At the moment we realize a big mistake we had done before leaving the practice room in Gongabu. We forget to tune the guitars. Hence it obviously became an irritating process tuning up our guitars to the required pitch, but more than that, we were notably getting late. It was already quarter to eight when we restarted our show. It had just been a few days after we had performed in a metal concert in Mahendra Police club and we were still into metal madness right until then, so we had to work out a great gap within just four days to come back to stream of romantic and commercial restaurants songs.


It had even become more difficult sad we were restricted only to play Nepali songs at this place whereas we had spent more than one month just practicing English songs for performing in other restaurants and bars. Hence, we could do nothing but try our best as Roshan forgot few of the lyrics from time to time and so did all of us. On the notes and beats as we tried to repeat the songs that we had practiced for playing Deusi on tihar a year ago. It was getting a little bit moody after our second break as we were really into some of our cool blues numbers. During this time I was deprived of using any guitar affects as my faithful guitar jack had forsaken me and we had forgotten to bring an extra jack for such an unforeseen hitch.

Finally it was all going to be like what we had planned, as we were palying our back up songs until our manager arrived. All of us were surprised to hear from him that we had to end our show early at nine pm. I guess it was because of the police who was complaining about something and frantically waving his hand towards us a few minutes ago. Well, whether we liked it or not, it had to end. Judging the show as audience ourselves, we felt looked like a bunch of frenzy phonics it was the most disappointing day of our ‘Thamel-music’ as we could not think of anything good and positive. It had been five pleading shows in Thamel for our band showing up for audition but for unfortunately none of the restaurants managers replied to us and all this time we were pretty tired of borrowing guitar effects and equipments from our friends just for the exhausting free shows and it did turn out to be a difficult talk to explain things back at home whenever we arrived late. I wonder how other bands manage it with their guardians. I guess we all face the same problems.

Making a profit out of music is pretty tough job in Nepal, especially in rock and heavy metal genres. Sometimes, I feel that people of early rock genre are too busy and obsessed earning money and spending an ‘out of rock’ lifestyle whereas it is us youths who are actively involved in playing rock and blues in every evening in the restaurants and pubs in cities like kathmandu, doing their cover songs and facing a cold yet, encouraging wind of change. There are many others problems for musicians like us and these problems are closely associated with today’s new cultural trends and economic slump. Though in today’s world rock music seems to have lost its significance, we all know that it is still not dead. And there is no one who can stop us from driving ourselves on the Highway to Hell!! With this feeling, we left Thamel that night, with a promise to return again and play.





BY GIRISH SUBESI
(The writer is the lead vocalist of the band
He wrote this article in 2002.)