KATHMANDU, Nov 2: At 3:30 last Saturday, the Jawalakhel Ground was all set for the musical extravaganza. However, the ground still looked deserted with just a few people roaming around. It surely must have seemed that the musical concert featuring Nepali and Indians bands would turn out to be a fiasco.
The concert had to begin though, even if there were only few in the audience by the early evening. Therefore, the promising Nepali band Alt F4 entered the center stage and took the honor to formally begin India-Nepal Youth Band Fest, which was organized by Indian Embassy in Nepal in association with BP Koirala India Nepal Foundation and supported by Surya Nepal.
Thanks to Alt F4 for when they started belting out cover numbers of Nima Rumba and Anil Singh like Priti Basyo and Bhana Bhana, the large football ground of Jawalakhel started pulling in audiences. By the time Alt F4 were done with their share for the evening, the “long time no-see” Cobweb made their entry. No wonder, people were waiting to see their long time favorite rock band rocking the stage again. And so they did when they sang their hit numbers back-to-back.
They performed Maryo Ni Maryo, Pritko Nasha Yo, Mercedeez Benz and Meri Pyari Putali and also covered Pink Floyd’s We Don’t Need No Education. Jawalakhel ground which at the beginning looked a loner soon got jammed with energetic studs of Kathmandu, mainly those who could even dare to go topless (and some even bottomless if they have a free concert to attend to). What made the crowd go crazy was Cobweb’s lead guitarist playing the electric guitar with a violin’s bow.
No sooner had Cobweb bid farewell to their wild fans, the only purportedly promising female rocker in the capital, Abhaya Subba joined the stage with her band members from Abhaya and The Steam Injuns. Now is it necessary to say how electrifying her performance was? It is too obvious to understand for Abhaya has been popular for the high voltage she projects every time she performs. Subba who started with smooth number Bibash took the crowd to a roller coaster ride of music when she started singing her originals like Jadaichhu Paari, Sapana Cha Kartabya Cha, Sakdina and Timro Lagi.
Needless to say she was flawless, both in terms of singing and performance. However, Subba had to bow before the audiences in the middle of her performance. One more time, Nepali audiences showed how a musical extravaganza is incomplete (at least to them) without a show of hooliganism. Not to blame the entire audiences. But almost half of them went nasty and started throwing thick layers of dust at each other. As if this was not enough, they even broke the front row bars and finally calmed down after pelting stones at musicians and singers while they were performing. This did not stop even after the organizers repeatedly requested them to behave responsibly.
It was a big time post Abhaya Subba’s performance. The major attractions of the band fest were the two Indian bands – Hipnotribe and Parikrama. Hipnotribe is a music band from Mumbai. Apart from singing together for their band, they also work and perform together with Bollywood singer Kailash Kher.
But some unruly audiences seemed determined to throw cold water on the entire musical extravaganza and Hipnotribe too was greeted with stones. Hipnotribe sang most of its originals like Hunter, Dark and Delicious, Moon, Beat Boy Mastermind and Robot. Their originals were beautiful to listen to but did not seem compatible to the taste of the crowd that had gathered at the Jawalakhel ground. The same crowd that seemed to go ballistic earlier remained silent during Hipnotribe’s performance. Finally, the much awaited Parikrama arrived.
“I’m feeling out of this world today and you know why? Because it’s not always that we get a beautiful audience like you,” said Nitin Malik, the front man of Parikrama.
After taking more than half an hour to fix up their sound system Parkirama finally started off and made almost everyone in the audience feel out of the world with the great cover performances throughout. Starting off with their original they sang the hits of Deep Purple and Jimi Hendrix. What captivated the crowd most was their breathtaking stage presence and performance. They not only exhibited their style of fusing classical with rock music, they enthralled the crowd with their electric showmanship. People not just danced to their beats but kept on insisting for more. The instrumental rock fusion played was the show stealer with pianist and violinist challenging each other’s sharpest notes and then Nitin Malik’s power-packed performance did the rest to set the Jawalakhel ground on fire.
What else could have been better than Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water and AC/DC’s Highway to Hell to wrap up the fiesta?
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