Welcome (to) Ashok Mishra

Just when we thought no one except Gulzaarsaab, Javedsaab, Kirkireji and to a certain extent Neelesh Mishra could write enjoyable songs for Hindi movies, we have a welcome addition to this honoured club. Let's extend a warm welcome to Ashok Mishra. Ashok Mishra debuts as a lyricist with Welcome to Sajjanpur. Forget all this nonsense about how the songs try and put the cool back in the gaon, or how the songs try and show that it's all happening in the hinterland, or even how the album really tries hard to bring out the latent “gaon-waala / gaon-waali” in all of us. Just sit back and take a good listen to the songs and I'm sure you will come round to appreciate the talent that Ashok Mishra is. And it definitely doesn't harm one's chances if he's in the good company of Swananand Kirkire and Shantanu Moitra and moreover for a Shyam Benegal movie. If I were to start writing songs for Hindi movies, this would be my dream team to start working with.



You can listen to the songs here or better still, buy the CD. Or download the songs and make sure you at least ten people around you listen to each song! My picks are Sita Ram, Aadmi Aazad Hai and Ek Meetha Marz De Ke.

PS. Found out that there was no Wikipedia entry for Ashok Mishra. Here's the page I've created. If you more information about this talented lyricist, please go ahead and add it to the page.

The Real Hero of Rock On !!

None of the following are the real heroes of Rock On!!

Farhan Akhtar

Arjun Rampal

Shahana Goswami

Prachi Desai

Javed Akhtar(Only he can write both - Zehreeley Zehreely Kaale Neele Peele and Jo Tum Ho Toh Hawa Mein Bhi Mohabbaton Ka Rang Hai with equal ease. Yes he wrote Dard-e-Disco.)

Jason West (He's the cinematographer)

Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy (As Ehsaan mentioned, it was just another jam session for them. Western music comes naturally to Ehsaan and Loy and I'm sure if ever there's a Rock On!! 2, they'l do much much much better.)

Ritesh Sidhwani (He does remain a hero for me, not only for this movie but also for the way he and Farhan have carried their friendship and passion to this level)

And not Purab Kohli, Luke Kenny or even Chakravyuh!

To me, the hero of Rock On!! is Anu Malik. Why, you ask? Because it takes something to play yourself in a role in which you know you are being ridiculed. Well, almost. Some of us know it as the ability to laugh at oneself. Perhaps that's Anu Malik's idea of laughing at himself. Hats off to you Anubhai!



PS. Hats off definitely, but I don't know about the wig inside the hat/cap!

Image Credit: www.radiosargam.com

Hazaaron Khwahishein Nahin, Bas Ek Khwahish

Dear Kirkireji,

I hope you, like I do, believe that this is your best song till date. I do not say best song ever because I believe, hopefully you also do, that there are many more such gems to come from you, both as a writer and a singer. It hurts me no end when I see such a beautiful composition being trivialised by being used in a television commercial*. I understand that perhaps you did not have as much say as folks at Virgin Records or at PNC, but this is still something we find hard to digest. Not music to our ears, if I may say.

I earnestly request you not to hurt your fans henceforth by letting your songs, either sung or written, be used for purposes other than for reaching musical ecstasy. Yes, there's an odd aberration like this one, but we know you're back in tune after this. Your songs, like this one, are music lovers' secrets, and only those in the know of it really understand how valuable they are. Please let them remain that way.

Please convey my regards to Jhingranji, Shantanuda and Mishraji.

Regards,
Nikhil

* The television commercial in question is the new Airtel+Nokia ad featuring Abhay Deol and Raima Sen. Glad that it's not up on YouTube yet. Glad that I'm not linking to it from my blog.

Via Darjeeling and The Darjeeling Limited

Two movies I'm looking forward to watch in some time - Via Darjeeling and The Darjeeling Limited.




Via Darjeeling comes from Arindam Nandy and has a very impressive star cast with an interesting story-line. More from Arindam Nandy on Via Darjeeling. Heartening to see NFDC (back to?)backing projects like these.


The Darjeeling Limited sounds a lot like Asiawheeling. Promises to be an interesting ride. I'm not sure which character from the movie would Scott, Woody and I be parallel to during Asiawheeling, but I'm more than sure that we could make a movie, nothing less, out of our experiences from Asiawheeling.

A couple of movies, of course, are waiting to be made out of my own trip to Darjeeling. Not to forget Gangtok, Kurseong, Siliguri, Kolkata, and Bhutan, and Nepal!

Bliss - Dil Indeed Dance Maare Re

It has always been my dream to make a song like this. Write it, get someone to put the song to music and shoot it. But I'm glad one among Piyush Mishra, Vishal Dadlani, Anvita Dutt Guptan or Kausar Munir(from what I gather, Vishal it is) wrote a masterpiece like this and Vishal-Shekhar gave such wonderful desi music. And Uditji, your rendition of even the word sasura is amazing indeed. Thank you Yashji and Adi for letting Vijay Krishna Acharya do this.

My favourite lines -

Rose Ke Jaisan Pink Pink Hamare Gaal Gulaabi
Sky Ke Jaisan Blue Blue Yeh Tohra Nain Saraabi
Bhola Chehra Jaise Moon, Kaali Julfe Jaise Cloud
Abb Na Aur Chhupaaya Jaaye, dhadkan Ho Gayi bhery loud

Now to the masterpiece -



PS. What if someone achieved my dream? I can always do better!

Movies - Towards Achieving My Aim In Life

Not that I'm going to become another Madhur Bhandarkar, but watching as many movies as one can has never made anyone a bad film-maker, has it? So much ado for a movie update. But seriously, if I had only seventeen more days to live, I'd make start working on a short film Right Angle. I might as well start working on it right away, but why not? I need the space and the time for it, the luxury of which I do not have right now. Here's the list of movies I watched recently-

• Not a 17% contented child as mentioned here , I can probably die a 23% contented child now. Have finished watching all movies made by Vishal Bharadwaj - Makdee, Maqbool, Omkara and now, The Blue Umbrella. Each of them is brilliant, with Vishal's earnestness and honest approach standing out. Watch The Blue Umbrella in a theater, otherwise one wouldn't be doing justice to the wonderful cinematography by Sachin K Krishn. I'll be following Abhishek Chaubey very closely now on. His work till now -
  
• Screenplay, dialogue, Associate Director - Omkara
  
• Associate Director-Maqbool, Makdee
  
• Associate Director & Screenplay-The Blue Umbrella

• Chakde! India - decent good movie. Couldn't have come a better time for it to do well. Independence Day, prosperity(?) all around, things looking more hopeful than ever for our country(yes) and for the youth(?). Pop-corn patriotism is very convenient for today's generation who do not have much time. Convenient for the producers too, pop-corn patriotism sells. On a related note, this is Celebrating Freedom from CircusMouse, our new blog. We don't have a description for it yet, please visit it and helps us find one. Warning : Very chaotic there.
  

• Naagarahaavu - the first of Puttanna Kanagal's movies I've watched. Ramachari's character is perhaps a better representation of the angry young man of those days. Even better than Amitabh's roles then? Not sure, need to watch more movies of the 70's to be qualified to answer this. But I liked the character played by Loknath the best. Ade namma speciality!
  

• Ananathana Avaanthara by Kashinath. Kannada industry needs more people like him. People like him, Upendra, Jaggesh whose work maverick, unconventional approaches add a new dimension to Kannada film-making. But what has happened to Sunil Kumar Desai to make a sub-standard movie like Kshana Kshana? Forget the review, Shri Desai has set certain standards with his earlier movies. At least live up to them, Sir?
  

• Movies I caught up with now, as they released during the time of my shift to Bangalore -
• Guru - huh, they shoot it in Karnataka and pass it off as Gujarat! The movie fails to capture the magnitude of Dhirubhai's empire. Perhaps his story is such that one can't put it together in a 3 hour movie. Maybe one can, if they do away with needless songs and not give extra time to characters just because they are played by Aishwarya Rais and Vidya Balans. Ratnam Sir, is Mahabharat still on? Forget Lajjo, make Mahabharat. Please!
  
  
• Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd - Minissha Lamba, Minissha Lamba, Minissha Lamba, Minissha Lamba, Minissha Lamba, Minissha Lamba. Well made movie.
  
  
• Ek Chalis Ki Last Local - This movie would be more tight and crisp if unnecessary songs and sequences could have been done away with. Nonetheless, it was about Mumbai Meri Jaan and that more than makes up for all the shortcomings in the movie. Laree Choote. At the last count, it was 2643 - number of times I've played it.
  

• Movies I slept half-way through -
  
• Choker Bali - will someone please explain why it is such an acclaimed movie? Maybe I do not know the meaning of the italicized word. Finding its meaning should be a rewording exercise.
  
• Yatra - my yatra to bed only got faster while watching this. Again, will someone please explain everything about this movie. Art movies, more often than not, are definitely enjoyable. But this one wasn't.
  

PS. Why Madhur Bhadarkar? I used to study and run a video cassette shop at the same time. I developed a liking for movies. I would watch all the movies in the theatre, first day first show! More in this interview - here.

The Long Tail in radio

I'm no rocket scientist(I've never wanted to be one), or an economist(which I've sometimes wanted to be) or a social scientist(which I want to be), but one doesn't need to be any of the above to figure this out.

For Jaane Do Na from Cheeni Kum, Illayaraja uses one of his earlier compositions, Jothe Jotheyali from the Kannada film, Geetha. An earlier version of the same is Vizhiyile Undan vizhiyile from Tamil film, Nooravadu Naal. Been listening to lot of FM radio and happened to make this observation. The observation being - while Jaane Do Na was played across different radio stations, the Kannada original was played more frequently. Much like this from Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. Here's an excerpt which talks about a similar phenomenon -

In 1988, a British mountain climber named Joe Simpson wrote a book called Touching the Void, a harrowing account of near death in the Peruvian Andes. It got good reviews but, only a modest success, it was soon forgotten. Then, a decade later, a strange thing happened. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, another book about a mountain-climbing tragedy, which became a publishing sensation. Suddenly Touching the Void started to sell again.

Random House rushed out a new edition to keep up with demand. Booksellers began to promote it next to their Into Thin Air displays, and sales rose further. A revised paperback edition, which came out in January, spent 14 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. That same month, IFC Films released a docudrama of the story to critical acclaim. Now Touching the Void outsells Into Thin Air more than two to one.

What happened? In short, Amazon.com recommendations. The online bookseller's software noted patterns in buying behavior and suggested that readers who liked Into Thin Air would also like Touching the Void. People took the suggestion, agreed wholeheartedly, wrote rhapsodic reviews. More sales, more algorithm-fueled recommendations, and the positive feedback loop kicked in.

Particularly notable is that when Krakauer's book hit shelves, Simpson's was nearly out of print. A few years ago, readers of Krakauer would never even have learned about Simpson's book - and if they had, they wouldn't have been able to find it. Amazon changed that. It created the Touching the Void phenomenon by combining infinite shelf space with real-time information about buying trends and public opinion. The result: rising demand for an obscure book.

While Jothe Jotheyali is by no means an obscure song, Jaane Do Na definitely helped to bring it in the popular public realm. And how did The Long Tail work here? The radio stations can store all the content they want and with smart methods of organizing such content and information, it helps them serve their audience better. All this and more without having to spend extra resources and still being able to find that one song which a caller might ask for during a request show.

Here's the Kannada song from perhaps the best example of The Long Tail -

Number 2

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Before you start reading this, I want to let you know that I’m very sade.

1. No comments on the previous post?! Don’t Mumbai and books interest you? It’s ok if you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend. But if you don’t have one, why not have Mumbai as your jaan for the time being. For my sake, please!!.

2. These days, I spend a lot of time on Orkut talking politics and books. I found that I don’t have a ‘good’ testimonial written by a female or for that matter any testimonial written by a female!!! I have a huge Malhaar complex now. (No problem, medicines from that complex will cure my inferiority complex!!!)

3. Jita tells me that the movies I’ve made with my new handy cam are ‘chu|iya’. Really sade.

Forget it, sarcasm will be in my children’s blood. Don’t know how it entered my blood. Maybe, the effect of staying for 7 years in hostels. Yes, I’ve got a handy cam and have made some really chu|iya videos. But believe me; they only lack a good platform. Ready to watch them?!

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Chhee, you people are so dirty. Not that number 2. My cousin had suggested a better euphemism- five down!

” Whenever there is strong number 1, there is automatically a space for a strong number 2”- roared the CEO/MD of a leading MBA entrance training institute. His recorded ‘Life Transformation Sessions’ are quite a hit among hundreds of MBA aspirants here in Surat. He is very good and can give Sunil Pal or any of the Laughter Champions a run for their money. I’m not mocking, but it is a whole-hearted appreciation of his oratory skills and more importantly his ability to keep the crowd’s interest for close to three hours. I guess the statement he made is true in the context of Pepsi v/s Coke and few other businesses. But he made the statement as if he were the Pope and was laying down the rules of business (Again, this is an appreciation of his skills!)

This post is not about _ _ it, or business or MBA. It is about music. The rule stated by the ‘Pope’ doesn’t apply here. At least when it comes to Hindi movie/album sound tracks. A particular song overshadows other tracks and we fail to notice its beauty, melody, or tune as the case maybe. Maybe, the producers/promoters feel it is prudent to promote a particular song(s). Maybe other songs aren’t publicized because listeners are satisfied with ‘watching’ the song on the promos. Maybe, they don’t buy the album and don’t listen to all the songs. Maybe the countdown charts are just cursory and the producers of these shows don’t go beyond the normal popular fare. Maybe, the audiences aren’t discerning enough. Maybe, I’m making a grand, baseless accusation. Maybe, it’s time to move on.

1.

Forget Summer of ’69. It’s been used and overused so much that it hardly evokes any feeling of nostalgia now. Forget ‘69, even ‘96 has come and gone and it’s ’06 now. Then we have ‘Purani Jeans’. Great song. Conveys the ‘college days are best’ message perfectly. But then it also has been played so many times. Oohoon, no effect. Then come ‘Woh Lamhe’ and came with it the remix in Zeher. Changed the whole essence of the song. Emraan Kissme, aur kitne gaanon ka ghanti bajaaoge? Woh Lamhe, Aadat.What next?!

But why look that far when we have a gem closer home- ‘Gill ‘Te Guitar’ by Rabbi. The song opens with a superb guitar lick by Rabbi and tells the story of Rabbi, his two friends and his guitar. It took me sometime to understand the lyrics. Since then, it’s made a permanent place on my play list. Bulla ki Jaana was path breaking by all means. It helped Punjabi music shed its stereotype image of fully clothed men (head to toe!) dancing with half-clothed women. It gave a new feel, a new look, a new sound and added a whole new dimension to Punjabi music. It’s video no doubt doubled its popularity and indeed was one of the best videos Indi-pop or sufi-rock(whatever you call it) has seen. But I wonder how much a hit Gill ‘Te Guitar would’ve been, had it been given a little more push and a beautiful video shot on it. The college crowd would’ve lapped it up and it’d have become the new generation ‘Yeh Dosti’. The most beautiful lines from the song roughly translated- ‘he called up and said “days pass by easily, but evenings are difficult to pass”. And I find it difficult to pass time on the computer without this song.

2.
Anu Malik is a shocker. Shocker for his blatant lifting of tunes and shocker for the melodious tunes he comes up with once in a blue film, oops blue moon. No wonder he won the National Award for Refugee. But still my favourite song is
‘Panchhi nadiyan pavan ke jhokein,
Anu Malik ko copy karne se koi na roke’

So much flak this man has to face. Most of his music especially of the 90’s and in early 00’s was downright pathetic. With Rahman’s Hindi films releasing once in three blue moons, void left by Panchamda’s demise, Nadeem- Shravan getting too predictable, one had to bear not only Anu’s music but also his voice. Remember Oonchi hai building and Jaanam Samjha karo ?!

But I’m still willing to pardon Anu Malik for one really beautiful composition of his. I believe one of his better works that went relatively unnoticed was ‘Intezaar’ from Paap I asked a friend about this song and with a glint in his eyes and a naughty smile on his face, he replied- “THAT song?!”. Yes, THAT song. The same one in the promos which showed an underwater Udita Goswami’s bare back with two straps. Sadly, it became that song. And the reason is understandable I guess. It is difficult to compete with heavyweights such as ‘Mann ki Lagan’ by Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Ali Azmat’s ‘Garaj Baras’ Let’s enjoy this song till we do ‘intezaar’ for Anu Malik to come up with a beautiful, melodious composition, for we know music is timeless and also that this wait of ours can become timeless.

3.

Me:‘Parineeta’ ke gaane sune hai kya?!
Him: Haan

M: Kaun se?
H: Piyu bole aur woh ‘train wallah gaana’

M: Music director kaun hai?
H: Koi naya hai. Utna toh pata hai. Aaj ka koi music director ka aisa ‘feel’ nahin hai.

Poor Shantanu Moitra, he gives them a different ‘feel’ and yet they don’t know him too well. No worries, a few more movies and his name will be on everybody’s lips as will his music. HKA was a fantastic debut and he followed it up with Yahaan and 7 1/2 phere. The icing on the cake was of course Parineeta, for it was more ‘mainstream’ (read publicity and media coverage) than Yahaan. I still believe Yahaan as an album is his best work. His best single composition is my all time favorite- Baanwara Mann. Simplicity and melody are the hallmarks of his music. Also to be noted is how he gets the best out of his singers. Sunidhi Chauhan and ‘Kaisi Paheli Zindagaani’?!. I didn’t believe it at the first instance. Will write more on Shantanu Moitra later.

The song in question here is ‘ Raat hamari toh’ from Parineeta. The tune is simple as are the lyrics. Swananand Kirkire’s opening haunts you forever and Chitra’s light melody will fill one’s soul. This song somehow has a very calming effect. Parineeta is a complete album in the sense that all songs are equally good, and ‘Raat Hamari Toh’s role in making this album a complete is as much as Saif’s train song or Rekha’s item dance.


4.
I still remember that day. That was the day I wanted to commit suicide. My belief that my knowledge of Hindi music is up to date was under serious doubt. Also my claim that I was a Rahman fan was under serious cloud. Only after lot of persuasion by Bharath did I drop the idea of suicide.

Till that day, I had not heard Khaamosh Raat. I was walking by the corridor of another block and heard a song sounding deceptively similar to Led Zep’s ‘Rain Song’ . (Bharath vehemently denies any connection between the two songs, but isn’t ‘Telephone dhun mein hasne waali’ reminiscent of ‘ Just beat it’?!!!). Still, Rahman is Rahman and we’ll let him get away on this one.

Here again, it was overshadowed by ‘Rang de’ and moreover Tabu and her dance. This song spawned many kindergarten, pre-primary, primary, high school, arts, commerce and law Tabus at their gatherings, school days and fests. Engineering Tabus?!! NO COMMENTS.

Infact another song from this movie was hailed in the promos as a ‘Rahman genius’ -Bheegi Bheegi. The box-office remained cold to such promotions and Thakshak was called a thaka thaka movie. The promoters relied more on Rahman’s music than Govind Nihalani’s direction. Atleast, that’s the feeling one got out of watching the promos. Is Rahman > Nihalani? Isn’t it Nihalani + Rahman = Great combo= equally great movie(atleast that was the expectation, isn’t it?!).

Let me be khaamosh now. I know how good my math is!!


Some more number 2s.

5.
Awaarapan (Jism) - Bipasha and her skin killed this song.
6.
Raat ki hatheli par(Refugee)- Abhishek and Kareena’s debut made sure this song got no airtime. It took a full month for their faces to appear in the promos. Till then it was the white sand and Abhishek’s voice. Of course, Kareena’s lower back too!.