The Story of my band

The Story of my band

A Story by Kevin Andros
"

I wrote this last night after a long time. This story narrates the event that happened when we, as a band, tried to perform in front of a live audience. These incidents are special to me.

"

I had been really looking forward to these few weeks. All my band mates were going to back in town and Totti had given me the good news over the phone while he was coming back: he was getting one of his friends from college to sing for us in our band! Well that was a great piece of news and luck as our band had always been missing a singer. And after being in the group for more than 2 years, finally we had an actual shot of nailing a gig!

 

But it was really going to be a problem for me managing time out for the practice and the jam sessions as my work pressure was not going down. But I thought that I’ll figure something out by the time everyone gets here.

 

We really have had some trouble with our band. Everything about it was a struggle and it is not going to end anytime soon. We all have been born and brought up in a small suburban town of India. Here almost every parent wants their child to study and get good marks academically. They are so intent on achieving their goal that they forget to even consider the possibility that maybe their child/children may have a different dream or goal. So we all have been pressurized, beaten, abused and restricted. But the passion we all have for music, keep us sane, keep us together and keep us working. We used to sneak out, lie to our parents, practice on the roof of our apartments but we used to keep going.

 

But all of our effort was of no avail as we didn’t have a full time vocalist who could have taken the stage during a full live performance. We did manage to record some of our composed tracks by getting some other people who could give some of their time and didn’t mind lending their voice to our tracks but that was it.

 

So after Totti arrived, we got busy to get together a place for practice. That week, Atul’s parents were away so we shifted Zeno’s drum set to his place. And we started practicing. Fortunately, the trio of Atul, Zeno and Totti had limited or almost no other engagement so they focused thoroughly on practicing. Me on the other hand, I was finding it hard to get the time to get together with the band. But I always used to join them after work. We really practiced hard that week and I must say that at first, we were sounding terrible together as none of us had practiced with each other. Our synchronization was not right; we were not able to catch the parts right. But after 2 practice sessions, we were sounding as our old selves.

 

 I was really enjoying myself in this whole time. It was the first time after one year that I was feeling alive again, feeling as if I had not been breathing properly and was breathing sweet, sweet air after a gap of 1 year. I was back again, shouting, laughing, acting immaturely, doing pranks, and all the other mischief. That week was really me getting back in my old self. As all through the year I have been working hard, no time for music, no time for writing, barely managed to keep my romance alive with my chocolate lady. I never realized that I had missed music so much in the past year. Yeah, I used to practice on my drums whenever I got some time, but it was not the same. Finally after playing and jamming with my band mates, it was what that I really missed. This time I thought that we are going to perform live. The chances looked good, Totti had invited his singer friend to come and sing for us and for the first time I was really jubilant about the whole thing.

 

After a week of practicing, Zeno and Atul had to go out of town for their respective but just as unavoidable errands. Atul had his counseling as he was going to join a college this year and he was going to various colleges counseling and trying to decide which one to pick. Zeno on the other hand had to accompany his dad to go to Delhi as his dad wanted Zeno’s help in some of his business.

 

Totti and Krunal landed on Friday. Krunal was Totti’s friend who was going to sing for us. We had decided that Krunal will work with us for the next few weeks and we all will figure out how this was working for us.

 

I met Krunal, and he was a very easy going fellow with a great passion for music just as us all. He also had to ‘pursue’ his dad to let him come at least 2000 Kilometers away from his home.

 

In the meantime, I had talked to my boss and he put me on light duty as I told him frankly that I was going to be involved in some ‘personal " activities’ for the next few weeks. I somehow managed to get us a temporary Jam room as Atul dad had come back after the first week of practice at his place.

 

As Zeno and Atul were away, it didn’t give us much to practice, but for the first time in our band, we had both the vocalists present in the band at the same time. That was a record. We already had Totti for the Keyboards. So me and Krunal started practicing together in order to get our synchronization right as we had never worked with each other before. After a few hiccups, we managed to sync together just fine. Now we waited for the rest of the band to return.

 

When we were not practicing, Krunal, Totti and me would roam around our town and chat about our band and I realized how much I had in common with the new guy Krunal. I really smiled at that thought. Then Totti gave me huge good news. He said that he just had been informed that Pranai will also be back in town by the time Zeno and Atul get back. I was ecstatic. Pranai was our lead guitarist and I was hoping to make him the face of the band as he was unbelievable with his guitar. He was a little emotional fellow, but he was very dedicated to music and we hoped to get his dedication work in a positive way in our band.

 

So after 4 days of Krunal coming to town, all of the band members return to our hometown and we shifted all our stuff to our new temporary Jam room. When I saw the whole band together as one in the room, I started welling up. I never saw the band together in one session. Totti was getting emotional too, but I’m the crybaby of the band. I guess getting together made us feel a lot powerful. We started exploring with the song list that we had decided, putting in new songs, removing old ones and making all kinds of changes in the playlist. After the sessions we were going out in the night, grabbing a few beers and roaming around the city and have fun before returning to our homes.

 

And just like that, everything started to go wrong.

 

We had got together for one goal: playing at least once in front of a live audience. Atul had given us hopes by saying that he was in contact with an agent who was going to put an awesome show together for us where lots of producers will come and hopefully we will get signed. But the agent screwed us up and left us stranded. Luckily for us, we realized that we are going to get ditched at the last minute by the agent and we quickly got real. One morning, the band got together (without me, as I was at work) and decided that we have to conjure something up out of thin air and we have to do it ourselves.

 

Totti played the genius role again as he visited his old school, St Xavier’s and talked to the Father/Principal and he said that we can play in the school on the occasion of Fresher’s day, which was ten days from then. We quickly had to change our playlist again as we couldn’t play hard rock songs, or cover songs by Anti-Christ bands.

 

That’s when we faced more trouble.

 

I was not actually there when this happened but from what I gathered later; that Pranai was having some ego problems with Atul. He came in one day to practice and suddenly he started packing up his guitar and said that he was walking away. After asking many times and pressurizing him to tell the reason behind his decision, he loudly started cursing Atul and he made Atul cry. Both Totti and Krunal also yelled and they had a yelling match in the jam room at the end of which Pranai stormed off, leaving us without a lead guitarist.

 

We couldn’t practice that day. We were all pretty shaken up; especially Atul and me. I was shaken up because I trusted Pranai a lot and I never had imagined that he’d do something like this. Atul was crying because Pranai had really insulted and hurt his feelings. But he took it as a challenge and Krunal and Totti really helped him and he took it on himself to fulfill the needs of two guitarists in our band.

 

We again changed our band’s playlist and picked songs that would be a little easy on Atul and we started to take the main stage. All the while Totti was again working his genius mind and making patches and loading bass sounds and doing what not to fill in the musical part of our band. Krunal was having troubles all the while with his accent because he never had sung English songs before and he was also nervous. But we all fed him confidence and he was coming out very well.

 

Then, barely 6 days left to our show, when Ajit Horo (who was a music teacher and a musical landmark in our town) called Totti and told him that his production house was organizing a semi-acoustics show and wanted us to play there. The semi-acoustic show was in the same afternoon of the day when we had our school gig. We got nervous but readily accepted the offer from Ajit Bhaiya. We again shunted songs that’d fit the acoustic show and kept on practicing. I had always wanted to play drums in front of a live audience in at least one song. The band collectively picked a song that I can play drums to and we carried on with our practice. In between we had to abandon the room where we were practicing in and we shifted to Totti’s place for 1 day as his dad was away. Then we came to my house for practice on the last day before our gigs. I argued with my dad, screamed at my mom till they let me practice in their home.

 

At last, the morning came. 18th of June, 2011. It was a Saturday. I had taken that day off from work. It had been raining from Friday. We somehow managed to get our equipments to the school. As we entered the premises, I was pleasantly surprised by seeing the faculties and Father was waiting for us to arrive and they really welcomed us in a warm way in contrary of the cold wet damp weather. We got inside and Totti set up his keyboards and laptop as Atul checked his guitar and synced it with a borrowed G-10 Processor.

 

The Fresher’s welcome program went on very smoothly. The school band played some songs, there was some song and dance by the school students, and there was a prize distribution ceremony. Finally our moment came to perform our first song. We had already done a lot of arguing on the topic that what was going to be our first song as a band. And after much analysis we had chosen the song Papercut by Linkin Park as it was song in which the band could perform as a whole. I wanted to perform one of our self compositions but the band overruled it by saying that if we didn’t make a good first impression then we are over. We were also feeling mighty nervous as this was our first gig ever as our matured and altered band.

 

So I took the microphone and started introducing ourselves and all the while I was trying to feel my legs. I thought that I was standing on Jelly. Nevertheless, I grit my teeth, sent up a prayer to God and we started performing. We rushed on the tempo of the song, but we nailed it. After our first song, the claps that we heard were like food for our musical soul. After that we perform two more songs before the faculties informed us that we have to move on in order for the program to conclude.

 

After we got off the stage and as we were dismantling our instruments and stuffing them into Zeno’s car, we had mile wide grins and were congratulating each other for a successful first show ever for our band. But there was no time to relax as we immediately had to move to the 2nd venue where we had to perform in the semi-acoustics show. In between we were constantly talking and telling each other how nervous we were during the whole first performance. So Totti suggested we should get something to calm our nerves before getting on the stage again. And we sure calmed ourselves with 3 pegs of vodka each, except for Zeno and Atul, who had Cola. Then we got out of the car and started to set the equipments again. It was more subdued venue, it being an acoustics soundproof auditorium. There were many learned musicians present there. We could have gotten nervous, but the Vodka helped not giving a damn about them. We got up on the stage and we played, played our asses off. We played continuously for 45 minutes before ending with one of our self composed songs Devastated and covering In the end by Linkin Park.

 

After that we went to our favorate bar, Palash and we had a beer each, constantly talking about the show. God! Not one of us wanted to shut up! We all had ear to ear grins and as we parted ways, I said to everyone, “Life always goes on. It never stops, not even once for any one. We keep moving with the time and the only thing that we really can salvage out of this rushing life is Memories! Thanks for giving me these memories which will last a lifetime! Someone really had gotten it right: ‘You can live a lifetime in a moment!’”

 

We proudly call our band n - Dimensions. The present members are:


Ankit Sinha a.k.a. Totti - Keyboards/Effects/Backing Vocals/ Composer/Part time Guitarist 

Krunal Parekh - Lead Vocals/Part time Bassist

Atul Dubey - Guitars

Zeno Paul - Drummer/ Percussions

And Me, Debashis Ganguly a.k.a. Kevin - Rap/Backing Vocals/Part time Drummer/lyricist

 

!!CHEERS FOR n - DIMENSIONS!!

© 2011 Kevin Andros


Author's Note

Kevin Andros
I am writing a short story after a very long time and maybe I've lost my touch, but my band is very special to me. Please give it a read and maybe you'll enjoy it.

P.S. It is not edited yet. I will edit it as soon as I find time to do it.

Cheers,

~KA~

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Added on July 3, 2011
Last Updated on July 6, 2011
Tags: Music

Author

Kevin Andros
Kevin Andros

World is one country, India



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Hi. I'm a Leo Person by birth. ************************ Update April 2016 I am making my slow return to this wonderful world without borders. Trying to be active on boards and adding new writer.. more..

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