Playback Time!!!

It's a violent pornography! Choking chicks and SODOMY! The kinda shit you get on your TV!

Serj Tankian, the frontman of System Of A Down, shouts into my ears while I hear other yells too. My mum's. She's threatening to sue me against criminal charges of room untidiness for the (n-1)th time.


"Abhi, I'm coming there... What the hell are you doing??"

*Comes inside*


"Oh...still listening to that jhaang jhaang, are we?"

Though my headphones aren't those Bose Noise Cancellation type, I pretend I can't hear anything else except Serj's guttural screaming amidst blaring guitars and high decibel drums.



"Abhi!! Last time I'm saying this!"

Okay madam, you win.. I know my nth time has come...

"Amma, no jhaang jhaang bang bang. It has a name. Rock music"

"Nonsense is nonsense, whatever the name... Clean up the room in 15 minutes, there would be some guests"

Phooey... "Alright.."



Dhan-Te-Nan!!
Room cleaned up! I mean...all the garbage is hidden in very unlikely places. Very. So what do I do now? I contemplate telling my mum I have this ever-so-important work that wouldn't happen without my presence. But as with every mother in the universe (Ok, at least on earth. Dunno much about aliens' maternal traits), son playing a respecting, and respectable, host is one of the prime things in her household constitution (which, by the way, is to be treated with even more respect). My legs are tied! I can't go anywhere!!

Fuming loud enough for her to notice, I switch on my PC and start downloading random music. Yaah, I do download free (p..p..pirated, that is) music. If I had to buy all my collection, I'd have to rob the World Bank.

Now while those tracks get downloaded, I wanna talk to you guys about something. The current music scene. There's so much 100% concentrated bullcrap out there that finding some sensible stuff is close to finding fat in an FTV model's diet.

Let's begin with Hip Hop. I can remember a few modern rappers...Eminem, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Li'l Wayne, Akon, 50 Cent...yeah that's about it. For more names, ask any twelve year old in your neighborhood. He'd give you a disgusted look and say, "Yo dunn noe dem?? Dey er kewwl buddyyy!!!". Hip Hop actually originated as an anti-establishment genre in the late '70s and the early '80s,mainly by the black section in America's slums, who were looked down upon. They used it as a weapon to fight for their basic human rights in the white-dominated society. But is that the case now? All that the above mentioned rappers ever rap, or rather crap, about is "banging hoes and bitches". And that is "kewl" to most of the world's population. This makes these "homies" celebrities overnight, even though they have zilch talent...and their capitalistic record companies get bloody rich by producing shit. Wonderful, ain't it?

Next is the 'pink pop' trend. Don't get what I'm talking about? Watch Disney Channel everyday. You'll come across a bunch of teenagers calling themselves hip rockstars, though what they make hardly qualifies as music...leave alone rock. All their meaningless tracks sound awfully same. The Jonas Faggots, Banana Montana, Gay School Musical...you name them! What they're promoting is a fake culture that 'inspires' kids to be bland, shallow, artificial and to live fancy, starry starry lives. I had got so fed up with all this shit, and its effect on the music culture, that it felt really good when my favorite activist band Rage Against The Machine got UK Christmas No.1 last year, beating reality show X-Factor's winner Joe McElderry by a major difference. Poor Simon Cowell, the producer behind this X-Factor popstar manufacture, sulked like a five year old robbed of his prized lollipop when his 'product' lost the race. In Tom Morello's (the lead guitarist of RATM) words, "It's a victory over bland pop mediocrity". The track which brought them, and true music fans around the globe, this victory is a song that's as old as me now...'Killing in the Name', a brutal funk metal delight that talks about the ill-treatment meted out to soldiers in the U.S. Army. Now that's what you call REAL music.

By saying this, I don't mean Rock and Metal are superior genres or political and activist lyrics alone make meaningful stuff. Whatever the genre, the artists should be talented enough to reinvent themselves creatively, giving birth to innovative songs...and thoughtful enough to write about things that really matter and truly make a difference.
This, and this alone, qualifies as music. Nothing else does.

So plug in guys...it's playback time!!!