Rock for a Cause - Blue Light Daze

Blue Light Daze : (from left to right) Vijay, Siddartha, Naren, Siddarth.

Blue Light Daze, a band consisting of 5 members (Siddarth Krishnan – Lead Guitarist, Naren Weiss – Lead Singer, Siddartha Mandaikar – Rhythm Guitar, Kashyap Jaishankar – Bassist, and Vijay Gopalakrishnan – Drummer) played a charity show , last Saturday, for an organization called The Banyan. The Banyan is a shelter and transit home for homeless woman for mental illness, who had wandered from their homes and wandered into the streets. They were asked to play to raise money for The Banyan and they agreed.

They involved themselves with enormous amount of energy to make this show happened. Their bassist unfortunately had previous commitments and couldn’t make it for the show, so the rhythm guitarist, to many peoples surprise, played the bass lines. He also managed to keeps the kids entertained by striking up the Pink Panther theme. They played a mix of originals and covers. Their performance was estimable and entertaining. The audiences were not bored or indifferent but highly involved like clapping with the drum beats or even rhythmic movements.

Blue Light Daze : Siddartha rapping.

Of the songs played “We will rock you “ by The Queens was well received by the older section of the audience, with energetic singing. “Feel Good” by the Gorillaz had the kids present imitating the laughter long after it got over. The Blue Light Daze even switched instruments to make up for the missing member. Naren’s effort on the bass and Siddartha rapping Feel Good were pretty commendable. There cover of Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was a high energy number. Their drummer Vijay managed to break both his drum sticks due to his frantic and cadenced drumming which kept the energy boosted.

They played a few own compositions, my favorite ones were Skeleton and Tempress, their sound check was pretty funky. The one detriment was that sometimes the singing was not very audible like the words of “For Whom the Bells Tolls” were lost in many parts and so was the chorus of Tempress.

Overall it was a good show. More important than all this is that they refused to take money for the show and donated it back to The Banyan. Maybe others can take a leaf out of their book and support an organization or the other. They managed to raise Rs. 40,000 for The Banyan. Siddarth at the end of it was heard claiming loudly that he felt “like a socially useful person”. Once again good show!!!

Sangeetha

September trip... learnings....random events etc

I'd say after auroville this is the best trip in my life till now (i started writing this before the december trip.. i still consider the trip to auroville the best.....it's one of those late published blogs...).

i saw and learned a great many things. we visited anandwan, hemalkasa, vidharbha...met Muralidhar Devidas "Baba" Amte, Shadhanai Thai, Vikas amte, Prakash Amte, the locals of vidharbha and people in anandwan. Since the trip is very valuable i thought i'd write an travel log kind of a thing so that i never forget it. i also decided to write because it saves the time i'd have to spend repeating the happenings of the trip to the people who want to know.
well here it goes.....

day 1 28th sept - well nothing much to write about as i pretty much didn't do anything other than eat and sleep. well over night train journeys don't go very well with me as i tend to wake up every half an hour or so. the train made me sick of waving to people. i waved everytime it moved then it stopped again, finally we left the station, the train was 15 minutes late.
after extensive singing of English,Hindi, and Tamil songs we were asked to sleep.

Day 2 29th sept - i woke up at 5.30 in the morning. i just looked outside when i heard something and looked below my berth to find find alex sitting up. then we took a small walk till the end of the coach then came back.. in a few minutes swati woke up ( lol must have heard alex!! :D ) then slowly everyone woke up. At about 7 we had our first trip culture and all i remember is sitting squashed on the upper with sheetal and kartik! i drowsed off and was woke up by someone at about 8.45 with breakfast! (pongal and vada yukk) then got of the train and took the bus to anandwan, warora from chandrapur. the long walk inside anandwan to reach our rooms gave me an picture of it. after freshing up we went down to have lunch and after that we met vikas amte who spoke to us about his dad, himself...anandwan 50 years ago and also about his work in vidharbha now. then we went to visit BABA AMTE himself. we saw him through a glass window. it pained me to see someone who did so little for himself and so much for the other suffer. as i stood there stunned, i let a few silent tears roll down my cheeks without realization. we visited sadhana thai she was about to start speaking to us when interrupted by a group of old ladies. we left heading back to the place where we were lodged....

(after trying to write a day by day entry i gave up because it was getting very long... so this is just bits and pieces that stuck with me... so less nonsense to read!!! )

let's see what do i remember of this trip?

the bug infestation is the first thing that hits my mind every time i think about the trip.... (which in a way is very sad because the trip had much more to it...) one day, if i am not wrong the second or the third night of our stay there, we came back from dinner to find that these weird little black bug had taken over our rooms. They were simply everywhere and there were thousands and thousands of them along with other bugs who were a minority...

It was kind of funny how 'silly little bugs' which are otherwise ignored, make a difference when they come in great numbers... maybe it's a strategy all of us can learn from them ....
it made the guys go haywire in the next room.... they were haphazardly attacking everything in the room... Siddarth was screaming, stomping on the bugs and trying to sweep them out at the same time.... Alex on the other hand took it as a competition and was desperately trying to sweep the bugs out first. it was comical and the hundreds of lives crushed and families ruined went unnoticed because man had succeeded once again in eliminating competition.. something he considered a threat, thus proving himself above these creatures... (more to come...)