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