L10 COVERSATURDAY, MARCH 27, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

LOUNGE COVER L11SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 2010 ° WWW.LIVEMINT.COM

LOUNGE

Counting notes:(far left) DemonicResurrection; and

Delhi bandFaridkot in concert.

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

You’ve got the fancy guitars andamplifiers, you’ve channelled the

loose energy of your jam sessionsinto a couple of original songs andare now itching to get up on stage.Hopefully, you’ve kept your day job. Ifyou have, it’s a fun ride—hit citieswith regularity, build up a fan base,play gigs as often as you can at pubsand college festivals and pocket theextra income.If you haven’t, here's how you can keepyour musical finances afloat:

KEEP IT FRESH“Think of it as competing with StarPlus,” says Jishnu Dasgupta of Swar­athma. “Package your music, design aflashy website—have a hook for youraudience.” A MySpace(www.myspace.com) or Facebook(www.facebook.com) profile is a must.As are samples of your music. If youhave videos, blogs, pictures—put themall up for people to see. Keep updat­ing your online presence with newcontent. “You can’t play the sametune again and again—it’s like a chan­nel playing the same episode of a sit­com on repeat,” he says.

Dasgupta also recommends look­ing abroad for shows, where yourmusic can fill a certain niche.“There’s a global interest in musicthat is honest and is rooted in theplace where it comes from,” he says.“Take Indian Ocean—they’ve prettymuch captured the Indian NRI (non­resident Indian) audience in the USthrough regular touring.”

KNOW YOUR REVENUESTREAMS“Ninety per cent of your money isgoing to come from concerts—that’swhat bands need to focus on themost. The rest is useful, but merewindow dressing,” says Vijay Nair ofOnly Much Louder. Live shows inIndia require bands to haggle fortheir cut, unlike the West, wherethere’s a flat fee depending on howmany people you pull in. Apart fromthe clubs and pubs, there are college

festivals, which are both lucrative,as well as “right at the heart of yourcore audience”, according to Das­gupta. Corporate events are anothersource, but these depend on the kindof music you play.

Don’t expect to get called for for­mal company events if you’re ametal band. “Bands can also createmusic for corporates—jingles andspots, for example,” says Dasgupta.“Swarathma also did some music foran upcoming TV channel that wanteda distinct ‘audio identity’—music forinterstitials and logos, for example.”Dasgupta reckons that tie­ups withbrands is the way to go.

“Take Thermal and a Quarter’srecent tour for the ‘Shut Up and Vote’campaign. You had an NGO, Janaag­raha, which wanted to spread thismessage. The band, which vocalized itwith a song, and Tata Tea with their‘Jaago Re’ pitch. It was a perfect fit.”

MONITOR THE RIGHTMETRICSAlbum sales are passé. “It’s next toimpossible to make money fromalbum sales, even if you’re soldinternationally,” says Sahil Makhijaof Demonic Resurrection. Fellowmetalheads Kryptos, riding a waveof critical acclaim for their lastalbum ‘The Ark of Gemini’, couldonly manage 800 copies in threeyears, a “pretty pathetic figure” byMakhija’s own admission. “We sold4,200 copies of our album since2008, but it’s little more than a vis­iting card,” says Dasgupta. “But it’snot useless. It gives you legitimacyand it has the essence of a bandmore than an MP3 ever will.”

Dasgupta suggests a new set ofmetrics that a band must monitor.“You have to check things like thenumber of MySpace hits your sitegets,” he says. “Or how many fanswill turn up if you announce a gig onyour blog, or how many will makethe trip from other cities if you sayyou’re going to play asingle new song.”

PITCH PERFECTHow to keep the guitar strumming andcash registers ringing

MUSICBeing part of a rock band was never a lucrative careerchoice in India. But today's musicians are finding ingenious waysto earn more than their bread and butter

B Y K R I S H R A G H A V

krish.r@livemint.com·································

On 13 February, the Bangalore-based rock band Lounge Pira-nha tried an interesting financial

experiment.It announced that it was organizing a

“sponsor-free” gig at the AllianceFrançaise de Bangalore. The band wasputting together everything from thesound to the stage, and hoped to recovercosts through ticket sales and merchan-dise. Lead guitarist and vocalist AbhijeetTambe called it an experiment in “criti-cal mass”. “Do we have the critical massin Bangalore to sustain a band that playsoriginal music?” he wrote in a pieceposted online prior to the concert. “Thesuccess or failure of Saturday’s show willbe an indicator. Now, we shall see howmany people are willing to come outand buy a ticket for Rs200 for an eveningof good music.”

Around 200 people turned up for theconcert—and Lounge Piranha managedto break even.

The idea of a self-funded, do-it-your-self (DIY) show came easily to the five-year-old band. “We’ve always had anindie frame of mind,” Tambe told usover the phone. “We organized our owntour across the country in 2008 after therelease of our (self-funded) album(tit led, ironically enough, GoingNowhere), and we just thought now wasa good time to test the waters again.”

The band’s regular gigs at the localpub, Maya, where it played once amonth for a year and a half, saw steadilygrowing crowds and the band membersfelt confident of a dedicated fan follow-ing. “We’d see about 180 people turn up,so we thought this would work well. Wehave nothing against sponsors, really,but we understand that sponsors andclubs need to see their cash at the end ofthe day, and us bands have our ownneeds and ends,” says Tambe.

Organizing the gig was a revealingexperience for Tambe as the banddebated expenses, considered optionsand tried to cut costs smartly.

“Cost-cutting” may sound like astrange phrase for a rock band to use,but when the gigs dry up and the phonedoesn’t ring, there’s little else to do butprepare for financial drought.

“All bands here go through a period ofextreme financial unpredictability. Mostdon’t survive,” says Jishnu Dasgupta,bassist for Bangalore folk-rock bandSwarathma. “We’ve all had to cut costs,both in our personal and professionallives.” This means transporting delicateequipment on rickety buses and jam-

ming in cramped, claustrophobic roomswith unfriendly neighbours.

The economics of being a full-timeindependent band in India is uncertainat best and Dasgupta says the idealismof a rock-star life usually gives way,within a year, to the practical difficultiesof making ends meet. “It is not fair, Ithink,” he says, “to expect your band tomake money to support yourself finan-cially for the first three years at least.”

But bands across the country, such asLounge Piranha, have been trying toswim against this hostile tide, organizingand financing themselves in ingeniousways. It’s a difficult endeavour and aquick vox-pop style survey of bands intwo cities presents a grim picture.

“As a band, you earn peanuts, espe-cially if you’re playing niche, originalmusic in English,” says 54-year-oldJayashree Singh, who plays for the Kolk-ata bands Skinny Alley and Pinknoise.Singh has been singing in bands since1977 and is blunt about the conceit ofbeing a full-time band in India. “Youhave to have a steady source of incomewith another job. I think the only newfull-time rock stars are very young andstill live with their parents.”

Sahil Makhija, an almost-full-timerock star who is young and doesn’t livewith his parents, agrees. “Always keepyour day job,” says the frontman ofMumbai metal band Demonic Resur-rection. Luckily for Makhija, his day jobis closely related to his musical alterego. He’s a consultant with musicalinstruments retailer Furtados Musicand owns a record company,Demonstealer Records. “Anymoney you make from yourband is just an added bonus.”

Metal music is a niche cultin the country and metalbands usually find a clusterof die-hard fans. But even adedicated fan base hasn’tmade the genre a lucrativeone. “It was only three yearsago that we started gettingpaid for shows, earlier metalbands had to play gratis,” hesays. “And our fans…well, theaverage metalhead is between15-25 and cannot afford topay even for entry. These areguys for whom a Rs50 beer is ahuge investment.” On a goodday, Makhija says, a new bandcan earn Rs8,000-10,000 for agig, but such days are few and farbetween. An average gig brings inhalf that and even those arespread out uncertainly. “If I factorin the cost of upkeep and trans-

port, we’d be running at a pretty misera-ble loss,” he says.

The kind of music a band plays alsohas a bearing on how well it does.“We’ve managed pretty well, being afull-time band,” says Inderpreet Singh ofthe Delhi band, Faridkot. “My guess isbecause we sing in Hindi, we’re accessi-ble to a much larger audience.” Faridkotcame into prominence after being fea-tured on Channel V’s Launchpad, theIndian Idol for rock bands. The bandhas since been touring consistently,playing up to six shows a month, and isreleasing its debut album in a fewmonths. “Shows like Launchpad reallyhelped us—it’s national television, afterall. Even if 1% of the people watchingthat show came out and saw us live,we’d be comfortable,” Singh says.

The sprouting of urban clubs hashelped the situation somewhat, withmore venues opening up for bands.Sponsors are starting to appear. Beerbrand Tuborg sponsored a series ofmetal concerts across the country in2009, in which Makhija participated.Veteran rockers Zero’s reunion tour wassponsored by accessories brand Fast-track in December.

There’s also been a shift in the audi-ence, with a growing contin-

gent of music fans demand-ing, even appreciating, origi-

nal music over covers. “Whenyou don’t have original music,

you have nothing to sell,” saysVijay Nair, co-founder of artist

management firm Only MuchLouder, or OML. “You play covers,

then your audience isn’t a fan of

you, they’re just Pink Floyd fans.”“It’s when you start making your

own music that you,shall we say, emergeon to the scene,”says Abhijit Nam-

boodiripad, managerof Kochi-based rock

band Motherjane. Mother-jane is among the most popu-

lar Indian bands on the live cir-cuit, attracting crowds of 700

to 1,000 people to itsshows. The band works

with an interestingb u s i n e s s m o d e l .

“ T h e y ’ r e p a i d amonthly salary by

their artist man-

agement firm (a company called Aum-i-Artistes Private Ltd), under the stipula-tion that they deliver three albums oforiginal material by 2013,” says Nam-boodiripad. This arrangement, he says,helps them focus on the music, leavingthe organizational headaches to the firm,which sets up around seven shows amonth for the band.

Nair says the emergence of this kindof “industry” around Indian rock bands,of artist managers, sound companiesand event management firms, is ahealthy sign of growth. “The scene isgrowing and if you’re good at what youdo—you can break through the clutter.”There’s a growing sense of indie “spirit”,he says, that’s defining the kind of musiccoming out of it.

Lounge Piranha’s inspiration for thegig came partly from Bangalore’s nowdefunct “Freedom Jam” concerts. Start-ing in 1997, the free monthly concertsran for a decade, buoyed by “sponsor-ship and philanthrophy”. “But the hand-icap there was the fact that it was free,”says Tambe. “As a result, professionalbands never took it seriously and it wasviewed as a largely amateur festival.”

The band approached things differ-ently for its own DIY effort. “We adver-tised heavily on the Internet. We kickedup a fuss about it—made sure peopleknew we were taking a risk, and that itwas a big deal,” Tambe says.

Posters for the show went up in localpubs and across the Internet, and sing-er-songwriter Gowri and Hyderabad’s

Native Tongue were also signed on forthe show. “It was really nice of them,”says Tambe. “They weren’t paid squatfor this—but we agreed to take care oftheir accommodation and transport.”

“I think 200 is the magic number,”says Tambe. “We managed to covermost of our costs and pocketed the bitwe made from merchandise as well. Itwas a real dose of confidence.”

The band is eager to try more suchshows, even hit other cities where ithopes to build a fan base. Tambe is hop-ing to prove another point—that bandsdon’t need to settle just for playing inpubs and colleges.

“Bands are used to this culture of pig-gybacking on pubs and college festivals.But if they set their expectations to just

that, it’s their loss,” he says. The band isnow looking for groups in other cities toorganize similar gigs and for the idea ofself-funded shows to “catch on andbecome a movement”.

“We’re brought up in an environmentof listening to foreign music—it’s thelocal bands who have to break thismould,” he says. Tambe remembersattending an OML-organized “uncon-ference” in November. “One Britishmusic producer speaking there said thatthe vibe and energy in Indian rock rightnow is very similar to Britain in the late1960s, around the time the pub bandsbecame international superstars,” hesays. “Something’s about to happen.The indie music scene is going toexplode. We’re just turning the corner.”

String theory: Banga­lore band Lounge

Piranha and; (below)vocalist Vasu Dixit

of Swarathma.

Rockonomics

THE LOUNGE PIRANHA METHODENTRYWe charged Rs200 for entry, because 100bucks for three bands is just super cheap andno one will take you seriously. Around 200people turned up, which helped us break evenpretty much—so I’m guessing 200 is themagic number that bands would want to hit.

VENUEHiring an auditorium can cost you any­thing between Rs0 to Rs20,000 (rang­

Abhijeet Tambe ofLounge Piranha gives

us a breakdown of theband’s sponsor­free gig

ing in respectability and capacity fromsomeone’s terrace to a professionalstage). Some venues may know you andmay be willing to support your cause abit, and throw in a discount—but watchout for any strings that they mightcome attached with.

SOUNDFor sound, you will have to be willing tospend a lot. Not less than

Rs10,000­15,000, going up to Rs30,000(the lower limit will give you the acousticfidelity of a ‘shaadi’ band, but hey, it’sindie music—so lo–fi is cool).

SUPPORTING ACTSIf you’re getting bands from other cit­ies—plonk down about Rs10,000 forthat. Cut costs by making them crash atyour place and get them on a bus ortrain instead of a flight. Alternatively,

just go for other local bands.

SECRET INCOMESell merchandise. It’s a secret source ofincome that we keep trying to tell otherbands about. T­shirts, mugs, albums,posters—when you’ve got an audience of200 people, it’s a good audience and youcan spread your music, and sell yourstuff. It’s the sort of place where peoplewill pay attention to this stuff.

PERVEZ RAJAN

KUNAL KAKODKAR