The history that won’t repeat itself

The first thing journalistic I ever did in life was to pull off a fraudmdashwhen I was around 13 Knowing that the Bombaybased rock band Indus Creed formerly known as Rock Machine were performing in Delhi one night and staying at the Taj I called up the hotel posing as a reporter from MTVThe receptionist miraculously put me through It took next to nothing for me along with my elder brother and his friend posing as cameramen to be invited over to their room so I could interview Indus Creed The piece was eventually published in Target a lovely childrenrsquos magazine at the timeWhich tells you two things about the early rsquo90s The desi rockers Indus Creed had properdiehard fanboys like us in Delhi And that the band was still casualaccessible enough to let a lirsquol kid in to begin withSpend an hour over a serious conversation about musicmdashbassist Mark Selwyn joking about their next album being called Third Coming because itrsquoll be their lsquoturdrsquo album is all I can remember from it And they were aware perhaps the boy had just fibbed about being a journalist at allThatrsquos before they stepped on to a massive stage with fairly fresh fans mildly headbanging to their original numbers say lsquoTop of the rockrsquo but in particular the ballad lsquoPretty childrsquo from their 1990 album Second Coming Why the latter Because MTV new to India in 1993 had made a stunning video of that song for the channel and ranked it No 9 among 100 greatest tracks in the world that yearThis probably made everyone believe the band was of global read western standards Which for Indians was the only measure for rock Desis of my vintage have grown up on local bands being judged only on how well they could pull off cover versions This inspired a full generation of longhaired mimicry musicians whorsquod probably call their own Delhi neighbourhood Carol Bag for Karol Bagh if it was in a track except it wouldnrsquot be because all that they had to do was mug up accentslyrics of 60s70s80s rockmdashthe obscurer the betterFailing which theyrsquod be booed off anyway by a crowd wishing to relisten on stage songsbands theyrsquod picked up from bootlegged cassettes and worshipped their histories in snazzy rock encyclopedias A scene so underground yoursquod have to pass a GK test to enter it and find no one besides an echo chamber of cultural snobs insideDid Indus Creed and lsquoPretty childrsquo mildly alter English language rock in India even if for only a teeny weeny bit I do think so As does Abhimanyu Kukreja in his rare joyously researched muchneeded documentary Rockumentary Evolution of Indian Rock playing at select PVR theatresAlthough he counts Gary Lawyerrsquos deeply derivative videonumber lsquoNights on firersquo as another tipping point and Irsquom not too sure Amit Saigalrsquos Rock Street Journal published from Allahabad promoting desi bands through coveragegigsalbums happened around the same time Especially the Great Indian Rock concert series We similarly adored a lesserknown local magazine called Connect I rememberFor whatrsquos Indian rock history before that It roughly starts with barsvenues Mocamborsquos Moulin Rouge Blue Fox on Park Street in Calcutta in the rsquo60s Its surviving saint is Lou Majaw whorsquos been holding Bob Dylanrsquos birthday concerts in Shillong for four decades nowThis was followed by Simla Beats sponsored by a cigarette brand in the rsquo70s that promoted Indian rock They were called beat groups then Among the high notes is The Savages which got an international recordlabel dealmdashits bestknown member Remo Fernandes Or Susmit Bose and his breakout album if you may called Winter Baby Sidharth Bhatiarsquos book India Psychedelic does an equally superb job of surveying this counter cultureOn the import side barring Beatles in Rishikesh and the double White Album of course Kukreja reckons the turning point was March 25 1980 Thatrsquos when The Police formally performed at Rang Bhavanmdashgiving Bombay and Indian rock an iconic venue and Indians the first taste of fullpower global act Apparently the organisers of the concert had assumed they were inviting the British police brass band If this is true itrsquos frickinrsquo amazingRang Bhavan is a pile of moss and shit as Kukreja revisits to find out Indus Creed I guess donrsquot exist But Parikrama Pentagram probably do as does Punersquos Agnee but in an entirely another form So wherersquos Indian rock now Exactly where Westled standup comedy or European arthouse inspired Indian parallel cinema is Itrsquos become its own thingYou can hear it in Malayalam through say a band called Avial or in massy Hindi which is so much of what newage Bollywood has been over the past couple of decades or so anywaymdashRahman ShankarEhsaanLoy Amit Trivedi VishalShekharhellip You admire the riffs mildly headbang to the drums toomdashmost of it is mainstream sound They just donrsquot call it Indian rock anymore Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paperRudy Wallang and Tipriti TIPS Kharbangar of the band Soulmate in a still from Rockumentary Evolution of Indian Rock