A few years ago while I was in the middle of my first novel " Telling Tales", I was travelling to a literary meet at Town Hall. Harish Trivedi, a big name in literary criticism was to be there. We spoke a lot and I got back home to find I had left behind my handwritten manuscript in the auto!
This was before I got a PC of course. After trying to trace the auto, a visit to the DGP's office with Ramesh with whom I had a wonderful conversation regarding Mallikarjun Mansoor and his son Rajshekar Mansoor, I sadly realised I had lost the manuscript.
I bought a P2 I think, and rewrote the entire book, soft copy.
Now it's replay time.
My Powerbook has crashed. Nothing I can do about it. Apple will get back to me in an hour. This time round I might have to recreate soft copies of music in hard copy. So, we've gone ahead and formed the band. No name yet, but Joe's happy. He's been at us for long enough. Little did he know, all it would take is a crashing laptop with at least 20 workable music tracks and plenty more in various formative stages!
The band has Nitin singing, Ram on harmonium and keyboards, Joe on drums, Caleb on the guitar, Deepu on the violin, Gokul the DJ factor and me on vocals and veena. Thought we'd call ourselves Esperilla, kind of no hope sorts in a mix of Latin and Kannada! Just kidding!
Meanwhile Mobius Strip my album got released on Rhapsody. Deepu had to publish the details on the site. Thanks Deepu!

Oh, I forgot, Vivek came in to do a voice over and left his tie neatly tied to the mike stand. Gokul took a snap of it. Looks great! Will put it up soon!

While I was rushing to finish the 3 creatives and their common signature tune, Ram needed to complete his station IDs. Sunday Philippe and Avril came visiting with Joe. They wanted an Indian arrangement and a nice tune for the lyrics Philippe had co- written. It was nice talking in French after a bit of a gap, my translation stints have not been frequent of late! Philippe sings in English too and this song is in English. We will be co-producing it and need to get a very different sound ready by Wednesday since he's setting out to Paris by then. They came in at 5 in the evening to work on the tune with me and went away happy with the scratch. Philippe will familiarize himself and get back Monday for the recording.
Meanwhile, trying to get the login issues around The Music Magazine has been a bit of a headache. Finally sending a fax to Network Solutions to sort it out. Hope things get untangled by next week.
Tomorrow, after we finish the ads and the signature tune and Sasha winds up Radio Cafe, Priya from Madura Garments comes in to finalise the song for her Chisel programme. Saunak again from Madura day after for another signature tune. Faiyaz Khan at 11 Saturday to sing another song for Ram's new album, now that Ninna Nenapu is out of our heads!
Time must be singing along as it flies!

Today we rushed off in the morning to Big FM. I was more nervous than the star, Tejas! Some wiz kids were leaving after stirring up admiration and awe. Tejas impressed with his age and size. The smallest and youngest kid out there. He went on air with great dignity and composure and sang a couple of lines too after promising the RJ only ONE line! Sihi Kahi Chandru too looked impressed and said so!

"Jothege nadi" has been playing since yesterday night. "Stand by me" has been on Radio Indigo since Saturday.
Back to the grind, with more voice overs, editing, naming, wondering how we're to execute a particularly awkward radio script for a client. Sumati is here trying to finish her project for Mumbai.

And thanks to all you guys with your feedback. Harish and Swamy of Project F6, Sunil Chris, Suresh at Mid-day and so many more who called in. V Manohar just did and said it was a remarkable song.

Thanks all for your support. Hope we all continue with our music and enjoy every note of the way!

We've been working feverishly since 2nd November on a special song for Children's Day. Sequencing and the English lyrcis were ready surprisingly quickly. But when we got in touch with Deepak to get that special child who could sing, we were disappointed. All the sweet voices he was recommending were busy with exams. For a while it looked bleak. And we knew this time around, we wanted to talk to radio stations well in advance.
We were looking for a child in his or her early teens. So the idea of getting our son, 7 year old Tejas never crossed our mind. But he was the only child around. Tejas was game, he was only worried he wasn't 14 or 15 as I kept asking Deepak for a child of that age.
He sounds utterly right for the song. We took English and Bageshree kept sending in the Kannada version in 3 segments even as we started recording. But Tejas was very tired. So we packed up and came back the next day for the Kannada version.
Radio Indigo was wonderful and is all set to play the English version which we always meant for them to play. Look out, more on this and other things in a while
Anurag recorded a rock feel song today. He will continue for another 2 days. Meanwhile we need to wrap up Ninna Nenapu. Ram will need to spend a good bit of time on that.
Shridhar Murthy came by, cracked his usual quota of wisecracks, had us in splits and left after lunch yesterday. Also happened to be our UPS maintenance day!

From being ditched last minute and being played on pretty high rotates on Big FM took about a day! Harish and Preeti thanks so much! We've always believed that local radio can make a difference to local musicians. You've supported and backed our song Kanna tumba banna like it were your own! Thanks for being so involved!
So, if you missed the song, you can request it by messaging 5454.
Next song soon coming up! Surprise aplenty in every aspect of it. So keep a ear out for it.
Meanwhile we have a voice over and a corporate signature tune today apart from other things
So, catch up with you after some more musicking!

Our song Kanna Tumba Banna for Suvarna Karnataka is on Radio One and Hutch. The Hutch people were the sweetest imaginable, loved the song and outdid themselves trying to get things in place. All of yesterday we were busy with a corporate video song, voice prompts and calls.

All was smooth sailing till about 7 pm. When the radio station which had promised to play our song, backed out, we being "unknown"! We only wished they had realised that a bit earlier at least in the day.

But that found us more friends in other channels. And Radio One pulled it off for us! Thanks out there, Anjaan! Ram, Gokul and I worked till 4 am.
The Kuwait Kannada Koota has written to say they love the song. Waiting to hear from others!

Puneet came in to sing for the corporate video song which turned out great.
Ram's recording some strings with Nelson for ETV right now. F6 is on at 6 pm.

More in a while. Watch out for our next special!