been cooking for two years and every
#
meal is a botch job, you don't want to actually, you know, cook anyone unless you are starving.
#
But if you like say after a few meals, it gets better, you know, like you notice a little
#
bit of improvement that becomes like an inspiration saying, hang on, I should just keep on doing
#
And that's at least for me, that's always what it's served, you know, I just need to
#
keep getting better at whatever it is that I'm doing.
#
A question that I'll ask over here is when you shifted from doing covers to writing your
#
own songs, how did that change your playing style?
#
Was it around this time that you realized that you had the strength of being able to
#
translate your own melodies that you had in your head onto guitar?
#
So I was just curious to see how that transition from doing Deep Purple covers to writing Not
#
My Kind Of Girl, how that came about, how that affected your own playing style?
#
Well, at the time we actually had to learn Deep Purple songs, I had already kind of written
#
So it wasn't really, you know, suddenly it flipped over, there was always this parallel
#
You're listening to other people's music as well as working on your own.
#
The good thing about your own music, like I said, there was no preconceived notion about
#
how something should be, what like something to live up to.
#
So whatever you did, at least as long as you put yourself into it and you were able to
#
listen back to it without cringing, that became like the goal, you know, I put like whatever
#
So at least I feel honest doing it, you know, I'm not trying to be something that I'm not
#
On the other hand, it's still, you know, something that I've done, but I need to make sure it's
#
at a certain level, you know, just so I can, because now I can listen back to some stuff
#
and some stuff is just like, no, let's not listen to that anymore.
#
Tell us then about sort of the early days of Zero, like one of the things you mentioned
#
is that you started as a five person act, you, I think, went to a mood indigo at IIT
#
Povai and you completely bombed and the next time one of you didn't show up and you realized
#
that, hey, it's much tighter, everything is kind of falling into place.
#
There was less to go wrong.
#
So tell me about your evolution as a band and especially what I'm interested in is who
#
were the other local bands you looked at at that time as models?
#
Because you know, when you start off, you look at all the guys around you, which I guess
#
in that era would be your Indiscreet, Parikrama, Pentagram, so on and so forth.
#
You know, who are the guys you're looking at as possible models?
#
You know, what is that journey like also towards finding your own sound?
#
Like you were pretty much, I think, the first band that I can remember, which would only
#
play originals, nothing else at all.
#
So where did that kind of conviction come from?
#
I guess when we found people were able to recall the songs when they came back for the
#
next gig, sometimes they would start singing the choruses.
#
That was like a, you know, a nice little validation of whatever you were doing.
#
But I mean, bands like Pentagram were still starting to play their own stuff because I
#
have watched Pentagram go from like a largely cover oriented set and very quickly start
#
throwing their own material in by the name that first album came out and stuff like that
#
So that also kind of was, you know, like a peer group thing, like, okay, it's fine to
#
But if you get gullies, let it be, they'll come back the next time and then it'll be
#
a little bit better, you know, that sort of thing.
#
By the time we had played I.T.
#
Moody Indigo for the third time, I think this was the year 2000.
#
That was the year we decided like, fuck it, that's not worth one single cover on the set
#
It has to be only our own music.
#
And, you know, that was it.
#
As an identity, as this is who we are as a band that has to be established.
#
And again, the added bonus is the judges wouldn't be able to know when you made a mistake.
#
As long as you were able to disguise that and not let it be a train wreck.
#
One little thing, like if you miss the note here, it will become less easy for people
#
I remember the first time we played PSP was at that I.T. Moody Indigo gig.
#
And Rajiv had just come back from the States and we had to teach him PSP in one evening.
#
And then when we're going on stage, the group starts, boom, and then he comes running to
#
How does the song start?
#
It's like, I don't know.
#
So he was running to Sid and Sid, like I knew the melody.
#
I didn't know the lyrics.
#
So Sid knew the lyrics and he sang it to him in his ear and all this while no one suspects
#
It is just driving that groove through and everything's like pretty tight at that point.
#
And then finally he goes to the front of the stage and like he sings it like he owns it,
#
you know, at that point.
#
So at least there was by then that ability to kind of take these little pitfalls or mishaps
#
and not care about it still like, you know, we are the guys on this stage.
#
So that particular gig went really well then because we won best band, best guitarist and
#
you know, all those prizes.
#
I remember like standing with my money in cash.
#
It was 7,500 rupees, the most money I'd ever seen from a gig.
#
And I gave all of it to my friend who had come back from the UK and bought me this thing
#
called the Ebo, which then went on to the studio recording of PSP.
#
But that Ebo was bought with my IIT Modenigo winnings.
#
Kindly explain title of PSP 12 inches.
#
It's just become a lot of a thing because the song became relatively well known.
#
The whole idea was, I'll tell you how the song started.
#
So I came into practice and this was for Strawberry Fields, NLS.
#
Rajeev was in the States.
#
So we had Gareth from Split, another Bombay band, they, you know, sorry, he came for practice,
#
So when I walked in, Sid and Bobby had been waiting there for like a little while and
#
they had started playing that in the tent and that grew.
#
And then I plugged in my guitar and then as is customary with bands, you start making
#
some noise along with what the other guys are playing and, you know, it kind of after
#
a while it fizzled out, but they had one nice chorus just standing by standing by, which
#
I thought it was a little annoying at first, but then I kind of figured it's got a thing
#
But then we didn't finish that song in time for NLS.
#
Then once Rajeev came back, this was like two months later, I think October to December.
#
Rajeev came back and then Moodye happened and then we needed one more song to flush
#
out the set list of only originals.
#
So then the idea was like, let's pull out that standing by song and finish it.
#
So we quickly finished it.
#
I went home and wrote that middle, that bridge part and everything, the little ambient section
#
The song was done, put it together, it was ready for Moodye, you know, that sort of thing.
#
So the chorus was standing by standing by, so then it became BSB.
#
And then they said it sounds like a pizza.
#
And then they changed it to PSP when I told them that when I play the chorus, my pawn
#
And then they became PSP pawn shaking pawns instead of by standing by.
#
And then because it sounded like a pizza that 12 inches put at the end, like it's a weird
#
It's one of those random events which just became a thing, you know, I guess.
#
And the song obviously took a life of its own after that.
#
You know, what you're telling us about the Rajiv going around on stage asking people
#
for the lyrics sort of thing.
#
It's such a zero thing because I remember so one of the things I admired about the band
#
in its later days when you guys used to get together for those one off gigs is that Rajiv
#
would go off on one of his tangents talking about something random and then the three
#
of you would be very bored and just look to pass the time.
#
One of you would come up with something either you would play a little riff or Sid would
#
And then before you know it, Rajiv is still talking about some nonsense or whatever.
#
And the three of you are back there playing something legit.
#
And being in the audience, I can say this, everybody around me is like, is this an actual
#
Are they actually, is this a lead up to an actual song performance?
#
And then you will smile or something and you'll say, okay, enough of this nonsense and let's
#
get to actually playing something.
#
And everybody's like, why did you do that?
#
Why did you do that KLPD?
#
Like that sounded great.
#
Why did you not continue this?
#
So yeah, so the reason I said that, I said that is from 2000 from that random incident
#
to 2015 or 16, I know the last time you guys played was I guess that tightness and band
#
chemistry really didn't change all that much, did it?
#
No, it never really does because even when we last played at N87, I remember flying in
#
from Singapore and you know, it was a series of connecting flights and I finally got there
#
five minutes before we were due to start the gig and they had soundchecked without me.
#
So I came in, just dumped my thing, plugged in and one, two, three, literally that was
#
like what it felt like, it may have been, I may have had a second to just go and wipe
#
my face, you know, of all the sweat and start playing, but that's what it felt like.
#
And it never really, you know, felt weird or anything like that.
#
It's just like you get back into it quickly.
#
As long as the other guys know how the song goes, we're good to go.
#
So certain things get written into your read only memory, never to be erased.
#
I think like you can wake me up in the morning, put a guitar and start playing Lucy, you know,
#
we can just start the gig in autopilot and somewhere in the middle of the gig, you kind
#
of take stock of, you know, what's going on in that sense.
#
So that's a pretty cool thing.
#
You can just get back with these guys and just plug in and make music.
#
And back in those days when Zero was taking off and you know, then Hook comes out, which
#
was the second album and you've become really popular on the local scene.
#
What was your conception of where this band is going?
#
Initially you are a bunch of guys who just enjoy jamming together.
#
You say, let's make a band.
#
You go, you form a band, then you write these originals.
#
You do one album, you do a second album.
#
Was there, you know, in your young minds the thought that, hey, we should, we want to break
#
through internationally or was there in your mind that gradual acceptance that, hey, no,
#
this is kind of the limit of what the scene is.
#
Just take me through that journey of thinking about what is this band's place in the world?
#
I mean, for us, like the whole thing was we had certain goals.
#
Like the first goal was to play Mode Indigo.
#
Then we wanted to play Rang Bhawan.
#
Then we played Rang Bhawan.
#
Then we wanted to win Mode Indigo.
#
Then we won Mode Indigo.
#
Then we won Great Indian Rock.
#
And after that we said, you know, I think we've like done a fair amount on this competition
#
We wanted not to like take part in any of these.
#
So we became one of those, you know, pro bands at the college, you know, they would call
#
us to play and that sort of thing.
#
And after a while, like I realized that this is kind of as high as you can get in this
#
particular, you know, pecking order.
#
And in order for us to break abroad at that point, first of all, we don't have the money
#
or financial backing to actually support or tour at that time.
#
It was like frightfully expensive, which it probably still is in that sense.
#
But we won a few competitions and then, you know, there was this thing about sending us
#
overseas to some country and everything.
#
But then there was always this thing that was communicated to us that you need to have
#
So we then had made many jokes about this whole Indian element.
#
What is the Indian element?
#
Like we are zero, zero is an Indian invention.
#
So, you know, that's the Indian element.
#
Is that enough for you?
#
Do you want us to wear lungis?
#
What do you want us to do?
#
So, you know, and at that time, I think also slowly, maybe after that time came the acceptance
#
that you can still show your Indianness in your music and still be authentic.
#
You weren't like considered selling out just because you put some tabla on your music.
#
Now, the whole thing is to get it to fuse effortlessly.
#
And if it doesn't, in a band like Zero, it never seemed like, you know, it was needed.
#
We just played what we want to play.
#
And the fact that we lived in India was Indian enough for us.
#
You know, we didn't find the need to add.
#
And then as you grow old, obviously, with Black Star Blues, those influences start creeping
#
You know, you are a sitar, the Tanpura drone in the Renaissance mission and stuff.
#
It goes together, you know, pretty well in that sense.
#
So there was also a little bit of that sense like, okay, I think, you know, it's kind of
#
got to as good as it's going to get.
#
And at that time, my parents had moved to New Zealand around 2003.
#
And there was this, you know, are you going to come?
#
Are you going to stay there?
#
That, you know, parents, they wanted me to obviously move along with them as well.
#
So for around one or two years after they left, it was like a huge party scene.
#
But then I also started kind of, you know, feeling the wind down, like there has to be
#
more to life than this.
#
So then for me, it was like, okay, let's go there and see what that's all about.
#
And then I went and I actually found a system that somewhat works, which everything was
#
like a polar opposite of what you're used to in India.
#
India is like too many people there.
#
There's not enough people.
#
You know, there's very long lines here.
#
There's not very long lines.
#
So that's what I'm saying.
#
I mean, you start noticing the contrast and everything like that.
#
So then it became like, okay, maybe I should stay here for a while.
#
And after a series of very, shall we say, fortunate events, I ended up getting my New
#
Zealand residency because the thing was I had to reach here before I was 25 and I landed
#
here on my 25th birthday, cutting it close.
#
So anyway, finally I got it.
#
And that was a sign like after all this, you know, chakkar and everything, maybe I should
#
stay here for a little bit.
#
So I did a six month thing back in India where I packed up all my stuff because I'd come
#
in initially on a tourist visa as you do, went back, packed up all my stuff.
#
And 2005 is when I was like, chalo, I'm going there.
#
You guys want to see me for a very long time.
#
So it wasn't such like a, what do you call it?
#
Like a whole drama thing, like, you know, I'm going, I'm leaving the band and all that
#
It was like, no, listen, I've got to go and live in another country for a while.
#
So, you know, you guys carry on and we'll see, you know, where things go.
#
And I think I came back for a holiday in 2006.
#
We played at one of the great Indian Rocks at Pragati Maidan as one of the headlining
#
bands and everything like that.
#
As in when, you know, there was no thing like, okay, now it's ended and now we're reuniting
#
It's just like, no, we're in the same city.
#
We're not in the same city.
#
It's as simple as that.
#
So that's kind of the whole thing with Zero, the way it currently is at least now.
#
And how were you kind of calibrating, you know, what you were doing as a musician?
#
Because you know, at one point you decided to be serious.
#
You've spoken about how you were doing engineering, decided it wasn't for you, left that you're
#
a full-time musician, your family was supportive of that and all of that.
#
Presumably you've got some ambitions for that, but you do as well as you can as a band.
#
And the next thing you're in New Zealand, there's a completely new ecosystem.
#
You don't know anybody there, I'm guessing it's like totally different.
#
What are you thinking of in terms of, you know, the next 20, 30 years of your life?
#
I mean, I know no one really plans like that, but were there moments of worry?
#
Were there moments where you wondered if you'd made the right decision in terms of going
#
Obviously not in terms of music because, or did you have second thoughts about that as
#
No, it was just like, I need to try something new.
#
You know, when you come to that point in your life, you know, like things are starting to
#
feel like samey and very old and, you know, stagnant in that sense.
#
So you have to kind of do something different to get to a different place in your life.
#
So in that sense, it felt like the right thing.
#
And you know, like a young kid who's never really been outside India, suddenly everything
#
was like, you know, wide open.
#
I was like, well, you can actually listen to the sound of your guitar notes decaying
#
That was a new thing for me.
#
I could hear the note decaying, right?
#
Because in India, obviously where I live in Bombay, noisy part of the city, it decays
#
and then the autos take over.
#
So you know, all these little bits of discovery were pretty cool.
#
And my parents had this garage where my brother and me pooled our resources together and we
#
set up a little studio.
#
And I was putting down a few ideas and he said, you know, I've gotten pretty good at
#
Let me have a crack at it.
#
So then he turned out some spectacular drum tracks.
#
I was like, hang on, this is a cool opportunity for me to flush out all the unfinished ideas
#
because there were always these ideas which were like, you know, in a half completed state
#
throughout the zero thing.
#
Once in a while, the band guys would like get me to finish it like Spitley for Christmas
#
and July and put it on an album.
#
But those were like the precursor Black Star Blues tracks.
#
So then there were tracks like Anubha Sky and Saw the Sky and everything like that,
#
which were, you know, incomplete.
#
Because of this sudden, you know, Josh, you get that, oh, suddenly it's sounding really
#
good with this guy programming the drums.
#
So then that flow got established.
#
So I think I recorded that entire album in three weeks.
#
It sounds nuts right now at my current state of work.
#
But in three weeks, I kind of had it wrapped up.
#
But it was still so fresh that I didn't have the detachedness from it to mix it properly.
#
The mixes never sounded good.
#
So that process took me like another year and something to finish the mixes.
#
And then finally it was at a point, okay, I can put this out.
#
And then once it went out and people liked it, then it became, you know, by the time
#
the second album came around, enough people had liked it, where like Mithi by College
#
wanted to fly me down to play a gig that became the first Black Star Blues gig in 2009.
#
So there was like a two year period of that, you know, just putting out stuff and seeing
#
And I think I put it out for free.
#
I had my website where it was a download link.
#
And then, you know, enough people heard it and they liked it and that's how things go.
#
And I'm intrigued by one aspect of your development, you know, which has a sort of dual part to
#
One is that you said in an interview once that the first thing you noticed about Auckland
#
was that it was a lot quieter than Mumbai and the silence opened up your ears in a new
#
And you began to listen to music differently.
#
But the other thing is also, I think something that inevitably happens with us as we grow
#
older, where we kind of learn to take a step back and relax just a little bit and maybe
#
get more comfortable in our skins and so on and so forth.
#
Like you've done an interview with Chuck, I think around the time of the second Black
#
Star Blues album, where he asked you what you don't do well.
#
And I think you said that sometimes I still overplay, you know, and listening to your
#
later albums and even those earlier albums, there's just a lot of restraint, a lot of
#
And eventually, I guess over time, you reach the stage where you become more and more comfortable
#
in your own skin, where you're no longer worried about, you know, what you want to sound like.
#
Am I living up to my own expectations or am I living up to the expectations of others
#
or you know, all of that and you and you just get comfortable and you just let the music
#
Like brief digression, I remember my friend Prem Panikkar once was doing a writing workshop
#
for my students and he told me this great story about a writer and I forget which writer
#
it was, but this writer was asked about his writing process and he said, OK, I get into
#
the room and I sit with my typewriter and I close the door and then I'm alone in the
#
So whoever was interviewing the guy asked him that, is that when you start writing?
#
And he said no, because there are still, even though I'm alone in the room, I can still
#
sense all these other people around me whom I want to impress or their expectations of
#
So I wait until they were all left.
#
So then this person asked, oh, so that's when you stop writing.
#
And the guy said, no, that's not when I start writing, because there is still one person
#
in the room and that's me.
#
And I wait for that person to leave and then the story takes over, right?
#
And I found it very resonant, like when you somewhere else in another interview, you spoke
#
about Ode to a Sunny Day and how that came about and how at the end of it, you were kind
#
of surprised at my God, I wrote this, you know, similar to when, you know, Paul McCartney
#
got yesterday in a dream and he woke up and he played it and he said that, you know, have
#
Because he couldn't believe he had written it, it kind of came.
#
So tell me a little bit about this, that have you become comfortable in your own skin?
#
What was that process like?
#
You told Chuck in that interview more than a decade ago that you sometimes you overplayed.
#
What was the journey like?
#
I mean, for me, the best music comes when you become a conduit or an antenna, and you're
#
just able to channel something or a feeling or whatever just goes through you and as little
#
of your own ego is applied to the process as possible.
#
There are certain things you obviously do well and the certain things that you're kind
#
of more inclined to do than other things.
#
So that kind of shapes it.
#
But as long as I'm honest to the song, you know, and not trying to bend it against its
#
will because you can do that to a piece of music.
#
You can try to push it too far into something it's not intended to be.
#
So I guess I grew a little better at knowing when I was doing that, and then just back
#
And the ability to take time and let something percolate in your subconscious for a while
#
is pretty awesome because now you're able to open a Cubase session, for example, and
#
do a whole bunch of stuff in one day, like say do six hours of work.
#
And then you don't listen to it for like three weeks, and then you come back to it.
#
And then you have a little bit of a clearer insight about, oh, take that out.
#
That doesn't work, you know, that sort of thing.
#
Because when you get into a flow, you tend to like throw as much of it into it as possible.
#
And then you come back another day and then that second person has to strip away the excess
#
and kind of find what that little vein of gold inside the rock is.
#
And then shine that out a bit and tend to make that the centerpiece of it.
#
So it could be a melody, it could be a chord progression, it could be a drum groove, it
#
could be a bass line, whatever it is, and then different types of songs, there's different
#
things that can do that.
#
My main goal is to kind of keep myself interested in the process.
#
And to start the process, I try to find an idea which has what I call legs.
#
It inspires me to do more, to get it out.
#
And sometimes I can do too much, but I can always kind of come back to it as long as
#
things are not set in stone.
#
The idea of collaboration also is pretty awesome with me because the idea of handing something
#
over to something like say a drum groove, why the hell would I want to think of a drum
#
groove when I've got someone like Jay or Cole?
#
And also now I have the ability to say, okay, this song is better if Jay plays it or this
#
song is better if Cole plays it, that sort of thing on this last current album, which
#
It was like, otherwise what you tend to do is you tend to shape the songs into what the
#
It's like, you've got a certain cast and then this is the kind of material that is going
#
Like with Zero, I would write in a very different way to what I would do in Black Soil Blues,
#
just because the members were different.
#
So once you get used to delegating that and handing things over, while still retaining
#
the overall picture, the big picture of things, it's pretty awesome in that sense.
#
Because then the whole idea is also just freeing yourself of all these hangups, you know, what
#
is this one going to think?
#
What is that one going to think?
#
Right now I'm at a point where as long as I play honestly and I play in tune and in
#
time as you would expect, the idea would get across, you know.
#
So I don't really want to fluff it up by putting too much into it just to show what I can do.
#
At this point, it's like people know what I can do.
#
So I'd rather do what's best for the song.
#
It almost seems to me like there are two parts to you.
#
And I'm not saying the pre-Zero guitars and the Black Soil Blues guitars, but what you
#
described right now was kind of fascinating, like there's a creator and there's an editor
#
Like there's a creator part where you create and then you come back and look at it fresh
#
Do you have like a different process or like what are the things that you do to get into
#
the respective grooves, are there, you know, or when do you know that you need to, how
#
do you know when to step out of the creator mode and step into the editor mode, for example?
#
I mean, you don't really hand off on one to the other because there's still a little bit
#
of that creator thing that has to inform the editor part as well.
#
Because sometimes you again get too clever with the editing as well.
#
So sometimes, you know, don't polish that too much.
#
It's better left, you know, in slightly raw state.
#
That's kind of what was giving the thing its charm.
#
So you have to be very sensitive to the aesthetic or the vibe or whatever you want to call it.
#
You know, there's obviously going to be a subjective thing because I'll hear things
#
differently than, you know, a different person who is equally proficient.
#
It's not a question of proficiency, it's just a question of taste.
#
So very often there's no right or wrong.
#
There's just different things and at the end of the day, it comes down to what makes you
#
happy at that point of time.
#
Because what makes you happy yesterday may not be what makes you happy today, it just
#
also depends how you're feeling, you know, what the humidity is like, what the temperature
#
is like, all that kind of changes the way you perceive a piece of music.
#
I think the passage of time kind of helps me at least if I'm able to have enough time.
#
Because when people ask me when is the next album going to be out, I said, when it's ready.
#
I don't know when it's going to be ready.
#
And there's no one putting a gun to my head saying it needs to be out once or once a date.
#
So then, you know, why have an imaginary gun, you know, just wait till it's done.
#
But then also, I guess the deadline kind of helps with the procrastination.
#
So sometimes you have to set yourself a deadline to have it done by this date, you know, that
#
Like this previous album, I uploaded it to streaming services eight times.
#
Every time I'd upload it, I'd hear it in the car, I was like, I've got to change that,
#
you know, and pull it back down.
#
And this eight times happened in a week, you know.
#
And by the time it came to the last upload, it was cutting it really fine.
#
And they were saying like, no, it won't be out by that day if you don't upload it today,
#
So it was like, okay, it's done.
#
Let's pull it out and see what happens.
#
So it's also it's ready when you when you have to let go.
#
That's also the thing is like in the early days, you had studio time, you had this much
#
studio time, you have to go, you have to finish the thing and get out.
#
Like there's a whole story of Led Zeppelin recording presence in like a very short span
#
of time because the Rolling Stones were coming in and they had to finish.
#
And he did all his guitar overdubs in one night, which is amazing if you listen to that
#
album and think all the guitar parts on that album were done in one night.
#
So similarly, like, you know, having a deadline can kind of push you.
#
But I like to have a reasonable, you know, window to to move things around and see how
#
What you said about stopping the editor inside you from polishing something too much reminds
#
me of this quote by a guy called William Maxwell.
#
He was an editor at the New Yorker for about 40 years and a great writer himself wrote
#
And once he was asked about what he looks for in the writing that people sent to him,
#
and he said, I don't look for style, I look for the breath of life, you know, and he said
#
this was something that he had learned to do over time, that it's not just about immaculate
#
craft and all of those things, it's about, you know, where is that kind of moment of
#
One thing I want to ask you about, which I've always wondered about in the context of both
#
music and cinema, is the anxiety of avoiding cliche.
#
For example, in writing, it's really common advice that you want to avoid cliches.
#
Martin Amis, even his book of collected criticism is called The War Against Cliche.
#
Now, in cinema and music, it seems a little harder than that, because where do you distinguish
#
between, say, cliche and convention and trope, like in a film, you know, if you have an establishing
#
scene, you'll have a wide shot, then you'll go in.
#
Is it just friendly to the audience to do it in a familiar way?
#
Similarly, when you're playing music, I would imagine that there'll be tons of tropes which
#
are, say, common to blues or common to a particular kind of vibe that you're doing, you know,
#
if there's a certain kind of melody, you'll mix it in a certain kind of way or whatever.
#
And some things can even become your own cliches.
#
So, you know, is that something that you're worried about at any point, the anxiety that,
#
you know, am I really doing something new, that where does one draw that line?
#
Stuff you've thought about?
#
There's always anxiety.
#
The whole imposter syndrome looms large, you know, but you kind of have to kind of almost
#
be your own psychologist and tell yourself, no, I do this well, just relax, I'll do it.
#
You know, I know how to do this, just let me do it.
#
So that part of you, you know, has to be silenced.
#
The one which is always like, no, it's wrong, no, it's wrong, no, it's wrong, like, okay,
#
you chill for a little while, let me just do it.
#
And you can kind of feel when you have an honest reaction to your own music, to something
#
And whether it is cliche or not, if the reaction you feel is tangibly genuine, then I don't
#
worry about it so much, because sometimes you can do a certain thing, which everyone
#
has done, but you can do it in a way, which is sometimes it's like a parody, like I played
#
it ironically, you know, something like that, like in zero, I would throw in like heaps
#
of these little things, these little phrases, like if you listen to the solo on found, there's
#
a lick from Santana from Europa, and this is one of the Ayaya guitar parts sound like
#
Led Zeppelin, your time is going to come, you know, just, I would just throw these things
#
in to see like who would notice.
#
And then sometimes after 20 years, someone would come and say, hey, that's amazing.
#
And you, and you were notable for doing this in live performance as well, like live was
#
a totally different thing.
#
It was like, you know, because at least on a recording, it's committing something to
#
posterity live, at least then when no one was recording shit on their cell phones, you
#
could do what the hell you wanted.
#
I remember playing the solo from what's that Metallica song, Fade to Black, Incomfortably
#
And which go very well together, by the way, there's actually a video where a guy, a super
#
impressed one over there, no, you would also do phrases from Tujhe Dekha Tohye Jana Sanam
#
inside Ayaya and things like that, yeah, that's quite.
#
That came about at some gig where people would ask us to play Bollywood.
#
So I was like, this is all I know.
#
Let's take a quick commercial break and on the other side of the break, let's continue
#
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and a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills.
#
Welcome back to The Scene in the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Warren Mendoza and Chuck Gopal.
#
I often wonder, should one say Deepak, should one say Chuck, but we'll just say Chuck.
#
Let's continue talking about Black Strut Blues.
#
Like you have a whole bunch of albums and they're all pretty different, like the noticeable
#
difference between Nights in Shining Karma and your second album, which was called The
#
New Album, though one could argue all subsequent albums are newer.
#
You know, like you yourself said somewhere else that in that first album, the guitar
#
is a hero and you spoke about your process of kind of putting it together, you know,
#
your brothers laying down the drum tracks and you're just playing everything else.
#
But by the second album, if you're building soundscapes, the guitar is no longer the prominent
#
There's this whole vibe that's kind of happening.
#
And through later albums, other interesting things happen.
#
There are these Indian influences like the Tanpura drone and so on, or the tabla or whatever
#
coming in at different points in time.
#
So what was your evolution during these years of the Black Strut Blues, where it begins
#
as a kind of a solo project, but then it becomes something more.
#
So kind of take me through that process of, you know, your evolution as a musician and
#
of Black Strut Blues as well at the same time.
#
So the first album was pretty much My Brother and Me, like I said, by the time the second
#
album happened, I had met a few other people.
#
So the first guy I met was, who still is, he's one of my dearest friends here, a guy
#
So I was going to watch him at a gig, actually we backtracked before that.
#
When I first moved here, I needed to get a job right away.
#
So it was at a local government organization and I met another friend of mine called Emma.
#
Now Emma had some songs which I thought were really cool.
#
So I said, let me help you put an album together.
#
So we started recording.
#
Then Emma said, I need drums on one song, but it has to be like a certain style.
#
So we had gone to watch this gig and we came across this drummer, Cole Goodley.
#
And he said, this is the perfect guy for that song.
#
So at that time I was working at a recording studio, I had quit the day job and I was able
#
The studio owner was a very sweet guy, so he said, you can use it whenever you want.
#
So we used the downtime to record Cole.
#
So Cole came over to the studio to record on Emma's song and he did his takes very quickly.
#
I think he had what we wanted, gave us a few options that was done in an hour and a half.
#
And then we had the rest of the evening.
#
So then before he started putting his drums away, he started playing something.
#
And then he went into Achilles' Last Stand, which is like one of my favorite Zeppelin
#
He said, dude, just give me a second.
#
I quickly grabbed the Les Paul, which was lying there, plugged it into the Marshall
#
and we started playing.
#
And then it went on from that to like, oh, do you know this?
#
And suddenly we found like a whole bunch of common influences and a lifelong friend was
#
So he said, hey, I'll play on your stuff if you want.
#
And I was playing in some demos and everything.
#
So he was like a huge contributor on that album, because I still think without his playing,
#
the music would never have been, I wouldn't say as good or whatever, just wouldn't have
#
been that, whatever it is that you hear.
#
Because on a song like Oh to a Sunny Day, he understood exactly what was required.
#
If you listen to that original album version, I still think it's probably like the definitive
#
Some people like the live one on Gear House and everything like that.
#
But he brought a lot to the music, whatever he played on it, just when he heard Happy
#
Billy's song, he knew instantly I was doing a manic depression on that.
#
So he just did the whole Mitch Mitchell thing and he was very good at channeling those influences
#
like I do on guitar, channel a Hendrix or whoever, but still kind of make it your own.
#
So he was able to do that same thing on drums, which was awesome.
#
It didn't sound like it was a Hendrix song.
#
It sounded like someone who understood Hendrix, but played what had to be played to make that
#
Similarly with Oh to a Rainy Day, he heard that and he picked up his sticks to start
#
the take and he said, right.
#
I'll do my very best Nick Mason on this and just listen to it.
#
And he would like sometimes stop and start and everything, but he kind of did all the
#
drums for that album in one day, which is kind of pretty amazing.
#
It's all done in one day.
#
And after he left, I still had some time before it got too late.
#
And I remember so like inspired by what we had just recorded and I finished Happy Billy
#
Can you imagine like you're spending a whole day recording drums and you still have some
#
energy to put down all the guitar parts, all the guitars, whatever.
#
So in that sense, the whole collaborative energy brought like a totally different thing
#
And by the time of the second album, I had been living here for a while.
#
So I kind of become accustomed to a little bit of a slower pace of life.
#
And so the third album comes on that becomes like another change altogether because by
#
then I had moved back to India.
#
If you notice between the second and the third album, there's a good six years gap.
#
So that was me getting accustomed back into being a professional musician back in India
#
and everything like that.
#
So then by the time the third album came about, I had met Adi.
#
In fact, Adi and he had played together long back at a gig where his band and my band had
#
And then the vocal, Mike Blue.
#
It was on a boat, the vocal PA Blue.
#
So it became an instrumental jam.
#
So that there's a picture of that.
#
I think I can share it with you later if you want.
#
And so we knew each other and everything, but we never really played together at such.
#
And then we had to play together at Ehsan and Roy's Koch Studio.
#
So that was the first time we spent a lot of time because in between rehearsals and
#
all we were just sitting and jamming, I think that one point there was Prakash Sondraki
#
on pedal steel, who knows the whole dark side of the moon, all the steel parts.
#
And then Ehsan and Adi and I think Debu was playing drums.
#
So like between rehearsals for that episode, we were only playing pink, it was hilarious.
#
So Adi and me started getting along at that point.
#
And Jay, who had played on the very first Black Star Blues tour, but had never recorded
#
But I figured Jay and Adi would be a good team together because Jay is the guy who will
#
push with serious energy, but Adi is the guy who will hold things back and ground it.
#
So you have a perfect blend of those two, you know, because if you have both guys pushing
#
at the same time, it can blow out of control, you know, the car will just go off the track.
#
So one guy is holding it back and, you know, guiding things.
#
And then as a trio, we recorded the third album.
#
And I think we had also worked a fair bit with Karsh.
#
So Karsh and Jay had split drum duties on that third album.
#
Then the following year, I'd met Bevin on Clinton's Coke Studio.
#
So two Black Star Blues band members came from Coke Studio.
#
So Bevin, I used to drive with him for Clinton's rehearsals and I was playing him like all
#
the third album stuff and everything.
#
So he turns to me and he said, if you ever need a keyboard player, just let me know.
#
And I was shocked because like Bevin is like a seriously skilled musician and to play with
#
us jokers, like rock band jokers, I was like, you will play with us?
#
And he said, yeah, I'll play with you.
#
So at that point, it became like, you know, everything just fell into place and you could
#
And then that's when that last analog generation happened, which I think is probably after
#
the second album, that's like my favorite one till now.
#
So that point, it became a band and then a lot of live gigs happened as well.
#
So that kind of solidified the lineup.
#
And then I put out an album called When It's Time, where I knew it was going to be time
#
for that to wind up and make the move back.
#
Because at that time when my kid was born, it was like, okay, you kind of have to stop
#
thinking about yourself and then there's another person that we have to consider making plans
#
and everything like that.
#
So at that point, it just became pretty evident that if a child is a New Zealand citizen,
#
he should probably grow up in New Zealand.
#
So at that point, it was a bit hard, you know, because we had kind of done so many killer
#
gigs and everything together.
#
But again, it was kind of almost like a hop back to the Zio thing, where like, you know,
#
the band had solidified really nicely, but then you have to just say, you know, then
#
it was because of me that I moved and now it was because of her.
#
Yeah, I'm also, you know, another sort of area I want to explore is what the other influences
#
around you, how that shaped your music.
#
Like in one of your interviews, you speak about how, you know, during Ganpati, you used
#
to hear that drum beat and later you hear the same beat in Black Sabbath and you feel
#
that there's sort of a commonality there.
#
And in another interview, you at one point, you said this quote that stuck with me where
#
you said, quote, I have an unproven theory that all forms of folk music are intertwined
#
down to the pentatonic scale that exists in all cultures after having worked with many
#
Indian classical musicians is pretty easy to spot parallel threads to the music.
#
And this makes collaboration a possibility.
#
For me personally, it's a common areas found in rhythm percussion that are the most appealing
#
stop quote, like, you know, the Ganpati beat and Black Sabbath, perhaps.
#
And equally, you've been a sessions player in a lot of film recordings and all of that.
#
And I think you've done a couple of dance must see albums.
#
You've been Amitrivedi's live guitarist.
#
You've performed with, you know, Ehsan Loi, Rehman, all of these guys.
#
So you're not just any kind of blues musician.
#
You've got a much wider array of influences than most people.
#
Like I often tell people that anyone in India is by default luckier than the rest of the
#
world in at least one way, which is that we are multilingual.
#
You know, in Europe, people will speak one language.
#
We speak three, four languages.
#
There's so much else coming in from there.
#
And in a sense, in a musical sense, you've got that same sort of good fortune, not of
#
just being surrounded by different kinds of music, but being able to listen to them and
#
find these commonalities.
#
So expand on this a little bit.
#
Tell me about, you know, what are these sort of different common elements?
#
How has it shaped your music and so on?
#
Well, the pentatonic scale is definitely there in every culture.
#
There's a nice video that Bobby McFerrin shows where he kind of has a theory that it's part
#
The pentatonic scale is part of our human DNA.
#
So that's worth checking out.
#
The 6-8 groove, you can hear that in every single culture, African, Celtic, you know,
#
American Indian tribal stuff, Asian music, you'll hear it.
#
I mean, everywhere you go, you'll find that 6-8.
#
And that's kind of one of my favorite grooves.
#
So you listen to a song like Focus 3, for example, that's kind of where I exploited
#
that whole thing, which is like a resurgent kind of groove.
#
But it's also like a blues shuffle, you know, that 6-8 thing as well.
#
You know, for me, it's like finding something that's pretty universal, which again, most
#
people would be able to relate.
#
And then the fact that it's instrumental means there's no lyrics.
#
So technically, it shouldn't prevent from anyone who listens to any kind of language
#
to not be able to get it.
#
But in terms of relating to other musicians, I think you kind of have to keep your ears
#
open because there's obviously some things they'll do in some particular rag, which,
#
you know, I'll have no idea.
#
Then I'll have to kind of ask them like, what exactly is going on?
#
And once you, there are only 12 notes, but how you use those 12 notes for infinite, you
#
And then you have to listen to things like microtonal inflections, you know, how they
#
There's another nice video, Derek Trucks talking about Indian music and how it's a common,
#
like the microtones to gospel music in America.
#
So that's worth checking out.
#
But every time I find something like that, it just makes me feel like warm and fuzzy
#
inside, you know, like there's something common among us all as humans, which it doesn't matter
#
You still can, you know, I mean, there's, I mean, have you gone to a place where nobody
#
Go to any beach town, there's some form of that music which is playing.
#
So I don't know, I just think the ability of, you know, the whole genre thing is basically
#
It's basically people want to sell things in certain boxes.
#
So it has to be, I mean, what do you call Led Zeppelin, a reggae band just because they
#
No, they were just Led Zeppelin, you know.
#
I mean, you could say they were a rock band.
#
So similarly, I wouldn't really consider myself a blues musician.
#
I think I have like a lifetime to live as a blues musician to be classified as one.
#
I love where it comes from.
#
I love also expanding it.
#
I think like early cream dated cool things with the blues where they would like taking
#
traditional forms and kind of, you know, making it a little bit more of its time.
#
So I like artists who do that, who take from traditional forms and are able to do something
#
different with it where you can retain, you know, where it's coming from, but you know
#
it's not that where it's coming from.
#
You know, one of the questions that I wanted to ask was, so you spoke about how you're
#
a fan of artists who take something with an existing genre and add on to it.
#
And that's really how music evolves, right?
#
So have you seen any of that happen recently, like for example, you can argue that rock
#
is now a rock and heavy metal are now traditional forms of music in some sense, like how the
#
blues and early rock and beat music was.
#
I've come across some artists doing fascinating things like an artist I came across recently
#
is called Carpenter Brute who takes traditional heavy metal and adds a lot of influences from
#
So it's basically just him.
#
It's basically a metal DJ on stage.
#
And while I may not be a complete fan of things like that, I think that pushes music in different
#
It makes some people slightly uncomfortable.
#
I saw this at a metal fest, so it obviously alienated the audience a fair bit.
#
Have you come across any examples like this and like just generally where do you think
#
music, especially the types that we love so much, where could it go?
#
Do you see like more of a role of traditional scales and instruments, for example, around
#
I've come across music like I was just telling Amit before our recording, I came across something
#
called Torek guitar, which is North African psychedelic guitar and you would love this
#
absolutely with bands with artists like Mdou Mukhtar, if I've got the pronunciation right,
#
who play a very Hendrix like fuzz sound, but with what is unmistakably Arabic influence
#
or that or North African influence of sorts or like it's Tinar even.
#
Have you come across any like this and what do you think about stuff like this?
#
Like where do you think at least the music that we like rock and metal could go?
#
For me, like for example, if I hear a bit of Hendrix, I mean immediately drawn in because
#
that's like such a, like if you're ever in doubt about what to play on guitar, do a jimmy,
#
For most, that's also like one of the things that I know certain things will work.
#
So like you said, like it sounds a bit like that Hendrix fuzz thing, that's kind of like
#
a universal sound now, like any guitar player across the world knows what Hendrix sounds
#
There's a really nice band from Sweden called Dunjan, so it's spelled D-U-N-G-N, they sing
#
in Swedish, but doesn't really matter because the music is amazing.
#
Guitar player is like a little bit of a, you know, you can hear the Hendrix influence,
#
but he's also like totally his own guy.
#
So that's another thing which, you know, you can take the similar sound like that Hendrix
#
fuzzed out, like that like guitar sound and do different things with it.
#
So I would recommend checking out, there's one album called Ta, Det, Lunt, L-U-G-N-T,
#
so that's I think that's the second or third album, and there's one album called Four.
#
If you listen to that Four album, there's one killer song called Mina Damer Okfassana,
#
I'm pronouncing it horribly, but whatever you can from my, you know, you can kind of
#
So this song, you can hear that fuzz guitar thing, but it almost sounds like Arabic or
#
Indian in a slightly Bollywood way, it goes something like that, and the groove is man
#
like this fat ass like something like that, you know.
#
So then, you know, you can, you can hear like different influences, but it's coming together
#
in such a unique way, which just sounds like that and nothing else.
#
You know, again, which is what brings me back, like you hear a little bit of the commonality
#
in it, but it's something totally different, which you've never heard before, and that
#
like is what I live for.
#
Have you heard of this guy called Josh Fix by any chance?
#
This guy, I think he came out in 2004 or 2005, and he had this album called, I'll send you
#
the name data, but it sounded like Queen, Elton John, you know, that kind of thing,
#
piano driven rock, but the production is immaculate, like you can't help but not like it.
#
And he found quite a few fans in like, say, Steve Lukather and you know, like, you know,
#
And then he had an EP after that with the most killer name, This Town is Starting to
#
So two, like one great album, one amazing EP, and then you never heard of him again.
#
You know, he just disappeared.
#
And I guess he kind of grew disillusioned or whatever, and that's only something I'm speculating.
#
But with an artist like that, you're going to gain your, you know, where he's coming
#
from very clearly, but again, it's so uniquely him, like just the way things are put together.
#
So that can be a facet of your originality, the way you put things together from styles
#
that have come from you so you can take things that are very like, you know, almost universal
#
in a way, but combine them in a certain way, which, you know, I guess people have been
#
doing that in every genre for the last 20 years.
#
So I want to get back to a question that we touched upon right at the start, which is,
#
you know, the question of form and content, how they affect each other, like, you know,
#
every form that we kind of have came because of a physical reason, you could only fit so
#
many minutes of music on an LP and therefore that's your album length or a radio will typically,
#
you know, they'll play a three minute thing and therefore that becomes kind of a standard.
#
Today you'll find bands optimizing for the first 30 seconds on Spotify because you got
#
to make the guy finish 30 seconds.
#
You know, when advanced mics first came about in the 1920s, people started singing differently.
#
Bing Crosby could whisper into the mic and, you know, didn't have to sort of throw his
#
You know, record labels will ask artists to have that 15 second catchy bit, which, you
#
know, Tik Tok or Reels can pick up.
#
And what has happened is that we somehow as creators, and I'm talking across everything,
#
not just music, we get stuck in old formats.
#
Writers will only think of 800 word pieces or 100,000 word books or filmmakers will think
#
in terms of like a 24 minute TV episode or a 90 minute Hollywood film and so on and so
#
But one in many fields, those formats don't matter anymore.
#
The reasons why they came about in the first place are they don't matter, they've gone.
#
And in music, you've got new imperatives, like sort of the one that we discussed.
#
Now, what has happened is that many of these formats have become cliches or formulas, you
#
know, so I got this video on YouTube where this guy was analyzing the formula for a perfect
#
pop song, which was 114.2 beats per minute, three minutes, 59 seconds long, moderately
#
danceable in the key of C major and so on and so forth.
#
There's another video that breaks down what Max Martin does, you know, where your chorus
#
will start between 40 seconds to a minute, your lyrics will be below fourth grade reading
#
level, simple harmonic structures, short, unique intros, because many people are, you
#
know, kind of if you're playing, if you're a DJ changing tracks on allowed to sing, the
#
intro has to be catchy for people to stay on the dance floor and so on and so forth.
#
So all these formulas have evolved and they've evolved because of one commercial imperatives,
#
because obviously labels will look at what is successful and just want to repeat that
#
and that becomes a formula to it's because we've gotten used to a particular kind of
#
So you think, Oh, every song has to be three minutes or four minutes or whatever that so
#
called optimal length is.
#
And three, because of the way our brains are wired, as you said, all our brains are wired
#
in the same kind of way, something will sound musical to us, something else will not sound
#
So in some senses, you're kind of catering to how our brains are wired and you kind of
#
therefore slip into those same old grooves.
#
So what is your sort of thinking about this?
#
Because you know, one of the things you mentioned that Auckland allowed you to do, for example,
#
just going there and maybe it's just a part of maturity of any artist or any person is
#
that you're able to sit back and re-examine all of this and you know, your role in all
#
of this and all of that.
#
So what do you think about all of these things that, you know, Chuck in an old piece had
#
in fact written about your stuff very, I'll quote Chuck now, there's something in his
#
compositions that move from familiar intro to slow part where people can soak it in and
#
notice how good the other musicians are to faster part when the pace picks up to epic
#
ending when everyone goes berserk, fuck how good is everyone in this band that just works
#
with any audience and he continued elaborating on that.
#
So what is your sense of that?
#
Because I guess when you start without even thinking about it, without even thinking,
#
oh, this is a formula, this is what I need to do, you just gravitate to that.
#
But then later on, you've tried many different things in different structures.
#
So tell me a little bit about how you sort of think about all of this.
#
Yeah, I mean, for every song that fits that formula, there's also another one that doesn't,
#
you know, so it just depends upon, you know, which are the ones that you latch on to.
#
The thing is also you have to keep in mind, are you making music for mass consumption
#
or are you doing it for your own gratification?
#
I do it currently because I want to make myself happy.
#
Now, the moment the commercial consideration comes into mind, I may have to change the
#
At this point, at least I'm still able to at least make the music I want to and still
#
have a roof over my head.
#
So that could change, you know, another day and then I may have to totally retweak, maybe
#
I have to do 30 seconds songs or whatever.
#
I mean, I worked in advertising for a very long time, so I know how advertising music
#
And there is definitely like a certain formula that has to work in context, like it can't
#
get in the way of the voiceover, for example, that's like the golden rule, otherwise they
#
The music track gets pulled down and the voiceover is on top of everything.
#
So with confirming to certain parameters now, obviously the parameters you confirm to when
#
you make music for yourself are your own preferences.
#
You like things to sound a certain way.
#
And you know, I'm a little bit old, so I still want to make an album rather than, you know,
#
Like my daughter may suddenly say, dad, make me a song, which is 30 seconds, I'll make
#
a song, man, once you're happy, I'll do it, you know, that sort of thing.
#
So I'm never going to like discount like saying this is the right way or that is the wrong
#
Everything is like at this point in my life, everything goes, you see what you like and
#
And there's so much music out there.
#
So let's, you know, try to keep ourselves happy by listening to music we like.
#
Apart from that, you know, the attention spans are different these days.
#
So, you know, where a double album would be something that people could consume in one
#
In this age, I don't think a majority of people, even I find myself like there are certain
#
times in the like, once everyone's gone to bed, then I can put on an album and listen
#
And these days also, I find like, I'll just not, you know, do something else, like I'm
#
always like something or the others there that, you know, like in my room, I'll be cleaning
#
up something or something while doing it.
#
But at least my musical attention is focused on what's playing, you know, in that sense.
#
So for me, it's like, again, the trick is to keep finding music that makes you feel
#
It's like a drug, you know, the old stuff, there'll be certain music, which no matter
#
how many times, like my daughter and I listen to The Beatles.
#
So I listen to Blackbird in my car, literally nine or ten times on repeat.
#
I don't get, I don't have a problem with that, you know, it's a cool song.
#
So no worries with it on repeat.
#
So the people who are making music by formula, I have no problem with them doing that because
#
that's what they have to do at that point of time.
#
So, you know, if you write for Bollywood, now the director becomes your, you know, your
#
You have to cater to his whims and the director, whoever's paying you has to be happy, then
#
everyone is happy, you know, and then it becomes like that approval by committee.
#
That's the process I hate the most because everyone feels they have to give some feedback
#
otherwise their job is not warranted, you know, they're just sitting there like useless
#
So that is not something that I'm personally fond of in that sense.
#
At least I want to be able to, you know, at least with my own music, if I put it out under
#
like Warren Mendoza or Blackswell Blues, at least I want something that goes out with
#
And then there's a good chance of other people being happy as well, by default.
#
Like you mentioned short attention spans, you know, five years back when I started this
#
podcast, my impression was that attention spans are short, you got to hook them in the
#
first 15 seconds, don't do an episode more than 10-15 minutes, and so on and so forth.
#
And I realized I was spectacularly wrong because tons of people crave deep content.
#
And especially in the case of podcasts, people are a captive audience when they're listening
#
to podcasts, they're commuting or working out or whatever, they're listening at higher
#
speeds, which of course doesn't happen with music, but they're listening to podcasts at
#
And people just crave depth, nobody else gives you depth.
#
And like you said, there are times of the day when you have a short attention span,
#
but there are times where you really want to sit down and listen to that double album.
#
And this was something I realized.
#
But the question I'm coming to is this, that what I have noticed is that for content that
#
goes deeper, your absolute numbers may not be as high as something that is shallower
#
and something that is hooking you in 15 seconds and all that, but the level of engagement
#
is way, way, way, way higher.
#
Your audience cares so much more about you, it's personal, it's intimate, all of that
#
So the dual question to you is that both as a consumer of music and as a creator of music,
#
have you felt that connect that, you know, when you're doing stuff that makes you happy,
#
because I think you're automatically guaranteed perhaps to not reach out to as many people
#
as you would, but to everyone you reach out to, you're making them happy as well.
#
So do you feel that deeper connect both from your listeners towards yourself and also from
#
you towards the music you like, that you just feel this more intimate connection towards
#
I mean, for me, when I meet people who I've never met before, but they tell me like, I
#
really love the music you do.
#
This part of me, which is like that Rush song, Limelight, like I can't pretend a stranger
#
is a long lost friend, you know, that part of me is like, there's nothing real about
#
this interaction if I have never met you before, but I have to shut off that part of me and
#
say this person is actually connecting to me as a human being because they first connected
#
And the whole idea of having like Black Star Blues as a, you know, a moniker or a project
#
name was just to say, okay, this is the music.
#
Now you listen to the music and you leave me alone.
#
You know, I'm not part of this whole relationship.
#
Your relationship is between you as a listener and the music, not between you and the listener
#
Maybe me as a musician.
#
But there has to be that disconnect.
#
And then you have like social media and everything coming where that line gets a bit blurred.
#
And then I guess also like being a dad, I've kind of become less of that, you know, it
#
doesn't really get to me because like there's a certain kind of social awkwardness I have
#
If I don't know someone, it's very hard for me to relate to them unless they say like
#
if they start talking about the Beatles automatically, like they become my friends.
#
I mean, if they, if I know that they know what they're talking about, that's something
#
I like when people are actually interested in something, they can talk about anything
#
as long as they're actually interested in it and they have a, you know, a proper knowledge
#
And there are people who just like to fill the air with conversation with, you know,
#
meaningless conversation, I can't deal with that.
#
So sometimes at social gatherings, like, you know, I have to kind of hide me and my wife
#
and you know, that sort of thing.
#
So even in these situations, like after a gig, I make it a point to stay back and talk
#
to everyone who wants to talk to me, you know.
#
So if they feel like they feel like connected to me as a person, who am I to say that's
#
not real in that sense.
#
So it's progressively become easier over the years for me to do that.
#
Like initially, I remember that gig where Chuck first came at Mithi bike college, there
#
were people taking photographs.
#
And he wanted to take photographs of me.
#
I was like, no, I don't feel comfortable doing this, please let me just play on stage and
#
That's what I want to do.
#
And to quote your bassist from that gig, you tried to introduce the band, you did a pretty
#
And Bobby grabbed the mic and said, as you can all see, Warren is very new at this mic
#
What he means is can all of you come forward?
#
I still have a video of that.
#
That was pretty hilarious.
#
But yeah, your banter skills have improved dramatically since then.
#
Someone just asked me once, what was the biggest difference between blacks and blues and zero?
#
I said, well, in zero, I didn't have a mic in front of me.
#
The moment I hear my voice on the monitors, I instantly feel awkward.
#
And then I just start mumbling and then it becomes worse because I'm just like talking
#
No one can understand what I'm saying.
#
I remember one gig, they delayed our sound check severely so I was super pissed off because
#
it was early in the morning.
#
I was like, listen, don't call a band for like a seven o'clock sound check.
#
If you can't meet that requirement, just call them and say, come later.
#
But that wasn't the case.
#
I was damn pissed off when we got on stage and apparently that was the best I've ever
#
We played like a smashing set because everyone was pissed off and apparently I was very loud
#
and audible because our front of house engineer told me, he didn't have to keep pushing up
#
In fact, I pulled it down and he was shouting on the mic.
#
So my question for you Chuck was this, that the same thing what I asked him, you were
#
actually one of the early big fans of Zero and Warren and so on and so forth.
#
So what connected you feel like, like, do you feel there's something to that?
#
Do you feel, for example, that a fan of someone like Warren or a similar musician or whatever
#
will have a deeper engagement than say a fan of somebody more popular?
#
I don't want to be disrespectful to someone by taking names, but say a Justin Bieber,
#
you know, do you feel that the connect would be, you know, that connect would be broader
#
I think it will definitely be broader and shallower.
#
I mean, there were multiple questions there, right?
#
So I'll answer what drew me to Warren's music for the first time and I won't embarrass you
#
I think I've done that enough through all the articles and stuff that I wrote.
#
I think I was just blown away by the fact that an Indian musician could make guitar
#
solos like this, honestly, and of course, the band themselves, the songs by themselves
#
So I was just blown away by that and from there I was, I actually, I wasn't an early
#
I would actually call myself one of the later fans of Zero and an early fan of Black Star
#
Blues because I got around that time, I actually discovered Zero when Warren was out of the
#
band and was in Auckland at that time.
#
So I was bang in the middle and that transition happened and that blew me away that you can
#
do this and this at the same time and I think that's what really drew me in and arguably
#
if you had continued playing the way you did as Zero, maybe I wouldn't have been as much
#
of a fan because I think that transition and the fact that you balance both so effortlessly
#
To the second question, yes, there's no doubt about it.
#
I think there is something about fewer fans but deeper engagement.
#
And again, something that we discussed so much on when I came on, when we were talking
#
about the Australian band Neo Blizzard is for example.
#
I think it is that I think, I think if there is a deeper connect, not only will they be
#
evangelist for the music more, but and Warren, you can correct me if I'm completely off the
#
mark on this, but also be willing to support you more for this either by spreading the
#
music, buying the music as opposed to streaming on Spotify, etc.
#
That's my feeling as a fan and I've done that for artists that I am a supporter of.
#
So yeah, that's my perspective on that.
#
Yeah, the guys who like it really like it.
#
I'll tell you that for sure because there have been guys who have been listening from
#
I remember this one guy at the time where I put it on my website for free and I said
#
this is my PayPal account, you know, if you feel like donating some money so I can buy
#
some better recording gear than, you know, feel free.
#
So one guy donated $200 at the time, which was like, wow, you know, so that guy wrote
#
I said, dude, thank you so much.
#
Like, this is really come at a good time.
#
You get the album advanced release for free for life.
#
So I make it a point now before every release I send a copy, so I never really forgot that,
#
you know, the gesture of his.
#
But there have been people who have been there from the first album, like, you know, Chuck,
#
who still are, you know, listeners and support the music.
#
So I'm really grateful for that.
#
I mean, I cannot like, you know, be more thankful.
#
But the whole thing is like, then when you have people who don't see your music as a
#
disposable commodity, then you kind of feel that interaction is a little bit more real.
#
You know, the way someone is just listening to Black Star Clues because their friends
#
said they're a cool band and tomorrow they've forgotten about it.
#
I mean, these are not the people that tend to, you know, engage long term with your brand
#
or your music or whatever.
#
So I'm really grateful for the people who really like it enough.
#
Like when I put out this most recent album, I put it on sale for Bandcamp first, and then
#
it went on to streaming two weeks later.
#
And it pretty much covered the entire recording cost of the album.
#
I was like, wow, you know, really, I wasn't expecting that at all.
#
But it kind of made me feel like nice and warm about the whole thing that there are
#
people who actually care about your music, they know they're going to get it for free
#
on your streaming services on YouTube or whatever.
#
They'll still, you know, take the effort to support you and put their money where their
#
So I want to talk about the commercial aspect a bit because, you know, one of the areas
#
like you talk about the high engagement and where that directly leads is that today creators
#
are able to connect directly with whoever's reading them or listening to them or whatever
#
and monetize some of that, capture some of that value, because anyone who listens to
#
your music is, in a sense, paying for it because time is money.
#
You spend one hour listening to Blackstrat Blues, you know, you're spending it.
#
And today we are in that unique age where you don't have to go through intermediaries
#
like platforms and advertising and so on.
#
You can capture some of it.
#
And you know, I've had this experience when I opened up support for my podcast as well
#
and was very touched by a response I didn't expect, which has been enough to kind of keep
#
me independent all this while and doing what I do.
#
You know, when things started going well for you, Blackstrat Blues happened, all that happened,
#
I mean, in a musical sense, commercially, there was so much flux that the revenue models
#
of the music industry kind of were going through this crazy flux.
#
All the labels come, they sue Napster and all that, they get that shut down, then iTunes
#
comes and there's nothing they can do because Apple has more lawyers and so on, as Ted Joya
#
says, and everything kind of goes to hell.
#
And you do this very interesting thing where you say that, look, I just want my music to
#
I want people to listen to it.
#
You put it up for free.
#
And your first two albums are out there, they're up for free.
#
How have things evolved since then?
#
Because the downside of all of this, it seems to me, is that creators are also forced to
#
simultaneously be entrepreneurs, right?
#
Someone may be a talented musician, but they may not have a head for business or a head
#
for how to use social media and so on and so forth and be able to do the rest of that.
#
So how have you therefore handled all of that in terms of, sure, you make stuff for yourself
#
and that makes you happy, but you also have deeply committed fans and so on and so forth.
#
How has it evolved so far?
#
Where do you see it going from here?
#
And do you think for musicians in general, how should musicians in general approach this
#
new world that we are in?
#
Like 30 years ago, the model would have been that maybe you tour a little bit, build a
#
bit of local following, attract a record label, label comes out and either you're lucky enough
#
to make it big or you're back to whatever, being a journeyman band.
#
Today, that's really kind of different.
#
So take me through a little bit of this landscape and what are your thoughts on it and so on?
#
Well, the cost of recording has been coming down significantly due to the advance of technology.
#
So that's the first thing we need to look at.
#
So by the time I did the first Black Star Blues album, my recording costs were literally
#
nil because I'd already owned all the equipment I needed to make that album.
#
Now obviously now as an artist, you sometimes tend to grow in the scope of what you're trying
#
to achieve and what you're trying to capture for posterity.
#
So then say tomorrow you decide you've written a piece of music that requires an orchestra.
#
Now that is not something I can record in my bedroom.
#
I can program it to a certain extent, but it's not going to sound like an orchestra.
#
Now you have to decide now if I have to have that orchestra, then the money's got to come
#
So either I put it in myself or I have to apply for funding.
#
At least here the New Zealand government is awesome about that.
#
They have funding avenues that you can apply for.
#
I mean the competition is severe, but you can if your music is deemed good enough and
#
commercially viable enough.
#
So there's some gatekeeper in that sense.
#
The moment your personal investment is exceeded by the cost.
#
So for me personally, as long as I was able to produce the album to the best of my financial
#
and artistic ability, I was happy with it.
#
It was cool, you know, because the first album, no recording cost, second, I was able to use
#
Third album, we recovered our investment on studio time from iTunes sales.
#
Now that time you could actually sell music on iTunes and OK Listen and all these sites
#
where people actually paid 100 rupees or whatever.
#
And if say, you know, a thousand people bought your album at 100 rupees, that's what like
#
one lakh, you know, which at that time was kind of what the recording cost was.
#
So we were pretty cool there.
#
We were still making most of our music as a band playing live, but even that wasn't
#
enough to sustain a life in Bombay.
#
I had to play with Vishal Shekhar and Amit Srebedi and ERM and stuff that I enjoyed doing
#
that totally because that was a totally different aspect of being a musician, you know.
#
But that is what kind of kept things alive in terms of having a lifestyle and being able
#
Now the moment that's gone with the whole pandemic thing and everything, and I now move
#
back here, it becomes a little bit more of a juggle and kind of have a more short term
#
budget in terms of making sure your mortgage payments are met and so on and so forth.
#
So as long as you're above that, I can continue to do what I do.
#
Now there's also a lot of commercial music that I've been involved in, which is kind
#
of what still pays the bills.
#
And then I mix stuff for other people.
#
I do guitar sessions and stuff like that.
#
So as long as those two sides are juggled, it's like our heads are above the water.
#
The moment that doesn't happen, anything could change.
#
I mean, the world we live in right now is just like every day something new is happening
#
and like the life that we knew six months back is gone.
#
You've got to do this and then it becomes the norm.
#
So again, I guess this COVID thing stabilizes a bit and then we actually have a stable income
#
We kind of have to, you know, for me, teaching has really helped because during the moment
#
the gig stopped, I was like, look, I've got like three or four months before I've got
#
to move to New Zealand.
#
So you know, I might as well find something to do with time.
#
So I started teaching on Zoom and like that kind of paid for the whole move, you know,
#
the whole moving costs and everything were met with, but just teaching.
#
So that again fluctuates up and down.
#
I think every time there's a lockdown, the amount of students goes up and everything
#
things open up, goes down as people find other things to do.
#
I mean, I still have a few students that, you know, stuck around for like, since like
#
So, you know, it's a bit of a very up in the air kind of thing and you're trying to make
#
sense of, you know, random events and sequences of things happening.
#
And all you have to do is kind of manage to keep the bike balanced.
#
One, you could hit a stone, but if you hit a stone, then you kind of regain your balance
#
and you know, as long as you keep the bike, you know, on two wheels and don't fall down,
#
What happens then you cross that bridge when you come to it.
#
So it's very hard actually to make long term plans at this point.
#
You have to be flexible enough to kind of just adapt to, you know, what every day brings.
#
That's one thing I guess the pandemic has taught me, like, you know, just every day
#
So you don't know if you're going to be around tomorrow, let's do the best we can.
#
And in terms of like the actual stuff that you make as an artist, that's going to survive
#
long after you've bounced from this planet.
#
So you know, that's something at least you put all of your current available energies
#
into to at least kind of leave something.
#
And now at least I have a daughter, so that's something else that will survive me, you know.
#
But it's like you just do the best you can every day and it's like so hard to, you know,
#
I'm the last person that will actually give you, you know, concrete advice and say this
#
is what you should be doing and this is, you know, invest your money here, don't invest
#
it, I don't know all that sort of thing, you know, it's like as long as you get to play
#
Tell me a little bit about teaching because one of the, you know, when I started my writing
#
course and I started teaching, I realized that I actually started learning more and
#
looking deeper into a subject I thought I knew pretty well, right?
#
So how has teaching changed your appreciation of music and has it actually changed you as
#
a musician and just the way you think of the work you do?
#
Yeah, I've become a better communicator of ideas.
#
I'm able to edit my, you know, thought process really quickly and, you know, because sometimes
#
I can be thinking of five things at once, but then that person doesn't have the time
#
So you have to pick the best thing that you're thinking of and communicate that.
#
Yeah, I've had to kind of actually study what I do because sometimes they ask me to like,
#
And I can't say I closed my eyes and it came out, you know, which is actually the truth,
#
but you have to kind of go back and deconstruct the process, even though that was something
#
you were never thinking about at the time.
#
So you kind of have to go back and trace your steps and say, okay, well, what was I thinking
#
of when I played that, you know, of kind of trying to give them an idea of my head space
#
because that's very important to whatever it is I played, there's no chance I would
#
have played the same thing if I was feeling it, you know, differently.
#
And then the whole idea of communicating how to channel emotion and vibe into what you're
#
Then you start having to tell them more about the technicalities like, okay, this is not
#
in tune and that is not in time and that sort of thing.
#
So, you know, a lot of people, I think also tend to disregard simplicity when my thing
#
is like, look, it's the hardest thing to actually play simple things well, because there's nothing
#
You know, you've got to have to have full conviction or whatever it is you're playing
#
if you're playing like three notes that span this much of time.
#
So you have to, you know, be able to communicate that to someone in that sense, like saying,
#
you know, take it easy, we'll do it one step at a time because they always want to like,
#
you know, learn the complicated stuff at first, I've said, I never even, I so enjoy listening
#
to complicated music, but I never thought that I would actually play it.
#
Now is the time I go back and learn those solos, which I always admired, you know, like
#
Steely Dan and stuff like that.
#
Now is the time I'm able to do that when I can actually have the faculty to take it apart
#
and then learn how to play it.
#
So I never set my sights too high in that sense.
#
I set my sights on like low hanging fruit and learned how to, you know, capture it really
#
Once I was able to do that well, then I was able to go to the next stage and start, you
#
know, getting all that stuff.
#
So like I have to tell them like, look, it's fine, just do simple stuff well, we'll deal
#
It kind of reinforces your own taste as well, you know, because it's also like giving someone
#
the reassurance that you'll get there sometime, just put in the time, very few people actually
#
have the time that is required to get to the level they have in mind.
#
So I was like, let's just aim at getting better.
#
And then because you're doing that, you notice like certain things in my own playing, which
#
I would find to be like weaknesses.
#
I was never able to use this finger that well, but then you can't tell someone like, look,
#
you have to use that finger and then not be able to do it yourself.
#
So first you have to learn how to do that.
#
And someone's like, how do I alternate pick this?
#
And I can't say like, look, dude, I can't play that.
#
You know, so I show them how to play it slowly and say like, well, now you have to just sit
#
And if I do that, I'm going to get better because sometimes I can find like, you know,
#
the certain exercises I give the student, I practice it during the week so when we meet
#
again, we're both like, okay, we've both practiced, okay, now let's see where we are at.
#
Like almost like musical first principles in some way, what you were talking about.
#
Just going back to the headspace is not the complex stuff.
#
It's not the theory, but it's more about the vibe, the understanding, yeah, musical first
#
Like I said, it's kind of feels that way.
#
Sorry, that was just a visceral reaction to what you just said.
#
There was one guy I remember like, he suddenly became better when I told him only play when
#
Don't play when you inhale because he was playing a lot.
#
He was trying to do too much and I said, okay, now look, when you breathe, you know, there's
#
a little inhale process, so long you spend first, do that and now you play.
#
So suddenly he felt like, okay, there's more like, you know, the intent in what he was
#
The intent is the hardest thing.
#
I mean, you can't fake it, you know, and if you keep on thinking of yourself as like,
#
I'm never going to be good, I'm never going to be good, sometimes it can kind of cripple
#
you and you'll never get there unless you're part of your brain says, no, I can do this
#
because like there are things that I'll be able to play if I'm not thinking about it.
#
But when I think about it, there's like that critical thing that comes in like saying,
#
you're fucking it up, you're fucking it up, you're fucking it up.
#
It automatically makes things go to shit.
#
So you have to find a way of telling that guy, shut up, be quiet, go sit in the other
#
room for two minutes, let me just do this.
#
Yeah, in cricket, there's a term called the yips in sports.
#
In fact, there's a term called the yips where people just freeze at something that they've
#
I think a famous example is Jana Novotna was playing a match in the mid 1990s sometimes
#
and she was 5-0 up in the last set and she just lost, she just froze, she couldn't do
#
And the theory behind that there's a famous Malcolm Gladwell essay on this also, the theory
#
behind that is that there's stuff that we've just internalized is reflexive to us, we do
#
But if you start thinking consciously about it, you're just not able to do it because
#
that's a different part of the brain and it becomes a problem.
#
And I want to therefore ask you about processes, just in terms of processes, whether it's processes
#
in terms of practicing your playing and learning, whether it's processes in terms of songwriting,
#
what are your processes like, are there sort of hacks that have worked for you in terms
#
of getting into flow, as they say, where the song just plays itself and like you mentioned
#
that sometimes your student will ask you, but how did you play that?
#
And at the time you played it, you weren't thinking.
#
So is it easy to get into that kind of state where you're just in the groove and things
#
Do you have routines, processes, ways to work towards it?
#
Like one of the things that is common advice for writers to give is that you cannot wait
#
It's all about getting your ass down on the chair and just working at it.
#
And you can balance that out with that thing that sometimes you can get into flow when
#
everything just happens easily and it's just kind of happening by itself.
#
So what are sort of your thoughts on this?
#
For me, the sound has to be right, you know, for me to be able to loosen up because the
#
moment my guitar sound is not happening, it shuts me down like boom, I have to just struggle
#
my way, you know, because there's sometimes at some gig, like the amps not functioning
#
well and everything, you know, you can only do so much.
#
So you kind of have to say, sorry, audience, I know you paid money to come and see me today,
#
but I'm just going to have to struggle through this and do the best you can.
#
And some days it's just like your feet are almost off the ground throughout the gig,
#
you know, like there was one gig I remember at Hard Rock Cafe in Pune, it was NH7 and
#
all the other stages shot off one by one and everyone started filtering into this gig,
#
which was actually like one full on low public thing.
#
But then it became like, you know, a full house and everything.
#
So that gig, it was like the moment I got on stage and I hit the first note, it didn't
#
There was like 10 or 20 people in there to start.
#
It just sounded so good.
#
I was like, okay, no, I'm going to have a good gig, you know, it just like you're hearing
#
everything clearly, that sort of thing.
#
Now when I'm writing, it could, you know, sometimes I could come up with something really
#
Sometimes I have to just massage it a few different ways and I don't really sit down
#
to write a song usually.
#
I sit down to complete a song, but that writing that initial idea that spark or the idea that
#
has legs and I said, it can come anytime.
#
Sometimes you're in the bathroom, you're hearing a melody in your head with some, I can't shut
#
If there's something playing in my head, it just goes on and through while I'm sleeping
#
at night, it's goes on and on and on.
#
And I can hear it in the dream sometimes.
#
I'm like, you're also, it's gone, leave me alone for now.
#
So the, and then like, especially if it's like a, like a musical problem, you know,
#
like now you're going to solve this problem and the bloody thing just keeps going, ding,
#
ding, ding, ding, ding, ding in your head.
#
And you create like almost like 500 different permutations and combinations of, of what
#
So that subconscious process, I still haven't, you know, come under full understanding of
#
There are a few studies, you know, like one is called, this is your brain on music or
#
There's another guy called Anil Seth, who is a professor of consciousness.
#
And he had a Ted talk, which I was watching and it found it pretty fascinating.
#
So I put his words in a song called anesthesia, which was like, you know, the anesthesia is
#
like this, it basically shows you what is, what is consciousness, you know, that sort
#
When does consciousness stop?
#
All that kind of thing.
#
So I find that a fascinating subject, but there's parts of my brain, which I still don't
#
understand, you know, how it works and that sort of thing.
#
I know what I like, you know, so I try to set up the process.
#
Like I have a template that I've made in Cubase, like everything is connected in a certain
#
So if I want to start writing, I can start doing that pretty quickly.
#
I can pull up a drum track.
#
I find it, sometimes it works if you're stuck, you put on a, you know, a loop or something
#
like that, that can kind of, you know, flow that.
#
And sometimes just jamming with other people, that's like the best thing for me.
#
You know, like the most creative environment is with other people in the room who are on
#
the same, you know, wavelength as you are musically.
#
There was one song, Focus 3, I wrote that just before I left New Zealand to come back
#
And my friends had organized this little jam and we were playing and then we had some stimulants
#
that were part of the, you know, the evening and everything like that.
#
So it came to a point like where the three of us were jamming and it sounded so good.
#
I almost felt like myself like levitate off and see us from, you know, above.
#
It was so weird, I mean, like you're connected with the instrument and everything, but it's
#
almost like you're looking at it from like five feet higher than you are.
#
Like the only time that it was like a tangible, you know, experience like that.
#
I don't know if the stimulants had something to do with it or whatever.
#
So the funny thing is I remember that exactly how it went.
#
And so when I came back to India, I remember I'd done this gig with Ehsan at the Garden
#
of Five Senses in Delhi and I had to do a song of my own and Jay was playing drums and
#
Let's just, you know, see where that goes.
#
And there was a Sarenky player, Suhail from Advaita and he started singing something on
#
top of it because I think the idea was, you know, to have him to collaborate with us on
#
And then I think Loy shaped it a little bit differently.
#
So that whole process took a very tangible idea, which is something that almost completed,
#
but he shaped it in a very cool way.
#
So then I kind of wrote a little thank you to both of them for their help in those melodies.
#
So that's where you kind of hear a little bit of that Indian influence and that kind
#
But the collaborative thing is also like you need to be with people who, like there's no
#
Everyone's just there to play music and not, you know, this is what color shoes I'm wearing
#
today or what is none of that happening.
#
So that can open up, you know, and you tend to learn what are the triggers that open up
#
It's almost like you're trying to break into another world and take something from then
#
That's ideally what, because the many songwriters have, you know, kind of likened it to that
#
Like Tom Petty or something.
#
I go like way up high and I pull something back down to the earth.
#
So the more you learn to do that, the better your chances of actually doing that.
#
You're not going to do it every time.
#
I mean, you watch Sachin, there's not every batch that he makes essentially.
#
Sometimes he gets out on a duck, but he's still Sachin, you know.
#
Can you give examples of these sort of triggers that you mentioned where you can, you know,
#
just collaborating with a bunch of people and shit happens?
#
Yeah, I mean, it's all over that second album.
#
Then there, do you want me to play you something?
#
It's kind of pretty cool.
#
Let me just see if I can find it because it's on some hard disk.
#
But this is the first time we ever played Northstar together.
#
And I'd kind of put the whole thing together in terms of a basic arrangement.
#
But I'd left things open into what would happen in that middle jam section.
#
And one of the things we did in Black Side Blues when we came to that middle section
#
was to just break it down and have Adi underpin something with a bass line or whatever, and
#
then have Bevan move chord shapes on top of it.
#
So we kind of said, okay, this is the bass line.
#
I gave it to him, like, you know that, and told Bevan, okay, this is the chords.
#
But after that, what happened is I'll play you that middle section.
#
Okay, so this is the Northstar middle section.
#
Even though no one has any idea what's going to happen now.
#
So what you hear is pretty much what went down on record because I thought like that's
#
a pretty good solo, so I went back and I learned it.
#
I learned how to play the improv thing and we put it down on the album.
#
So that's kind of like, there's no ideas, like the sense of like abandon, you know,
#
which was captured luckily.
#
And obviously now I was able to go back and change a few things which I felt on retrospect,
#
you know, that could be changed, that could be better.
#
But on the whole, the entire flow of that whole sequence is what happened and that's
#
what we try to recreate on the album.
#
So you know, one of the things sort of Chuck told me about you is that from sort of being
#
the brash young upstart in the late 90s, you are now like a senior citizen of the Indian
#
rock scene and so on and so forth.
#
I was trying to be polite there.
#
But tell me, how has the scene kind of evolved over all of this time?
#
Because whenever a new ecosystem emerges and you know, in that period of time in the 90s,
#
ending at perhaps when Zero came around, I was writing a lot for the Rock Street Journal
#
and I was into the scene.
#
And it seemed at that time that our bands aren't really quite there yet, some stuff
#
And obviously the way ecosystems evolve is over a period of time as more and more people
#
come into it as time passes, it gets deeper, just the overall quality gets better.
#
I mean, I kind of tuned out the indie scene around the time Hook came out and I remember
#
at that time listening to that album and thinking it is and that's what I was telling Chuck
#
in the morning today that it's just so much tighter and crisper than a lot of the other
#
stuff that is coming out and absolutely no disrespect intended to, you know, any of the
#
other bands around that period.
#
So fill me into how that scene kind of evolved, because at the same time, the times are changing,
#
Things are opening up, the internet is exploding, is there one thing you can call as an indie
#
rock scene today or is it just different things happening all over the place?
#
For me and those of my listeners who may not really have followed this, just kind of fill
#
me into what's happened, what are the parts of it which kind of fill you with happiness
#
when you look at it and you say, yeah, you know, things happen just right.
#
And where do you kind of feel disappointed or let down and so on?
#
Well, I've seen it like transition at least three or four, maybe five or six times.
#
So like when I was just getting into playing music, I think probably the biggest band in
#
the country at the time was Indiscreet.
#
Now we had Star TV and we could see their videos on Star TV.
#
So in terms of that reach, I don't think it's ever been as good since then.
#
Then you had bands like Pentagram putting out albums of original music, which kind of
#
inspired us to do the same.
#
Now when we put out that first album, which we recorded in a balcony on a computer, which
#
is to keep overheating, just getting into the technology where we were able to do it
#
That was the whole thing.
#
We had creative control and for whatever reason, you could put the blame squarely on us for
#
But at least it was ours.
#
You know, we were like in total control.
#
There was no one paying us money and saying, nothing of that was part of the process.
#
So there's always been artists in any country that are still doing that and were able to
#
If your dad owned a studio, for example, then you could do that thing in the 80s.
#
So the technology became a bit more democratic.
#
Now the downside to that is now everyone can do it.
#
So when you put a distinction in between a bona fide artist and some guy who was just
#
playing around in a garage band and came up with some groove that he liked, put on some
#
other loop and put some fives.
#
The moment that loop-based thing started happening, I noticed it became like now it's not just
#
the realm of musicians, now anyone with some taste and hopefully some taste and some technology
#
can put the two together and come up with something.
#
And once people start liking that, you know, the thing is as long as there are people to
#
listen to it, you can't say that it's not legit or whatever, as long as the people listening
#
to it and having an honest reaction.
#
I think that's for me the parameters of legit, you know, whatever it is.
#
You can have spoken word over some concert piano.
#
Someone digs it, great, you know, who's to say this is good?
#
Because like if, you know, for example, like a kid, yeah, my daughter, she listens to stuff,
#
she doesn't have those parameters about this is good, this is bad, you either like it or
#
So that's as honest a reaction as you're going to get.
#
So I mean, there'll always be that, you know, like whatever music is coming out.
#
In terms of the scene itself, how it grows, I mean, when I was in New Zealand, initially
#
from 2004, I think that time it was like the biggest boom, I felt like I kind of missed
#
And when I came back in 2009, I kind of caught the last bit of it.
#
So you know, down to like the first NH7 festival to 2010 or 2011, I don't know, 2010, yeah.
#
So that was like a totally cool vibe because like, you know, it was no like big, huge thing
#
which like, you know, everyone and their friend came along to.
#
It was just basically artists and people who knew that this was happening landed up in
#
Pune and it was a beautiful time.
#
So the first couple of years, you know, it was like, then it started getting bigger and
#
And then with every scene, there'll be one upwards trajectory and then there's one downwards
#
trajectory and again, something else will come along and, you know, take that.
#
And, you know, there's the whole thing about like indie versus Bollywood.
#
Now the moment anything becomes big, Bollywood absorbs it and pulls it in because Bollywood
#
has money and Bollywood can get whatever it wants.
#
You know, I'm going to say like, no, don't pay me one very, two crores to make this song.
#
I'll do whatever you want.
#
At least, you know, you're somewhat financially secure and then you do what you want to, you
#
So I guess the whole idea is like till now, you know, the biggest songwriters in India
#
still don't get to control their own music.
#
I think that's like the saddest part.
#
I know music directors who didn't get permission to play their own songs.
#
For me, that was like a travesty of justice.
#
Like, why, why do you, because some other company owned it and you know, how the things
#
get in the industry, it's not as rosy as it seems.
#
People who control the money, they want to obviously control their investment and they'll
#
do whatever they have to do to, you know, make sure that they retain that power.
#
So until I guess, you know, mainstream artists are able to, I mean, you look at India, it's
#
kind of an anomaly in a sense because I think no other country does film music take such
#
a dominant part of the mainstream music culture.
#
Here, it's like we have fed music with images from a time immemorial since, you know, 60s
#
So like we had MTE before there was MTE in India.
#
So you know, it's always going to have some kind of thing.
#
And then now as the mainstream changes, like saying from Bollywood to now Netflix and all
#
that is coming out, then there's like, oh, this also exists.
#
And then the lines start blurring, you know, between indie and mainstream.
#
So many of the artists that you would classify as indie artists have got links.
#
I mean, even down to me having played on heaps of Bollywood songs.
#
And for me, initially, it was like a bit of like, you know, I only want to play on good
#
I don't want to play on shit.
#
But then it became like, you know, let's bring the best that we can to whatever it is that
#
It became like a challenge.
#
You know, what can you do with this?
#
What can you turn it into?
#
So that is what I got off on.
#
So as long as, you know, there was that, I still found it challenging.
#
You never knew what you were going to get, you know, in that sense.
#
And then you suddenly like, okay, come up with a killer hook now, right now.
#
You know, it's like you either have the goods or you don't.
#
So in that sense, it was like, it still kind of separated the, you know, the men from the
#
So like there's still killer musicianship in Bollywood, like you see some of those Indian
#
Like there's like not, I live to live five lifetimes for me to get that good and how
#
And they just close their eyes and they do it, you know, just like, because there's years
#
and years and years of practice, which has to go into that tradition for them to be able
#
to even consider a good musician, you know, it's like you pick up a guitar and you learn
#
three chords and bro, I've written my own song, you know.
#
So it's a different world in that sense.
#
But I've always had respect for good musicianship in, in any genre, you know, you can always
#
sense that, okay, this guy is a motherfucker at what he does, you know, that's like a jazz
#
saying like the best guys are called that.
#
So it's like, you have to have respect for that sort of thing in that sense.
#
So the lines will, you know, keep blurring because that cross-pollination will keep happening
#
and who's basically controlling them.
#
The money will ultimately control what's going in the mainstream, you know, it just depends
#
what, I mean, Netflix has got a budget, bro, there you go, Bollywood's got a budget, bro,
#
It's just like, who's going to pay me to do this?
#
I just, I mean, I know you have a question of it, but I just wanted to close that out
#
I think Warren, you're the only person I know who's actually played at each stage at NH7
#
Weekender, the rock and metal stage, the alternative stage, the folk stage, obviously, and also
#
I think I've seen you once.
#
No, there's two other people who have done it.
#
There's Sid Kuto and Sid Basroor, both the Sids have done it.
#
All right, fair enough.
#
The first then, let's call her the first.
#
Sorry, that is just an observation I wanted to get out of the way.
#
No, no, and that's a kind of a telling observation.
#
So when you kind of look ahead, like what you've done over the last 10, 15 years is
#
you've done work that pays the bills, right?
#
It's your sessions work, your Bollywood work, whatever, it pays the bills, you've got to
#
At the same time, you've done the stuff that you love.
#
How do you see things going forward?
#
Because it is also music.
#
So is that also drudgery or with what kind of attitude or approach do you go into it?
#
Is some of that also work that you're proud of or it's just something that you do to pay
#
the bills and you've got to do what you've got to do?
#
My attitude is very simple.
#
I get paid to play guitar and that's a blessing.
#
I will never discount that enough.
#
As long as I'm playing guitar, it doesn't really matter in that sense.
#
You have to always come back to it.
#
Because even on gigs, which I wasn't really enjoying, there were things that I would appreciate.
#
The other musicians, you would have a hang after the gig, you may make connections, that
#
Then sometimes the shared misery brings you together.
#
In fact, the thing which I should not really like about the whole commercial thing was
#
mainly the whole drudgery of traveling and the early morning flights.
#
And every musician has to deal with it, so I'm the last person to complain.
#
But it can take a toll on your system, especially if you...
#
I don't know how people can actually do tours for months and months without going home.
#
We were banging out maximum three gigs on the weekend and we would come home to family
#
at least on a Monday, Tuesday, we would see their faces before we took off again.
#
But that whole thing about being away from home for a very long time, man, I have the
#
ultimate respect for people who actually do that.
#
And now with this virus thing, the whole life thing again is again up in air because the
#
moment things start opening and something else happens and then all the things close
#
Same thing happened in New Zealand.
#
Now, the biggest artists, they had a nice run till Jan and then that Omicron thing happened
#
and everything is shut.
#
So also being a musician, you have to keep in mind that a lot of your income was seasonal
#
there'll be times of the year where you would make a lot of money and then there were times
#
of the year where nothing would come.
#
So then you have to keep in mind that all that money that I've stashed up from that
#
is going to cover you for the rest of the year, all that sort of thing.
#
So you just have to be adaptable, man.
#
Now I'm kind of putting my energy into at least doing a YouTube thing and seeing what
#
Just do as many different things as possible because for a long time it was just like I
#
focused all my energy in Instagram and then I was like, no, I can't really do only that.
#
With this whole metaverse looming and everything, I don't really know how long I'm going to
#
Maybe things will change in five years or whatever.
#
Remember, what's that thing that used to be the Orkut?
#
And before that there was some, what?
#
Man, there were so many musicians who invested a lot of time in MySpace and then when MySpace
#
went bust, they kind of got disillusioned and then they said bye to social media.
#
So now, I don't know if I should make a TikTok.
#
In fact, I have made a TikTok account, but I think I posted only one video.
#
I'm still learning about this algorithm and everything, like how it works and post at
#
certain times of the day and all that shit.
#
And sometimes I just want to say, f it, here it is, take it, you listen to it, now my job
#
Well, I've actually been enjoying your Instagram account in the sense, it's just these little
#
nuggets of happiness that just keep coming when you play all these covers.
#
I try to keep those live things now just as a temporary thing because then I can, you
#
know, early on they used to save the chat and I don't know if you've been on any of
#
the Instagram live things, sometimes there's some weird things that are in the chat which
#
And when that's taken away, you just think I'm talking rubbish, what's this guy on about?
#
So I tend not to save them anymore.
#
I think a couple of good ones are saved for, you know, just to see what it was like.
#
But apart from that, like I don't really have a fixed time where I jump on it because I
#
know I could have a wider reach if I did that.
#
But to me, it kind of feels more authentic if I just, I'm feeling it sometimes, you know,
#
you just feel like playing and you, you know, feel like seeing, okay, what do you want me
#
And sometimes I don't want to play requests, you know, I was like, shut up and just let
#
me do what I want to do right now.
#
So it's kind of hard to say that without being deemed like arrogant or impolite.
#
But sometimes like I have a better idea of what would be good to play right now.
#
So just leave it to the DJ, you know, I'm the DJ right now.
#
And sometimes I'm like totally open man, like what do you want me to play?
#
You want me to play some backside?
#
It just depends what, what mood you're in.
#
So, you know, it's, it's kind of cool that way.
#
And in terms of posting, you know, regular stuff, I, again, it's like something I'm
#
I don't really have scheduled posts or anything like that.
#
If I'm feeling up to it, I, I try to remain as authentic as possible to myself, you know,
#
the moment that goes away, then for me, it becomes like, why am I doing this?
#
Yeah, no, a hundred percent.
#
I was about to just put that word in.
#
I think the coolest thing about your account is the authenticity.
#
The fact that it's not planned this, it's like, you don't have schedule stuff that happens.
#
You know that like this stuff is going to happen.
#
You'll do a lie once in a while, you'll do this, you'll do that.
#
And it just makes it feel more human.
#
I feel guilty promoting my own gigs on Instagram.
#
And that's as authentic as it gets.
#
Putting, putting more than one post about a gig.
#
I was like, I posted it, I want to keep talking over the same thing.
#
So tell me something, you know, when we are young, for most people, when we are young,
#
You know, so on and so forth.
#
As you grow older, you realize that those goals are pointless.
#
They keep evolving anyway.
#
Many of them don't happen.
#
Many of your dreams are not going to come true.
#
You kind of figure it out and you figure out that the path to both excellence and happiness
#
lies not in achieving goals, but in just setting up processes, living your life in ways that
#
make you happy, taking happiness in those small joys.
#
You know, you wake up in the morning and I assume for you, if you wake up in the morning
#
and you know, you're just going to play around with your guitar and record something and
#
blah, blah, you're already feeling happy at the start of the day because that's what you
#
The goal may not matter.
#
So has there been a similar sort of evolution with the way that you look at life, especially
#
with parenthood and all?
#
Because I guess being a father then must make you take that step back.
#
And you know, when you were young, were there goals like, Hey, I want to be, you know, world
#
famous guitarist or, you know, zero will be this big band or whatever.
#
And where you are today, you know, what do you think of is making you happy over the
#
next five years, 10 years, 15 years?
#
Is it just doing the stuff that you love without thinking about what comes out of it?
#
Or is it that, no, there are these things that I also want to kind of figure out?
#
I'll tell you about goals when I was much younger, around the time I was 17 or 18, I wanted to
#
play Rang Bhavan, I wanted to get stoned with my friends and I wanted to have a girlfriend.
#
So by the time I was 18, all those three things had been accomplished.
#
So I was, you know, onto a good streak there.
#
Then things started happening with the band and everything.
#
And then, you know, like after Rang Bhavan was the next thing, like I said, we did the
#
great Indian rock thing, but by the time I think I reached around 30 or so, then I figured,
#
you know, actually the whole process, I mean, the whole journey is as important, if not
#
more important than the goals you achieve.
#
So in that sense, I've never really been the most ambitious person, you know, like I want
#
to play Madison Square Garden.
#
I was pretty like realistic, like Rang Bhavan's a good, you know, and Rang Bhavan is as good
#
as Madison Square Garden for me personally.
#
Like that's like that venue's got like plenty of history and vibe and everything like that,
#
So in terms of like also having a music accepted, now how many listeners is enough, you know?
#
Once you get to a point, like if you get to a point where your Spotify streams, I mean,
#
your streaming payments can support your lifestyle, that's great, you know, but you need so many
#
of those, which means making totally different choices, which, you know, for whatever reason
#
is not something I want to do right now.
#
If for whatever reason, suddenly it becomes popular, I'm not going to like say, hey, no,
#
keep it only to like, you know, hardcore listeners, who wants to listen to it, let them listen
#
So in that sense of like numbers and everything, I've never been able to play that game without
#
having a bit of a laugh about, you know, how ridiculous the whole thing is.
#
I mean, what really matters at the end of the day, you know, like just genuine enjoyment
#
from the music and while making it and while listening to it, you know, I mean, if you
#
can reduce it down, I've always been like, let's reduce it to like the simplest thing
#
that it could be and find some enjoyment in that.
#
And then, you know, the other things tend to take care of themselves.
#
So in terms of goals, I guess, like just, you know, keeping a roof over the family's
#
head is like, you know, the main thing right now.
#
And if we can make some good music while doing that, then that's, you know, you want to keep
#
us alive in the creative and in spiritual sense and also like finding as many different
#
kinds of music to appreciate, you know, because life is short, you're never going to get to
#
You're never going to find the magic chord or whatever it is.
#
So I just like finding pieces.
#
The thing is, when I find music that I don't know how it's done, I don't know the formula,
#
I don't know the magic trick behind it.
#
I appreciate that more because then it becomes like a very like, you know, I just enjoy it
#
The moment I know where the, okay, this is the formula, I was like, this is like, you
#
know, leave it for someone else to enjoy this.
#
But there's still like a lot of pop music I still love, like Def Leppard or White Snake
#
and you can like, you can read the producers telling you, okay, this is why we made so
#
and so creative decision, which is not exactly the most musical one or whatever.
#
It still works, you know, because that's something I guess you enjoy when you are younger and
#
you don't have those, you know, judgmental, you know, faculties about you.
#
So again, who's to say what is real?
#
The realest you can get is when you're able to put in something that is honest and the
#
listener is able to perceive that honesty and that authenticity or whatever you want
#
For me, then at least that's the first thing taken care of, you know.
#
Then you see later like where we're going to play, what kind of gigs we're going to
#
do, what's the backstage rider like, hold on, that will come later.
#
Another guy who I've always appreciated for who, you know, is able to do that as well
#
He's always done exactly what he wanted to do and you can sense that in his music.
#
So like another, it's almost like we've had like parallel careers and now one of the things
#
he's done went in for an Oscar nomination, which is damn amazing, you know, like super
#
happy for him right now.
#
I was just listening to his track, What Color Is Your Raindrop yesterday, beautiful track
#
and somehow it reminded me of a similar vibe to Ode to a Sunny Day, you know, I just kind
#
of heard them back to back and it just, you know, both of them are just so soothing and
#
And when I was watching his video for Dasthan, somebody left an interesting comment.
#
They said that every time they reach 2 minutes 15 seconds in the song, they start crying
#
and then below that someone else left a comment saying that, why do you start crying?
#
And you know, it's just a song.
#
And then somebody else came and said that, no, it's not a song, it's a story, right?
#
And every time I reach that part of the story, I know what's coming, but I can't help myself.
#
And I just thought that that is such a beautiful sentiment.
#
And sometimes if you listen to music and I have to keep reminding myself to be more mindful
#
in all the things I do, not just music, but sometimes when you listen to music like that,
#
that magical thing can happen where you feel you're going on a journey through the song
#
So when you sort of write your music, do you also feel that, sure, there are no vocals.
#
It's you're building a soundscape, you're playing your guitar, you're doing your thing,
#
but there is a story, there is a progression.
#
Does your own music move you sometimes?
#
Yeah, it has to actually at some point in the process, otherwise, you know, it gets
#
At some point, I have to get like the chills of the Google, I mean, it won't happen again
#
and every single time I listen to it.
#
But I mean, at one point, like Ode to a Sunny Day was my music that I listened to fall asleep,
#
you know, for like a good month or a couple of months, I just put it on every night while
#
Otherwise, like my head was full of too much stuff that, you know, kept you awake.
#
So that was the thing that kind of, you know, soothed those beasts in your head and say,
#
okay, so can I go to sleep?
#
So if it has that effect on you, like I said, it's a good chance it will have that effect
#
There's also things like sometimes you take for granted that you do it, and it just happens.
#
And then someone else will say, oh, wow, that's amazing.
#
I was like, oh, you like that?
#
And there's sometimes like where you think like, wow, how clever I am here, and no one
#
It just flies over everyone else, then like not one person will bring it up or whatever.
#
So there's been a few of those.
#
But you never know, maybe like 20 years later, someone will say, hey, what about, you know,
#
Like on the zeroes house, someone finally got it.
#
So you know, as we wrap up a couple of final questions, and one is if there are young musicians
#
listening to this, and obviously it's challenging in India or anywhere, I guess, to be a young
#
musician because you don't know where the money is going to come from.
#
You've always got to sort of find that fine balance between doing what you love and just
#
having to make a living, right?
#
And what advice would you give them?
#
And I mean, in a general broad sense, not just career advice in terms of making money
#
or making music, but even learning music, appreciating music, like if you were to meet,
#
say, the 18 year old or the 17 year old before your three goals come true, if you were to
#
meet the 17 year old Warren today, what what what advice would you give him?
#
In fact, I just put out a video today saying like 10 things I wish we link it from the
#
Some of it is a bit technical because like there were musical discoveries that happened
#
like much later, which I wish had been communicated to me.
#
Somebody should have told me that.
#
Generally I would say keep your enjoyment of music sacrosanct.
#
Never get to a point where it just becomes a drudgery because then you've got to check
#
out at that point and do something else for a while and then maybe come back to it.
#
So if it gets to that point, you're doing something wrong.
#
Try to play with as many good musicians you can as possible.
#
Like I think like my best growth spot as a musician happened at this time where I was
#
playing with Cole and a couple of his friends in this cowboys band every Friday night.
#
I mean, you go through that process of just playing like what what's popular at that point
#
of time, but you try to do it in a way which like you yourself are feeling it.
#
Otherwise, people are not going to react on that.
#
So when you're the worst guy in a band, that's probably like the best position you can be
#
So if you think you're like the shit hot guy in the band, leave the band, right, then find
#
some better guys to play with.
#
I mean, it sounds easier said than done, but you kind of have to get to that process.
#
And keep an eye on the money.
#
You may know where your bills are being paid and stuff like that.
#
Don't like be that, you know, I'm only going to do it for art's sake and everything.
#
You have to obviously make sure your financial things are met.
#
Not like you can always find a balance, you know, finding a balance sometimes is tricky.
#
But you know, if you that's what I mean, I've just been juggling both ends of the thing
#
Don't really focus only on one genre of music.
#
Try to like steal from as many different people as you can, because then no one will know
#
If you steal from one person, everyone's going to notice, oh, that's where you got all your
#
So take a little bit, little bit, little bit, then no one will really notice that, you know,
#
where you've got your stuff from.
#
And the thing is to kind of develop a certain amount of confidence in what you do, otherwise
#
it's never going to get past that point.
#
If you're always second guessing yourself, you're never going to get to a point.
#
Like I bet all your favorite artists had some amount of confidence in what they were doing,
#
which enabled them to just put it out, you know, and do whatever it is that they're doing.
#
Just an observation on this, to me in many ways is kind of surreal being part of this
#
recording as a fan of your music for so long.
#
This might seem kind of cheesy, but this entire recording itself felt like a Blackstripe Blues
#
song in much the same way that you read out that quote of my own that I wrote.
#
It started off with the nice punchy bits and then it moved into a slightly poignant part
#
and then towards the end there was emotional guitar solo where you're talking about all
#
this and now it's ending on the crescendo again.
#
So I know it's a cheesy way of tying it all back in, but that to me is the observation
#
of this entire conversation itself.
#
And it was like a perfect Blackstripe Blues interview in some sense.
#
So yeah, that's the observation that I have.
#
It's not really a question.
#
I don't have anything else to ask on this.
#
I went to compare a session I've done with a Blackstripe Blues song is a great compliment,
#
but I'll take time to process exactly what you meant.
#
But since you want to end on a crescendo, we can end on a crescendo because this is
#
often the favorite part of the show for many people, which is in general, I ask my guests
#
to recommend books or films or music, which they absolutely love and they want to share
#
In your case, I guess it will mainly be music, but whatever else you want to recommend.
#
But in the sense, stuff that you're so excited about that you want to stand on a soapbox
#
and shout at the world, hey, listen to this, this is amazing.
#
I mean, I guess everyone's seen Spinal Tap, if you haven't, please check it out.
#
That's like one of my favorite films.
#
All the Monty Python stuff I love, especially I think people these days who have problems
#
with religion should watch Life of Brian and kind of figure out why this whole belief as
#
a, it's almost like a germ, you know, how it tends to propagate.
#
The other things I'm interested in were like cooking and stuff like that.
#
There's this nice account I found on Instagram called Masala Lab.
#
So he actually talks about the science of Indian cooking, which I find.
#
We had a three hour episode and he's a fine musician, by the way, if you haven't checked
#
Like he'll take a famous Western song or a piece of opera and convert it to Carnatic
#
and he'll do his things with it.
#
So I think you'll love him.
#
Yeah, you should check.
#
I will check out his music.
#
There's another account on YouTube I found called Bill McClintock, who does some amazing
#
mashups like his specialties taking like 80s metal and mashing it up with 70s R&B, which
#
you'll find some, there's one with Aerosmith, Sweet Emotion and Aretha Franklin, which is
#
It kind of gave me a little bit of the goosebumps when Aretha kicked into the chorus, which
#
If you haven't heard Derek Trucks, please check him out.
#
If you haven't heard Michael Landau, please check him out.
#
He's like, like if Hendrix learned a bit more jazz and kind of got like a more polished
#
If you haven't heard Jeff Beck doing Nathan Sonny's Nadia, please check that out.
#
That's one of the finest bits of guitar playing.
#
There's another one he did called Where Were You, which I think is like one of the toughest
#
things to play because he's playing melodies using the whammy bar and that thing is like
#
notoriously tough to control exactly in pitch, but he manages to do it.
#
So it's like these little bit of, you know, like the gods have visited us, you know, in
#
Again, like when I can't figure out how it's done, it just like, I can't figure out that
#
magic trick, which makes it like more incredible.
#
Apart from that, let me see.
#
If you haven't heard Arunjoy Sarkar, he's one of the finest blues guitar players.
#
That's what a blues guitar player does.
#
I'm not a blues guitar player by any standard.
#
I play the blues, but I'm not a blues man.
#
So if you want to listen to an authentic, bona fide blues guitar player, I'd say Arunjoy
#
and Rudi Walang, of course, he's been keeping that style alive for years.
#
With regards to more commercial stuff that, his name is Achint, who did the scam in 1992
#
and the Rocket Boys thing, he's on to something cool.
#
And some of my favorite indie artists, Tejas, Komarevi, Rohan Rajadakshar, Nicholson, Sandeuns.
#
I mean, if you see who I follow, I guess on Instagram, you'll kind of find all my favorite
#
So check them out as well.
#
I mean, I think sometimes like my main goal is for me to say, hey, check this out.
#
You know, don't listen to what just me doing it.
#
This is just my way of saying, listen to Jeff Beck or Gary Moore, whoever those guys who
#
influenced me, please go and check out every single person who you think influenced me.
#
I think, Amit, for the first time, you might have to actually create a Spotify playlist
#
to share as a link on the show notes to put all these together.
#
I'll put all the songs, bro.
#
Handsome Joni Mitchell to boot.
#
In fact, Cross Beesles and Nash is like something that my parents used to listen to because
#
my dad used to be in this short lived acoustic trio with Nandu Bhendi and Remo Fernandes.
#
So they were like, oh, you know, they did Cross Beesles covers and all back in the day.
#
Actually, let me give a shout out to my dad, man.
#
He's like an awesome guy who never really did music full time.
#
I mean, he was in a few bands of his time, but he's one of like the finest musicians
#
He was a guy who was just comfortable to provide for his family.
#
And then, you know, at these family occasions, he would pull out the guitars.
#
But if it wasn't for him, man, I wouldn't be here, honestly.
#
And now the Black Side Blues analogy is complete because you have the opening riff, which you
#
started with your dad, you kind of ended the interview with.
#
Guys, Warren, Chuck, thank you so much.
#
I mean, this was such a splendid conversation.
#
I'm glad we're still awake after all this time.
#
If you enjoyed listening to this episode, head on over to blackstratblues.com or follow
#
the links in the show notes, discover Warren's music, and more importantly, support Warren's
#
You can follow Warren on Twitter at Blackstrat Blues, that's one word.
#
You can follow Chuck at Chuck underscore Gopal and Chuck, hey, thank you again for coming
#
And you can follow me on Twitter at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-V-A-R-M-A.
#
You can browse past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at sceneunseen.in on any podcast
#
Thank you for listening.
#
Did you enjoy this episode of The Scene and the Unseen?
#
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You can go over to sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute any amount you like to keep
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