Zebediah Plush's music

I wonder why I talk about bands and mention their website but fail to download music. (Duh!)

I downloaded two songs of Zebediah Plush from their website and a couple of clips. (Click on the downloads hyperlink at the top of the page.)

I like the way they sound. I should be there tonight at Alliance to listen to them live. (Touchwood.)

Also, their first album is called Afterlaughs (Rs. 150 only), which I guess explains the name of tonight's show. Here's what they say about the name of the album:

The title "Afterlaughs" is a tribute to the band's ineffable infatuation with bad punning, atrocious humour and laughing at life in retrospect.

If I hear them tonight, you'll hear about it soon enough.

Live! TAAQ and Zebediah Plush

I heard about this from a friend yesterday and then got an email today from the TAAQ mailing list. From the email:

THE LAST LAUGH

Zebediah Plush & Thermal and a Quarter Live in Concert

Alliance Francaise de Bangalore
June 30, 7 pm
Tickets: Rs 49.99 (available at the venue)

For details call +91-98860-61976

I wonder why they're calling it The Last Laugh.

Windsor, The Pub

It's amazing that you (I) can live in a city for four years and not know of the existence of a restaurant, one that serves delicious food.

Which brings me to reason no. 17999 of why you should have friends. Friends will tell you about good restaurants and take you there.

My friend Yogi suggested Windsor, The Pub, last night and I had a great time there. As far as I am aware there is no connection between this restaurant and Windsor Manor, which is a five star hotel.

Since my friend had been there, he suggested the Jerky Long Horn (I hope I got the name right), which was thin strips of meat (I decline to name the animal, wink, wink), nice and tender, with a lovely cream-coloured dip. Fabulous.

We also had the Malabar chicken, which was spicy, chicken, with the predominant flavour of cloves. Ahh. We also had spicy pork sausages were actually pork frankfurters fried with pepper and onions. (For the record, you get way better sausages in Hyderabad than in Bangalore. Come to Hyderabad and I'll prove it.)

After all those starters, we still had space for dinner, and we ordered a fish curry and two varieties of chicken curry. In Windsor, they'll serve you a choice of apams, parota (the Kerala kind), or sannas, so we had all three.

That stuff was good too but it was blown away by the spicy chilli garlic toast. (I don't have the menu with me, so please don't shoot me if the name is not exactly right when you visit the restaurant.) I took a bite and the flavour of the cheese exploded on to my tongue. And what a lovely explosion it was! If you happen to go there, please try this dish without fail and save me a couple of slices.

So, it was an extremely satisfying meal, and though the music was at times slightly louder than I'd like, I'd love to go there again.

Windsor, The Pub, is in Vasanthnagar, in Bangalore.

PS: The restaurant's name sounds like a Hindi movie title with those English sub-titles.

Local Vocals at Coffee Day

Since !_!_!_! has already blogged about Local Vocals, I thought I'd just add a few observations of my own.

With only one rhythm guitarist and a multitude of voices, some singing harmonies, some percussion (see what you missed?), Local Vocals managed to sound awesome. The quirky humour and the mixing of languages (they sang in English, Tamil, and Hindi) is something I've never seen.

They brought the house down (twice) with The Alphabet song, which was hilarious! While that song and Mala stood out, their other numbers (they sang a Doobie Brothers number too) were really good. It was obvious that the group was having fun and it showed in their music. I had a blast.

It's a pity though that we won't get to hear them again.

Delectable West Indian Food

My friend Max (name changed ever so slightly) told me the other day that I should be writing about restaurants on this blog and I realised that I hadn't done enough of that. So, Max, this one's for you.

If you've never tried West Indian food or if you have and love it, then you must go to Sue's Place. (Even the West Indian team ate there on their last tour to India.)

The buffets at Sue's Place are a feast with something for everyone. You start off with a soup and if that's not your thing, go for the salads. Sue's makes some of the best salads I've eaten. You have a range of salads, from plain veggie salads to egg salads to chicken salads. Hope you've got some more room because we're just getting started.

This past Sunday, they had fish cutlets and some pork ribs. The cutlets were good, the ribs were divine. The meat was tender, not overcooked (I don't know how they do it) and delicious. Then, there was jerk chicken, which is a slow-cooked West Indian chicken (another delicious dish), and crab curry. All ye crab lovers, knock yourselves out.

They had a vegetable biryani and plain rice to go with the gravy. There were a few vegetarian dishes as well, but I didn't taste a single one. Where's the space for so much stuff anyway?

I must not forget to mention the fried banana. Sweet, succulent bananas, deep fried, should've been a dessert. (This place is not for people who want to lose weight.)

I'm probably missing something, but this is not a menu right?

The dessert was a kind of chocolate cake-fudge, which was slightly warm and chewy. Yum. The piece de resistance was the coconut custard pudding (I'm making up the name here) which tasted like a mix of sweet tender coconut water and caramel custard, without the caramel. I had about 8 slices.

The cost of this buffet? Rs. 200 + taxes. Quite reasonable for the amount of choices and the quality of the food.

Sue's Place has a buffet every day (lunch) and for dinner on Friday and Saturday. They also have a kick-ass menu, which has dishes like Trinidadi Dal Roti with different curries and a number of chicken and fish dishes.

If you're going for the first time, I recommend the buffet. There's a lot of stuff to be tried and you can sample different kinds of food and get a taste for some wonderful West Indian food.

Sue's Place is in Indiranagar, off 100 Feet road. You can call them and ask for directions because it'll take me a few lines to explain and you'll probably get lost anyway. The number is (080) 2525 2494.

Le Fete De Musique

So, I don't know French all that well. But, I do know (or so I think) that Alliance Francaise (in Bangalore) is having their (annual?) festival of music this Saturday (18th June) from 6.00 pm onwards (I think). Zebediah Plush is one of the bands that's supposed to play. I can't remember the other bands. Not that they are not worth remembering, I just can't remember.

There's a reason I'm giving you such precise details. A friend and I were walking on Brigade road, and I saw this poster lying on the footpath. I don't normally pick up posters, but this looked interesting, so I picked it up and realised that it was a poster for the Alliance Francaise music festival. Okay, so everything else but the title was written in English. In spite of being tempted, I didn't roll the poster up and put it in my bag. If I'd done that, I could've told you the names of all the bands. I left it in a nice place though, where someone else could do what I didn't.

You'll can contact Alliance for more information. I'm sure they'll give you the correct information. Hopefully.

'S' Under The Stars & Local Vocals

I did go to Barista last evening. (I'm a sucker for live music.)

The great mystery was solved. In 'S' Under The Stars, Sushma's the vocalist and Shwetha's the guitarist and vocalist. Shwetha's acoustic guitar had a nice tone and she played some nice rhythms that set my feet tapping. Sushma's got a voice that was a bit shrill sometimes but the girl has quite the range. The best sound from the band was when they had one performing harmonies and the other with lead vocals (they switched in some songs which was novel). My favourites--Black Velvet, One of Us, Angel, and Stupid Cupid. The disappointment--they only performed covers. They do have talent though, I was really impressed with Sushma's vocals.

Then, there was this other band called Local Vocals, which is a band from Christ college. They came in during a break and kicked ass. Three vocalists and one guitarist, who had a nice rhythm going (reminded me of Ice-cream man by Van Halen) on one of the song. They sang in Tamil, they sang in Hindi, they sang in English, they had fun and they made the crowd laugh. And they sounded different, good different.

I spoke to one of the guys in the band and he told me that they're playing their last concert next Saturday, June 18th, in the Coffee Day at Cunningham road. (Nope, I can't give you directions.) At 6.00 -- 6.30 pm is what he said. I'm going to try and make it because I've not heard a band that sounds like them.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith in Symphony

Put Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie together and you'd hope that the screen would sizzle. It does, a little, but not as much as it could. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is good or okay depending on what you expect from it. Me, I thought it was okay, but it could've been a great movie. I felt that after a great start (post intermission) it didn't really take off to where it could've. It's one of those movies that you enjoy when you see but when you think about it later on, you realise that it's not as good as you initially thought.

This review in The Globe and Mail pretty much nailed how I felt after seeing the movie, so please read it if you want to know more about the movie.

There were a bunch of college kids (cutting classes I am sure) in the theatre. When Pitt and Jolie first came on to the screen, they yelled like crazy. I missed the dialogue in the first couple of scenes, it was so loud.

PS: In a related note, Symphony's ticket clerks are probably the rudest I've ever seen.

Barista Unplugged (June 10th)

I got an email from Rave announcing that there's another "edition" of Barista Unplugged this weekend.

Where?: Barista, St. Mark's Road (Bangalore)

When?: June 10th 2005 from 7 pm (Last time they started around 7.45 pm)

Who's playing?: Sushma and Shweta (That's all the email said. I'm as clueless as you)

What's it called?: 'S' Under The Stars Live

I don't know if I'll be going, but I'll try to. It sounds interesting. If you want to find out more, call Barista at (080) 5151 0131.

Rave on Indian Rock and Indian Idol

I had mentioned Rave India sometime back on this blog. I just read two articles on their website and enjoyed them both.

The first one's called The Year of Indian Rock and talks primarily about TAAQ and Pralay (I'd never heard of them before) but mentions a lot of other bands as well. Here's an excerpt:

A few months back, when Uday Benegal made the alarming prediction that Indian rock was dying, we decided to hitch a ride with the paramedics to check out what was really happening. Though he was right on many counts, we found out Uday was wrong about the death of Indian rock. It is alive and kicking serious butt.

The second one's about Abhijeet Sawant, the Indian Idol, and is nice, feel-good story about the guy. Heck, I should buy his album, but since he's doing so well, I figure I'll support the lesser-known bands.

But, I think I should subscribe to Rave. If only I can get away from this computer.