Of trials and Tribu'lations!

Have you ever gone to a club and wanted to hear the songs by your favourite artists and bands? Well, even though it's impossible to bring them back to life or for some even bring them to the country. But, recently many bands in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru have been coming up with performances that tribute your favourite bands like Pink Floyd, Guns n' Roses, Coldplay and artists like Michael Jackson and Bon Jovi.  Geeth Vaz, the lead guitarist from the nationally acclaimed band Lagori says, “It's a great concept and initiative because you've been following these artists ever since you have been into music. There's a great sense in having a crowd full of people gathered together totally dedicated to one band or one artist. And the best part is that we also love these bands and we're not just singing as singers but as followers giving a tribute to them.”

Speaking to the band Perfect Strangers and Debjeet Basu, the manager of the band talks about the two tributes the band performed, and shares their experience, “The thing about a tribute is that it's a like a package that is dedicated to a certain fan-following, it narrows down your market and gets those diehard fans of let's say Bryan Adams or Bon Jovi. There's a lot of nostalgia around these artists so we planned to dress up as an 80's band which the crowd really enjoyed." These tributes are so much more than just a random band doing covers of some songs but rather a full night dedicated to the songs that were sung by these artists. 

The band blueFROG All-stars curates artists and puts together these tributes. They have successfully organised tributes for bands like Coldplay, Guns n Roses, Pink Floyd and even MJ.  Kishan Balaji, the drummer in the band says, "Every tribute needs a different tone to the setting, which is why we make sure that we find the best in the town or even in the country. These are the songs we grew up listening to so it has to have a certain feel to it when we play it to the audience.”

The turn outs at these tributes are enormous! Many of these events witness about 300 to 600 people in the clubs and restaurants.  Richard Andrew, a musician from the Moksha Academy tells us what makes these tributes so special and says, “This trend is amazing because most of the tributes are from bands of the classic rock era thus giving this generation a taste of what the 70s and 80s were like.”