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METROSCAPE
The Right Swing
The last guests were making their merry way out
of the Parkroyal's ballroom in Delhi, their spirits boosted no doubt by
scotch. A few stragglers remained to talk to Dutch band The Continental
Six which had just played three hours of brisk swing jazz. Then the second
quirk surfaced: only two of the seven of the band speak any English. Yet
they sing only English songs.
 None
of the 100-odd well turned out guests at the Chivas Regal Jazz Night in
Delhi who heard the band play oldies like Fats Wallers Ain't misbehavin
and Roy Eldridge's If I had you would have suspected this linguistic anomaly.
Those who requested songs got them; the grandpa who stepped up to vocalist
Jaqui Martin even got a dance with the lady. In the end she had just one
grouse: "Why didn't more people dance?" The MBA-turned-singer
who says she feels guilty about getting paid for doing what she enjoys
might look to the band's founder, clarinet player-cum-psychologist Karel
Mayer for answers. And things might become better during the band's next
stops-Mumbai and Chennai.
-Samrat Choudhury
COLLECTOR OF ART: Calcutta's
Income Tax Additional Director P.K. Dash, 41, a self-taught artist, values
the restorative effect of art "amidst a busy and stressful life".
So when his paintings became a cache, he took another therapeutic break
and had a show with five other Calcutta artists in Bangalore's Chitrakala
Parishad. Clearly Dash had not been wasting time: his bold compositions
of Lord Jagannath are powerful and energetic. Says Dash, who is from Orissa:
"I am fascinated by this tribal God ... his eyes without eyelids
and nose without nostrils." And we like the art.
-Stephen
David
Sing For Him
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DYLAN'S
DAY:
Banks,
Merchant
and Bedi |
A bash without the birthday boy. But that didn't
hamper the spirits of the 2,000-odd Bob Dylan fans at Rang Bhavan, Mumbai,
on May 24 for "Thank You Bob", a tribute sponsored by Tata Legends
to arguably the most influential musician in modern US history. They knew,
that the answer's blowin' in the wind, the times they are a changin' and
that dignity's never been photographed.
And that Dylan's songs extend far beyond the
American myth. At 60 this Grammy winner has over 500 songs, 43 albums,
over 57 million copies sold and has done every style of music imaginable:
folk, blues, protest and reggae, rock 'n' roll. These were served up in
a three-hour-long evening by over 21 performers from Vivienne Pocha's
feisty rendition of Knockin' on heaven's door to Kim Cardoz and Sharon
Prabhakar duet of House of the Rising Sun, and a no-frills declamation-like
performance by Sabira Merchant. Kabir Bedi recalled the Bohemian 1960s
and Louis Banks composed the final Thank You Bob number.
The accolades though clearly went to Delhi-based
Susmit Bose who paid tribute with an original number- a poet and a one-man
band very much like his hero. Disappointment perhaps was inevitable for
such an ambitious effort. But for Dylan fans the joy was in him "just
passing through".
-Himanshi
Dhawan
Lunar Licence
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| TWO-WAY TICKET: Cernan |
He's no Neil Armstrong. He prefers to be Eugene
Cernan. Breasting the tape may not be his forte but breaking records (or
is that barriers) comes easy: 73 hours of exploring nearly 21 miles of
moon's surface, over two hours of spacewalk ... the last man to have been
on the moon in 1972. This last may be his ticket to fame but it's "disappointing"
that no manned landings have taken place since his Apollo 17 mission,
says Cernan. As for the moon itself "it's like being on God's front
porch looking back home". Home, by the way, is Houston, Texas, where
the 67-year-old continues to indulge in his passion for flying.
The flight to India was as brand ambassador
of Omega, the watch he sported during his lunar visit. It was a packed
schedule in Delhi and Mumbai-three days of talks, press interactions and
unveiling of a space exhibition. That didn't stop him from inviting Shah
Rukh Khan to Houston. The man loves "stars".
-Riju D.
Mehta
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