Wesley

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then and now

artists had to do concerts to make money back when it all started

then came the record companies

who made it easy to spread the word around, popularise the music and make a lotta money

artists got a fraction of what the companies made

figured they werent getting their due..

went on record asking people to steal music..

then napster happened..

now anything you need is online..

and the artists are back to doing concerts to make money..

least things are heading that way

nature has a way of correcting itself i guess

any interesting alternative revenue models for these people who write and make songs ?

No more classroom concerts please

What a "classroom" experience the opeth concert turned out to be.
The jumpy start, mindless interruptions, not to mention the phone the band had to endorse an hour into the concert was totally uncalled for. The other band, Demonic Resurrection was blech.!

Opeth did their best nevertheless to make the evening worthwhile and I wish they'd come back to India and this time perhaps perform in Bangalore. Speaking of which, Iron Maiden is back!

BIFFES - 2009

Held from January 15-22nd in Vision Cinemas complex with screening in other venues, the Bangalore International Film Festival was a treat to film-goers. Catering to official participants and numerous other professionals who attended as guests, the program featured distinctive artistic styles from countries such as Poland, Germany, Turkey, SriLanka, Korea, Sweden, Italy, US etc to showcase the diversity of independent cinema. I Absolutely loved the movies. It made for an interesting experience to observe elements of script, performance and production into a satisfying totality.
A most welcome film synopsis manual, about the small budget films that use minimal sets or special effects and few professional actors, distributed by BIFFES served as superb background material.

Among the films I saw, Goodbye Lenin, The Match Factory Girl and The Man Who Quit Smoking were ranked high. Both concept and execution of the films were superb. The Man Who Quit Smoking is such an Incredibly funny movie. (Grynet Molvig is soo hot!!!). Then there was the amazing Joyeux Noel(English title - Merry Christmas ). The film, based on a true story, is at its poignant best when the male tenor and his girlfriend spending Christmas on the front sing from the German trenches as they are joined in by the Scottish bagpipes and lit- up Christmas trees emerge and circle the trenches. The soldiers begin to poke their heads up slowly, tentatively, and eventually lay down their arms and join in to listen to the singing and the bagpipes of the Scots and then to celebrate mass. And in the following morning which is Christmas Day, they play soccer, exchange precious bits of chocolate, bottles of wine, whisky, etc and photographs of wives and girlfriends. The dead are given a decent burial. As the day draws to a close and hostilities begin they momentarily shelter each other in their trenches.

Even "Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, L" was fabulous. A story of immigrant musicians from Rome who are brought together for an orchestral performance. The band apparently is still making music. Check them out here .

Some of the films such as Sophie Scholl , Spring Summer Fall Winter and Coast Guard (both by Ki-Duk Kim) played really well for Indian audiences going by its reception. Among films from India were first class productions such as Gulabi Talkies by Girish Kasaravalli on par with the best I saw from other countries.
All in all, a week spent well.

Opeth

is coming to India!
Cant wait to experience damnation live!
We can all die and go to heaven now.

RIP Richard

RIP Richard, we're going to miss you!

There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness,

for these bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible, but pass by whispering and on tip-toe. But the worst of it is that it is just this contentment which I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain. When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so-called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than the warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols, to provide a few rebellious schoolboys with the longed-for ticket to Hamburg, or to stand one or two representatives of the established order on their heads. For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.
Herman Hesse (Steppenwolf)

Perfect Holiday!

first day = shoulder acid driven + hallucinations(?) + looongish beach

second day = weed all day + bump on the head + lots of bleeding

third day = hash + looong trek + drenched + some lame pics
Courtesy - Gokarna, Om beach, Namaste Cafe, VRL Sleeper