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METROSCAPE
Summer Of 2001
Flippant and elusive,
he can best be described by what he is not. Despite the all-white ensemble—right
down to a white guitar—he is not a "white T-shirt kind of person".
He concentrates on "his kind of music but doesn't really think about
the business of music". Singing with Luciano Pavarotti was "okay"
though he felt he "could die" after a duet with Smokey Robinson
at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem.
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| Adams adulation: The singer in Mumbai |
Quite a lot of quotes from a man considered to
be notoriously media shy. But then the winner of 10 Grammys and 12 Platinum
awards with record sales of over 65 million albums worldwide, Canadian
rock icon Bryan Adams was in an uncharacteristically forthcoming mood.
His current tour, his third after 1994 and 1996, following the release
of his greatest-hits album The Best of Me, was a stripped-down affair,
featuring Adams (on vocals and bass) and steadfast colleagues Keith Scott
on the guitar and Mickey Curry on the drums.
The 60,000 fans that jammed Bangalore Palace
Grounds on May 4 and the 20,000 that filled the smaller NSE Grounds in
concert-starved Mumbai two days later were genuine Adam addicts. They
had travelled from neighbouring cities, braved traffic snarls, bought
tickets in black, arrived hours early at the venue, ignored the heat,
bad organisation (will they ever learn?) and faulty sound systems to swoon
at the 40-year-old Canadian singing Let's make it a night to remember,
Run to you, Summer of '69, Everything I do (I do it for you) and 18 Till
I Die. The rock concert ritual also happened-in Mumbai 16-year-old Simran
Thadani got yanked out of the crowd by Adams to sing the duet he had sung
with Mel C, When you're gone.
The balladeer who has recently taken up photography
(he has released two books, Haven and Made in Canada) finds there is "always
so much to see in India". We're certainly going to see a lot more
of him.
-Himanshi
Dhawan and Stephen David
  CHILD'S
PLAY: An apple might have done the trick for Newton. For Pravina Mecklai,
owner of Mumbai's Jamaat Art Gallery, it was her teenage son's overnight
interest in art. When Karan, who'd always thought "art sucked"
finally came across a "rocking" painter (Samir Mondal), it set
his mother thinking and what followed was an exhibition organised with
the most spontaneous art critics in mind-children. The brief to 11 artists
was clear: this was to be "For Our Kids" (also the title of
the show). So Indrapramit Roy etched a birthday frock on a hanger, Rajeshree
Thakker put together "assemblages" with soulful dogs (left)
while Paritosh Sen, 83, captured cheery play time. The children had their
own favourites, like Malvika, 5, who stared gleefully at Thota Tharani's
Force. Parents were happy too, but not when they were harassed into buying
the works.
-Natasha
Israni
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