In Repair; In Transit.

It’s quarter to the three in the morning. I keep sitting down to update this blog and to post something on it, but each time that I do, I usually make it through three lines and I’m overwhelmed at the thought of all the things I want to write out. 

The sensation of being overwhelmed, however, is quickly submerged in the much larger ocean of unmotivated writing and I decide to abandon the whole thing. So, there you go. I minimize the window, disappoint my word processor and leave it alone for another night. 

Here’s what’s going on in my mind: I haven’t sat down to write anything since mid-November. Since then, a lot of things that might be fun to mention (at best) have happened. In a big way, they’re all made of the same thing: People – who have come and gone; Gigs – some good and a lot bad; and naturally, the experiences and consequent realizations afforded by both – some fleeting and others pretty significant.

From the outside, especially when speaking in lazy general terms, it doesn’t look like much has really changed or happened – but when I really get into it, there seems like there’s a lot to say. Things with Drift are great – but they’re in transit. We’ve been getting a lot of good gigs and sometimes, it feels like the phone doesn’t stop ringing. We also seem to be doing pretty well on the recognition account – by which I basically mean, people buy us drinks all the time. Reuben, my drummer, went to a club with some friends, rang up a nasty ass bill and at the end of the night, walked out hammered without having to part with any cash, because the owner was a frequent visitor at a lounge we play at. It’s a decent feeling.

It’s really interesting how with any given band, there are always a few parallel streams that run side by side. In the case with Drift, I can clearly see two – and the reason why things are in transit, is because there is a clash between those two streams.

The first one – arguably more important - being that of personal musicianship. By which I mean: skill and general satisfaction with your own sound. Really just being able to like yourself and what you do on your instrument. The second stream, in my eyes, is how the band is perceived from outside and maybe right now, the latter is just mismatched with the former. There’s a craving from the former, for a fresher sound – but the need for that is happening at a point where I feel like the image of the group is just beginning to be consolidated – on a strictly P.R. level. I guess there’s always the question of how much that really matters in the first place – but anyway, I hope things will balance out soon.

I haven’t been taking the band or the lifestyle that’s come with it for granted and I knew it wasn’t going to last forever, but these three guys have become like family to me. Infact, I've met them for rehearsal on a daily basis for something like half a year - and at our peak, we were playing right upto 4 nights a week. That’s more than I’ve seen my real relatives over the past two years - no two ways about it.

I played a really fun gig on the 1^st of January. There’s a school in Delhi called the Bridge Music Academy. They organized a Winter jazz concert at the India Habitat Center’s Stein Auditorium. I’d say maybe two hundred showed up? Maybe more? I can never gauge with people.

I got to play with Nippun Cheema’s project – which played something called Cinematic Jazz – which was basically film score but customized to make some room for improvisation. Some of the music was really gorgeous and it’s still very much stuck in my head. What made the whole thing a much bigger deal, was that Drift was also slotted to play this concert. So Nicolas and I got on stage with Nippun’s project first – spent an hour up there – after which, Drift came on and it was just a really great way to the start the year. I couldn’t be more grateful. There are recordings and a dvd of the same, which I will sit down with, scrub and put up at some point.

I think this is a pretty good way to start clearing a blog-back-log and there’s definitely no better way to wrap up, than to shamelessly publicize myself. 

So:

Catch Drift at the Living Room in Hauz Khas Village on the 4^th of February – which is a Friday. Come on out, come on out. I didn’t know we were playing there till yesterday when I saw the poster with our pretty little faces on it – so, it’s news to me too.

Also, if you can’t make Friday, come on down to Baci on Thursday. It’s been a treat to play there this year. I hope to see some of you there.