On the twenty sixth of June, PTI reported the death of Jonathan Fernandes, drummer for debutant band Reverrse Polarity, Leaving the Mumbai music community reeling with indignation and shock.
If you were to be in Delhi, and were to read any of the major dailies, you’d learn of the death of a certain Jonathan ‘Joseph’ (sic ) Ferdandes the last night, whilst allegedly dead drunk. He allegedly fell from the seventh floor balcony of his friend’s party.
Only, that was not his name.
Jonathan Joshua Fernandes was twenty four years old. And he was a pilot. At 12. 30 am on Sunday the twenty sixth of June, he fell from the seventh floor of a building in Delhi, and promptly died. He was “heavily drunk”. These, according to your NDTV and your Times of India, are the facts. The rest is detail.
Jonathan Joshua Fernandes’ favourite music was SKA and punk-rock. He had a penchant for hats of questionable taste. His band had a Wikipedia page that was created and deleted on the same day because it didn’t “indicate importance or significance of a group/company/etc”. But judging from the hundred and fifty comments of outrage on the article, he seems to have been a pretty cool guy all around.
Jonathan Joshua Fernandes’ was the drummer for Reverrse Polarity. If you own a telly then you will remember them as the unlikely winners of Channel V’s Launchpad 3. They’re metal. They do a lot of performances in Mumbai, and they were working on their debut album. They have been unfairly compared to The Scribe.
In the band, they called him “ The Drumming Machine.” Every video that I’ve seen of him, his mouth is half hanging open, an intense look of concentration on his face, as he beat the five colours of shit out of the drums. He’s played for a lot of bands over a lot of genre’s through the years : Dream Out Loud (Pop), Zodiac (Alternative Rock) and Anhad (Hindi). And of all of Reverrse Polarity, he looked the least grown up.
[youtube_video id=yAnztTlg1qE]
The drumming machine and friends, at launchpad. R.I.P
After his death a media furor has been unleashed about sensationalist journalism, his friends and family demanding a retraction of the offending article, demanding that there was no alcohol found in his body post mortem ( there wasn’t ) and how he was not actually a pilot yet but training to be one ( he was.) One look at their facebook page tells you the enormous amounts of angst and misdirected anger that has been generated at the false reportage.
But the important thing is, that he made some music that a bunch of people liked. From the songs he performed, “Johnny Horny” and “Zombies are good for your health”, he seems to have had fun. Vishwesh Krishnamurthy, vocalist for The Scribe is puttuing together a tribute concert in his memory so he is survived by friends and family who seem to miss him. Hopefully he will be remembered.
And that is all.
