Heard and Hearing ....

Blue Umbrella - Vishaal (2006)
A great album - 3 songs and the remaining are all teeny-weeny instrumentals. For those who might not know, Vishaal is a great Director too ....if Maqbool and Omkara are enough to form an opinion. Blue Umbrella, his latest offering is a children's movie and as he does for his other movies, he gives a great score here too.

Fatboy Slim - Greatest Hits (2006)
Great collection of their hits from the yester years .... luv the song ...'Brimfull of Asha' - song dedicated to Bollywood and more accurately Asha Bhosle)

Clash - The Singles
Nothing new. Hadn't heard them in a while ....so got this album recently and hearing them all over again.

Also hearing a lot of Salil Chaudhary .....

-A

Eureka Eureka.....

In the past 2 weeks or so, I have more or less arrived at some starting conclusions about - when actually I started getting interested in music or should I put it - that I first started to notice music.

No, its not A R Rahman with whom my earliest memories are associated to (though he certainly is the one who influenced me and turned me into an absolute music lover), nor RD Burman or SD Burman. As I think back and reflect on my past, I remember that I had heard, noticed and liked the songs from an old Dilip Kumar movie - 'Madhumati'. I also liked the songs from a Malayalam movie 'Chemeen' , the Hindi movies 'Anand', 'Chotti Si Baat', 'Rajnigandha', 'Half Ticket' ....and some other Malayalam movie songs.

The music was different, the arrangements were great and they had those unpredictable moments here and there in them. That's what probably caught my ears. Most of all, they were original and had a fun feel to them whether it was a slow number or a pacy one.

For anybody who has closely followed the music of this great music composer, I am sure he/she must have guess that I am speaking about none other than 'Salil Chaudhary'. Here was a music director, who like Rahman was much ahead of his times and was different. He dared to be different - he played with a varied number of sounds, instruments, unconventional beginning and ending of songs and choruses and a whole other aspects of music. I haven't heard much of his work to speak more about him like I can about Rahman. But all I can say is that Salil da (as I think he was known to a lot of people) was a great music composer - surely one of the greatest India has had.

So here's to Salil Chaudhary and his music ...A Salute and a Cheers.

You can read more about him and his music at http://www.salilda.com/

-A

Happy Birthday to the one and only ....

Birthday wishes to the man who to me

Defines music
Defines humility
Defines divinity
Defines life
Defines magic
Defines joy
Defines every good virtue that probably exists

and defines probably a lot more than I can put in words here


Happy Birthday to A R Rahman on his 41st birthday on Jan 6th .....

-A