How College Gigs are a Highway Ticket to Neanderthalism

With Rock & Roll thriving in the country, there has been a sprout in the number of raucous concerts at educational institutions. Karthik Iyengar gives a piece of his mind about them.

Every college gig I have had the displeasure of going to has ended with me leaving with an inexplicable urge to jump off a tall building. It all starts with me going to the gig with bloated expectations only to see them come crashing down like the climax of a generic CID episode. The whole fiasco ends with me repenting the frivolous waste of time and energy. This pathetic excuse for entertainment serves only two purposes:

To cover up for the other shitty events happening at the college, which are as boring as rat funerals.
To retard human evolution and create a dystopian universe where people are forced to live in caves and listen to Kumar Sanu songs.

Mostly, it’s the former, but you see where I’m getting at. These gigs often boast a deadly combination of horrendous sound, amateur bands and a ghoul-resembling host. Remotest of signs of genuine talent from the bands is crushed instantly by the hugely unappreciative and sometimes amusingly stationary audiences. Participating bands can be conveniently classified into one of the following categories:

Dude the sound sucked dude: The band which screws up a major part of the allotted time in the sound-check, and then innocently blames the elusive ‘Sound Guy’ for their troubles. Everyone has the same arrangement, fucking deal with it already.

I kill you: The brutal, growling trash/death/metal-core band with blood stained tee shirts. They earn a ton of laughs by the item-number loving audience who cannot comprehend the genre. Such bands can also be used as an effective weapon to disperse crowds creating the illusion of rabid dogs and pigs, thanks to the vocal growls.

What men want: The band with the hot lead singer chick, who usually can’t sing for shit. Gets lots of wolf-whistles and desi hoots. If the said singer performs western numbers, choicest words such as ‘Firangi Item’ are put in the mix. And if by some accident, if these guys win the contest, the judges can be immediately branded ‘Tharkis’.

Summer of ’69: The band which whores itself to the crowd by playing popular numbers. Exhibits absolute lack of rhythm and timing. No signs musical competence whatsoever, with the band heavily influenced by err..Ultimate-Guitar.com. And it’s no miracle that these guys are lovingly embraced by the audience.

Finger-Biting good: The serious looking band who look like they play in a mortuary in their spare time. Morbid expressions may be caused by extreme nervousness or years of listening to Progressive Rock music.

Macho men: The hard core band which heavily cusses and performs questionable antics on stage in an effort to look cool. Finally gets disqualified for doing the same. Can be seen pleading to the organizers with puppy-faces, abandoning all their awesome machismo.

Now, If you ever decide to visit one, blending into the crowd at the venue requires strict adherence of:

The 10 commandments of a college-gig goer

Thou shalt always diss the college thou art at.
Thou shalt always strive to find shady corners at the venue where thou shalt get high.
Thou shalt always covet long hair.
Thou shalt brag to your friends about the gig ASAP to improve thy coolness quotient.
Thou shalt treat anyone not wearing a black tee with contempt.
Thou shalt totally focus on the ‘Bhassist’ during an impressive guitar solo.
Thou shalt head bang and mosh even if it’s Beethoven playing.
Thou shalt post photos of thou at the gig on Facebook whist making the m/ gesture.
Thou shalt always try to compare rookie bands to Jimi Hendrix and Metallica.
Thou shalt look for seating arrangements at a metal gig.

Note 1: Stop counting the points to verify whether there were actually ten.

Note 2: For all those people who are going like “Hey dude, not all such gigs suck”, These are statistics son, you can’t argue with math.

Note 3: I know how you’re complaining about how opinionated this post is for a music magazine. Why you ask? Because I can!

Like batman, Karthik Iyenger comes out at night, shoots us articles and goes incognito. To save the world we think. He was last sighted at a bar playing a complex drinking game with Slash’s top hat.