(Photo by Siddhartha Menon)

Most exciting development of 2013.

Most exciting developments of 2013: I'm going to be cryptic and say that the most exciting development of 2013 was a development that is in turn going to lead into an even more exciting development in 2014. Haha...but in all seriousness, it is probably our establishing ourselves as a committed and serious touring band, which has opened up some really big doors for 2014, starting with some huge festivals like Graspop and a few others that I can't name just yet :)

Best live act of 2013.

Best live act of 2013 has to be Scribe as usual. Those guys are unfairly good, they make it a point to steal this crown from every other band out there, every year.

Best/worst movie you’ve seen this year.

Best movie...I watched Samsara for the first time in 2013 and it blew my mind. Worst...pretty much most other movies that I watched in the year were terrible.

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Were you a good human being this year? Why/why not?

I was a very good human being, because I left my corporate job and gone full-time into organising indie music events.

Do you like cops?  

No, Because they are ch*ts.

Most promising young artists this year that you’ve seen live?

The Vinyl Records and The F16’s.

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Best/worst moments on tour this year?

Best moment – NH7 Weekender, Kolkata. (As for worst moment) it’s not really a worst moment, it’s more of a light-hearted moment was in Guwahati, because when we started playing the crowd broke the barricade and the worst moment was when a guy out of the crowd walks onto the stage, comes to me and starts taking selfies on his mobile phone. At one point I hit him with the guitar headstock, I was like, ‘Get away from me.’ And he was drunk out of his mind and, at one point, he started poking me to look into the camera. That was in Guwahati, some 200 people invaded the stage.  

Your biggest pet peeve of the year?

My biggest pet peeve right now is, I think the flyby night operators who call up bands for gigs and expect us to play for free. So it’s like, ‘You are a band? We have a stage; come play for free.’ And we say, “Dude, we are trying to make a living out of this.’

Favourite band in the scene? Why?

SundogProject. Because they don’t give a fuck about image, they just do what they want and they are putting it where it really counts which is the music. 

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Best/Worst metal band you’ve heard recently?

The best metal band I’ve heard this is year is a death metal band from New Zealand, called Ulcerate.

What new food have you discovered in 2013?

Salted Caramel.

How do you think the scene can grow?

The music scene can only grow sideways as of now.

(Photo by Ishaan Suri)

Favourite album/s of the year?

Damn dude, 2013 is just a blur.

One thing that really annoys you at a gig.

Bad sound engineering.

Best/worst TV series you’ve seen all year.

Breaking Bad for sure. It makes you wanna go buy the real thing, I’m done with torrents now; I wanna see it in HD. 

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Most embarrassing moment of the year.

Forgetting to turn on the delay patch while playing the leads.

What is the craziest thing a fan has done at your gig?

Dude, our fans are damn sober man, Koi kuch karta hi nahi hai, everyone’s chilled out.

What song are you humming incessantly nowadays?

A track by Helios, but I can’t remember the name.

(Photo by Pawan Manglani)

Best 3 artists of 2013.

The new ones? Or just generally the best music released this year?

Worst gig/s you’ve gone for this year?

Best ones:  And So I Watch You From Afar at Blue Frog. Robot Koch at Magnetic Fields. Lee Ranaldo at Ziro.

Any new and exciting news that you would like to share?

Just finished mixing the new Your Chin EP so that should be out soon.

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Best live act of the year?

Sky Rabbit, they are one of the nicest sounding bands, great sound.

One event you’d like to see in the Olympics? Could be anything.

Air-guitaring.

Favorite/worst songs this year that you can’t get out of your head.

I'll just go for Bollywood, 'Kolaveri Di'

(Photo courtesy SKP Photography)

Top 3 artists of the year.

 Antariksh, Live Banned, Agam.

Most memorable moments of 2013.

Opening for Mike Portnoy and Neal Morse band in Mumbai and playing my first hometown gig with the Baiju Dharmajan Syndicate on Jan 26, 2013.

What are your resolutions for 2014?

Become better at playing the guitar. That's my resolution every year :)

How do you think the scene can grow?

10 CDs sold in a gig = 100 CDs sold declaration on FB fan pages. Sources need to be hidden. Music, merchandise, shows...everything free. Love from fans > Money. There is only one life.

Seen anything weird lately?

A middle-aged man living in a corner under the bridge in Andheri farting loud with his bum faced towards a tomcat's face who was chilling with him. 

Best/worst bands you’ve witnessed this year.

Very, very hard to choose one out of all…Well, I will just name one album by this wonderful band. They released this album which is equally best and the worst i have ever heard in 2013. Dethroned and Uncrowned by Katatonia. I think it's best because it has the most beautiful sing-along songwriting and the expression is so much stronger than their previous records. The message is strong and that's why it's also the worst album of this year. So much sadness and so much dispossession and depressed vibes. I think once in a while listening to a beautiful sad song makes you human when you want to cut out stress or 24/7 happy vibes in your life to calculate it with the amount of sorrow distributed by media and other things in your life. But this album is too beautiful to ignore. You can't stop after listening to the first song and then it goes on and on. Hate that part. May be they are trying to resurrect Goths on a larger scale...you never know.

(Photo by Kuntal Mukherjee)

What is the weirdest reason you’ve liked an artist for?

Their lack of damaged drug addicts.

What new food did you discover in 2013?

Afghan Food, it kicks ass.

What is the best TV series you’ve seen this year? Why?

Oh yea, this one has a very clichéd answer, Breaking Bad, but I’ve only seen it till the third season now. Uhh, freaking meth, I mean how can you not like it, dude.

What is the nicest thing a fan has ever done for you?

Showed up at our gig.

Favorite childhood game.

I guess it was a cricket, because everyone used to play it so it was like a social thing you know.

Is there a musician, dead or alive, that you wish you could play with? Who and why?

Michael Landau, a sessions guitar player. ‘Cause every guitar player wishes they could play with him.

Best live act of 2013.

It has to be, without a doubt…actually, no wait hold on, I’m not sure if I saw Third Eye Blind this year or the year before that. Well, if Third Eye Blind did play this year and not the year before then they’re definitely the best act I have seen, without a doubt. They are my favorite childhood band, I still haven’t taken them off my iPod.

Most embarrassing moment onstage.

It probably happened more than a couple of times, especially when I’m playing with a new setup and new line-up; I’ve forgotten the lyrics, lyrics not so much, but I have played the wrong chord and stuff. Honestly that is stuff you can cover up, so nothing really embarrassing this last year. It’s been a good year for me. Actually I don’t if this is embarrassing or not, but at the NH7 Weekender in Pune, the G-string on my guitar broke while playing the first song. I also tried my hand at standup comedy, it actually turned out pretty well. Most of the crowd stayed; it started off embarrassing but got better. 

What was the worst movie you saw this year?

I saw a bunch of bad movies last year, there was this Tom Cruise movie, Jack Reacher. That’s probably the most stupid, pointless movie. It was just to make Tom Cruise look good with a shot of botox and stuff.

(Photo by Naman Saraiya)

Worst gig you’ve played all year.

It has to be a gig that I played in Kolkata, at this club called the Princeton Club. There’s nothing wrong with the club or the venue, but what happened was that midway one of my pedals just stopped working. So half of the sounds coming from the amps were things that I couldn’t control. And I had no way to replace it. And I didn’t have any replacement guitar so it was quite difficult, but we got through and the crowd was still happy.

How much music did you download this year?

Zero bytes, because I don’t download music.

Do you sing in the shower? What generally?

I don’t really sing songs with lyrics in the shower, I just sing dubstep bass drops. I just make bass wobbles, ‘cause it just works well in the shower.

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Do you read? If so, what are you reading right now?

Chicken Shit for the Arseholes.

Worst gig you'd gone for in 2013.

Goofy Saucespel Project, winner every year.

Tell us a few day jobs you've had in the past.

All kinds of jobs, but none with 'happy ending' .

Worst gig you played in 2013 and why? Has it happened more than once?

The year 2013 was pretty good as far as gigs and their turnouts go, the worst one probably being one outstation Hard Rock gig where the attendance was really poor and we ended up eating to a lot of people there for the burgers.

Were you a good human being this year? why or why not?

I don't know if I was good human being but was definitely a better human being than the year before , most probably because I was finally trying to get the Circus releases and management sorted; I don't know if that qualifies as being better but definitely more productive.

Most annoying news/controversy of the year.

I don't know about most annoying but the most shocking one was definitely the Ian Watkins (Lost Prophets) child abuse case; it was very disturbing to read to what depths he could go to just because of a lack of check on his ego . Very disturbing indeed.

(Photo by Mala Tochhawng)

Best moments on tour in 2013.

It was great and amazing doing a contra band 360 degree tour of all HRC's across the nation. It's hard to specify a particular best moment as releasing an album through such a platform and medium was more than a dream come true for us. 

Were you any close to getting arrested this year?

Yes, after our gig at HRC Bangalore I had  lost my PAN card which I used as an Identification at airports and realized that it was gone only at the airport gates . So, I wasn't allowed to get in and the personnel on duty at the jet counter was mute and, as we were already late , my friends left me there and went home while I was trying to enter at every departure gate without an ID and apparently this happened because there was no time to photo-print my ID  either. So, after trying to get through at the 5th Gate I think, a Karnataka Cop noticed me and told me that I was causing trouble. After a few arguments, they took me in and seconds before they put me in a prison mobile van , I was able to talk myself out of it with a few bribes. 

One event you'd like to see in the Olympics. It could be anything.

Would love to see Boomarang doing an opening at the Olympics.