We are monsters… and we rock!
We are monsters… and we rock!
Mind Riot, The Trip, Co-ven and many others unite for a night of pure rock
Ali Sultan
Lahore
Back then, a revolution
Anyone who was anyone growing up in Lahore, in the ’90s, remembers that it was all about rock and roll. The decade, especially the later half, marked the beginning of a very close-knit, “underground” music scene in Lahore – its birth is generally marked as the Peace Festival held in Jinnah Garden in 1994.
It was either Woodstock or Altamont, considering the people you hung out, the drugs you took and the bands you fancied. Then it was all about Alhamra, peace festivals and it was all “underground.” Bands like Mind Riot, The Trip, Co-ven, Midnight Madness, Dog Tag and Seth and many others were all ready to take on the world, theirs was a sweaty, heady mix, full of blues, punk and everything in between, touching upon everything from youthful angst, alienation, drugs, sex and politics. It was a strange kaleidoscope of image and sound and perhaps the first serious attempt at performing underground music and setting a scene. But as with all good things, underground music in Lahore slowly yet surely, dissolved into thin air.
The song remains
the same
On December 17, 2009, after 15 years of its birth , stalwarts of the Lahore underground, with the help of Riot Productions, Tamasha and an international cola company, took their place on stage again at Peeru’s Café, under the name of Peace Festival 2009 aka Monsters Of Rock. Shahzad Hameed, Co-ven, The Trip and Mind Riot -both playing after a gap of 3 and 14 years respectively- announced that they would rock the socks out of the audience. It’s a pleasure to announce that they did just that.
Fear and loathing
Shahzad Hameed – who looks like a mix of John Lennon and the always pale Jimmy Page – with his thin pencil like figure and long bushy hair is an artist with a temperament. It means that depending on the night, he will play like nobody’s business or be down in the doldrums. His opening act at the Peace festival was somewhere in the middle.
Supported by an old veteran, Clyde Francis on the drums and Imran on the bass, Hameed played out a noisy, clattering set. He tried mixing it up, playing his own songs with a few covers that included his favorite Led Zeppelin tune ‘Rock&Roll’, but mostly all of his set seemed like a long mostly unfocused boogie jam with some snapshots of pure clarity, Hameed playing vicious solos: part Robert Quine, part Keith Richards, then Hameed slashing out funky, paranoid sounds of his fretboard-its unpleasant and meant to be- with the band trying to catch up.
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl
It sounded cheesy but an announcement by one of the hosts defines The Trip perfectly. “Like KFC does chicken, The Trip do Pink Floyd!” and the people who were just waiting to hear The Trip again, cheered on as Cecil Chaudry and Omer Yousaf took the stage. “We’re going to slow things down a bit,” said Cecil cheerfully and that’s what they did. Supporting them were Farhad Humayun on drums, Abid Khan on acoustic guitar and the quiet but wonderful Sheraz Siddiq on keyboards. What The Trip served was a soulful cocktail of Floyd covers. Whether it was the crowd singing along to ‘Wish You Were Here’ or the band playing a near perfect note by note rendition of ‘Hey You’, Cecil Chaudhry was, as always, wonderful. His bent notes, were full of feeling, you could almost feel the joy in his playing and when he sang (he pulls off an uncanny Roger Waters, especially in the higher register) it was with pure gusto. The cherry on top were in fact two; a heartfelt vocal performance by Tauseef Dar on U2’s ‘One’ and the crowds’ standing ovation to the band’s rendition of ‘Comfortably Numb’.
The boys are back
in town
The scene, however, got stolen by Mind Riot. Never once, in their infectious, mind boggling set, did the band let the audience know that they hadn’t played for 14 years. Yes, Ali Amin on rhythm guitars & Khurram Khalid Khan on bass (both original members) were missing in action, but it didn’t make a difference. Salman ‘Larkaa’ Yasin bearded, dressed in black leather pants, took to the mike like a lost lover and blowed his pipes out. As Farhad Humayun pounded away on the drums with equal style and sophistication, Haider Hashmi (ex-Aaroh) still wearing his customary hat, let his guitar do all the talking while Sheraz dealt with the atmospherics. The band was on fire as they ripped through songs by AC/DC, Judas Priest, Whitesnake and Coverdale/Page. The only concern being that the vocalist seemed buried in the mix during the whole set.
This is the end, my only friend, the end
I only wished that Hamza Jafri, wearing a skull cap, military fatigues and brandishing a sticker that says YOU on his guitar, once owned by the very funny Joe Walsh, had taken a step back from the mike. His voice, strong and dense got blurred out most of the time. There is, however, nothing funny about Co-ven. When Jafri and Omran Shafique attack with their guitars, Sikander Mufti (drums) lays down all his cards on the table and Sameer Ahmed (bass) holds forte, the sound is heavy, woven like a soft spider’s web, but tight as a nail. They played all originals, and painted a picture, from the funky ‘Sailing Fast’ and ‘Boundaries Broken’, to the morbid ‘Headless’, to the call to arms of ‘Ready to Die’ and then some.
Source: Instep today
