Metallica's India Concert 2011: Greater Noida October 28 Yes!

Metallica will play in India October 28, 2011 in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. The concert venue is near Delhi so now go and fight for the tickets, people. The band has signed up to perform during the inaugural F1 Rocks inaugural Formula 1 Indian Grand Prix on October 28, 2011, according to Indiancarsbikes.in. The Indian Grand Prix is scheduled for October 28-30 at at the Buddh International Circuit near Delhi.

                                Metallica's lead guitarist Kirk Hammet during a show in Tokyo

Well, sober up. Here are some things you ought to know. While this update will have you refreshing your allegiance to Metallica when the band rigs a concert for us here in India, there has yet to be any official word. But I am assuming the information is correct. The reason is Metallica has set no tour dates for the October weekend anywhere. Also, the band's website doesn't mention an India concert for 2011 but that also means the band is free for a gig after the thrash metal pioneers play in Rio De Janeiro on September 25, 2011 and there are no dates after that. You can check out Metallica's website here for their tour dates.  So, Metallica  has the time to play India on October 28, 2011 in Greater Noida. See? So as stated earlier in this blog, the dates are consistent with the news reports. Now go and polish your favorite Metallica pose.

Keep checking this blog, I'll keep you posted. 

(Attention: Please note that all content in this blogsite are personal and original works of the author - they involve efforts of observation and research, personal experience and participation, news information and personal insights. If you desire to use any of the content or any information in the blogs, you are very much welcome to do so (but only for non-profit use. Copyright libel would be employed against you if you use the content for profit - such as submitting to paid article sites, rewriting them for sites that pay money for submitting etc). So long as it is not for monetary gain, you are free to refer or use information in my blogs. In case you do, I shall really appreciate if you credit this blog/author or at least link back to this blog site or article you desire to use. Thank you for understanding)

I just update my blog: Go to the following link for all details of ticket, their prices, retail outlets from where to buy them from and other information associated with Metallica's Gurgaon and Bangalore concert shows.

Here's the link: 
Tickets, Prices and other updated Info on Metallica's India concerts

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Metallica’s India Concert 2011: Indian fans rejoice!

Metallica will play in India around October 28-30, 2011. Now you can retract yours jaws to their original position, thank you. Who would have imagined that the biggest thrash metal band in the history of noise would decide a concert for India? Metallica’s low-ender Robert Trujillo revealed this to Inland Empire Weekly’s April edition (oh, this is the biggest new since Bon Jovi’s turning around and seeing something called India behind). Read the entire interview here.

This is what the Metallica Bassist told the weekly: "We are going to play India in October. That should be interesting; playing a place we never thought in our wildest dreams we'd [go] to play. It's an honor for all of us that we get to be a part of that whole music scene as a metal band sharing our music with fans in India at this incredible concert!"

Metallica: (L-R) Kirk Hammet (Guitars), James Hetfield (Voice, Guitars), Lars Ulrich (Drums, Percussions) and Robert Trujillo (Bass guitars)

The news appears consistent with rumors since November 2010 that Metallica would be playing in India as part of F1 Rocks, the music segment of the inaugural Formula 1 Indian Grand Prix scheduled for October 28-30, 2011 in Noida, UP, India. 

Boy oh boy. This band elbowed me major time into playing the guitar and metal (as it did to billions of Nagas. 16 lakhs to be precise). The first ever Metallica song I listened to was ‘Nothing Else Matters’ when school was the universe. After it, no metal band that ever leapt and banged out its hair though the speakers impressed me enough. Let’s just, only, simply say that by the time I was in college, I could play every single slab of Metallica, every song, every single guitar passage from any of their nine albums – mom could not afford me a drum set. (By the way, do you know, Metallica has about 28 albums, actually. EPs, cover albums, live albums etc) Can you believe it? Metallica’s India Concert 2011 would be injecting greater interest in proper Metal music in India. Just watch and see. 

Oh, you are still here. What are you doing here still? Go grab your metal seat, you incompetent dingbat!

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Crunchy OFF, Heavy Alice in Wonderland

Content: Nagaland bands Original Fire Factor (OFF)

                                           Alice in Wonderland

Jumping Bean’s menu for Friday April 15 was a crunchy (OFF) Original Fire Factor and an explosive Alice in Wonderland. The youth and music hangout hosted the 2009 Hornbill Rock winners and complementing the band, the young but gifted Alice in Wonderland, for the April 15 edition of the café’s popular Friday Night Live. 

The course for the night was protest and angst packaged in the time-tested tradition of rock. Liu Tzudir and OFF led the café’s patrons into streets that had no names and introducing them to a musician called Bono. OFF began the evening’s gig by climbing on high mountains and running through the fields with the U2 classic ‘I still haven’t Found what I’m looking for.’ After the poignant classic, OFF performed a rockish version of Lionel Ritchie’s ‘Easy’ before floating into ‘Where the streets have no name,’ another of U2’s classics. The Kohima-based singer and entrepreneur Theja Meru passionately sang the number in almost every show during his early Dream Café music days and OFF’s rendition elicited strong reminiscences of most Kohima performers’ passion for U2. 

After leading the café into nameless streets, OFF introduced the patrons to one of the band’s originals ‘Mr. Selfish’ – a crunchy, blues-driven rock piece “about me” as Tzudir explained. Arguably one of the classiest funk rockers in the state today, OFF demonstrated huge technical command and rhythmical finesse with ‘Mr. Selfish’ and with the second ‘Save me’ another of the band’s harder-hitting works. Concluding its gig, OFF decided that it was time to hand the microphone over to Alice in Wonderland and played ‘I Just want to go,’ easily one of the protest rocker’ grooviest blues rock works.

Young but bristling with unmistakable potential for musical distinction, alternative/core rockers from Kohima, Alice in Wonderland, added to the crunch of the evening’s dish.  Alice in Wonderland had won the sixth Best of the Best Nagaland Art Fusion rock contest in Dimapur in 2010. Primarily playing core metal and alternative rock, AIW proved to be a startlingly tight band. That they were a new band did not reflect in their musicality and performance. They played a number of ‘unidentified’ flying numbers of no-nonsense metal slabs; nonetheless demonstrating potential with their distinct harmonization and easy musicality, not to mention of their extremely natural showmanship.

Earlier on Friday, the eighth, Kohima metallers Black Rose performed in Jumping Bean. Azha Usou, of ‘The Last Serenade’ (2008) fame, leads Black Rose. The next Friday Jumping Bean would be hosting a group of young hip-hop performers who would be dishing out ‘their own thing’. The hip-hoppers are young, fresh, still in school, and needs more than just a hearing, Jumping Bean’s management informed. That the café has been at the forefront of offering free platform to local musicians since 2008, Jumping Bean hopes encouragement and support would come for the young performers.  

(Photo Courtesy: Jumping Bean) 

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The Nagaland rock bands for ‘Rocknock festival’

Eximious, Black Rose, OFF & Graffiti 

This rock music festival comprising some of the better-known rock bands from Nagaland fascinated me. The rock bands in performance were former Music Safari and Hornbill Rock prizewinners Eximious, Hornbill Rock prizewinners Black Rose, Hornbill Rock prizewinners OFF (Original Fire Factor) and one of Nagaland’s 90s rock forerunners Grafitti.

(Right: OFF in performance during the March 30, 2011 Rocknock festival in Kohima, Nagaland.  Photo/The Morung Express)

Fascination #1: 

The concept of the event – The rock music festival had a number of well-known social commentators including Niketu Iralu offering insights in an event that had all the paradigms of youth clichés.  The statement from the organizers explained that the event represents an aspiration to ‘change encourage, educate and spread awareness’ on ‘various issues that need to be redressed at this day and age.’ So there you are – social academics and your neighbor-friendly noise mongers on plate. I love the concept major time.  

(Eximious. A hairy hairy nice photograph of Tali's gang. Photo/The Morung Express)

 (Left: Grafitti. No, don't be deceived by the glasses - they are not geek-core rock dudes - they play the harder stuff. Photo/The Morung Express)

Fascination #2: 

The rock bands: You would have expected Divine Connection. However, the MTV Kurkure Desi Beat winners were not there to join the noise (I am assuming the organizers felt Divine Connection’s already into big time so the chance this time was for the other guys). The Rocknock festival had progressive rock group Eximious and Kohima metal group Black Rose, protest rockers OFF (Original Fire Factor) and (surprise, surprise) Grafitti – a band I club to be in the league of one of the earliest popular rock bands in Nagaland, The Oleanders (led by that inimitable, tiny Lopeno Ovung).

All these years I’d though ‘hey, Black Rose and Grafitti are dinosaurs now.’ Nevertheless, no one is complaining. The guys are still good. Especially that Black Rose had Azha Usou – the dude who gave you that sublime death/symphonic metal piece ‘The Last Serenade’ (2008). And in Graffiti, guitardude Yanger – former The Oleanders, former Diatribe, and former all-round-every-rock-band man – that guy is one of my favorite Naga guitarists. 

(Right: Black Rose. 

Azha, please be a gentleman and give the seat to her.

Photo/The Morung Express)

 

Fascination #3: 

Coincidence or not, I could not help feeling that the organizers were quite imaginative with the name ‘Rocknock’. Naga events are not that famous for coming up with imaginative names. Nevertheless, the question was: what if they had sneaked the name of my blog? My Naga ego told me ‘hey you have one of the larger and comprehensive contents on Naga musicians and rock music (just ask Google and its traffic pundits) this side of India so maybe them organizers ran into my blog and snitched my blog name thing?’ I dunno. Alright Mr. Ego, get out.  My sincere congratulations to the organizers of the event for the knocking the rocks out of us Nagaland rock dudes with the novel event. 

(Attention: Please not that all content in this blogsite are personal and original works of the author - they involve efforts of observation and research, personal experience and participation, news information and personal insights. If you desire to use any of the content or any information in the blogs, you are very much welcome to do so (but only for non-profit use. Copyright libel would be employed against you if you use the content for profit - such as submitting to paid article sites, rewriting them for sites that pay money for submitting etc). So long as it is not for monetary gain, you are free to refer or use information in my blogs. In case you do, I shall really appreciate if you credit this blog/author or at least link back to this blog site or article you desire to use. Thank you for understanding)

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