Anish Nadh’s Blog

Slain eventually became one of the headlining bands in the Independence Day Freedom Jam, the music festival organized by the guys at Sunday Jam. This was held at Palace Grounds and this was the biggest show I have ever played! I knew my band was awesome as the crowd loved it! We played Angel in the sky, Gates of Hell, More than Conquerers and the band title song Slain.  There’s a video of this on YouTube! Link here:  https://youtu.be/tdPOqxpa1sI?si=t8rcGSWfa_6hQTJ7 https://youtu.be/zxRFI1eoWxw?si=3-fx7O2M_F79HSXr

 Jared was in our band slain when he was just thirteen years old. He is an amazing drummer! We used to call him karadi as it rhymed with Freddy, his nick name. Freddy wasn’t a drum machine, he could get any beat, on any subdivision and had a thorough knowledge of beat subdivisions and poly rhythm. He could drown the guitars down and break ear drums with his drumming! It was strange playing with a child. Most venues didn’t allow kids, but Freddy was an exception, they never asked. 

 Slain was the first band that worked regularly. After an 8 hour shift I went to Judah’s dad’s studio for rehersals, we would practice each song with harmony, stance and everything! We were one hard working band. By the time I was done with rehearsals it would be 8:00 or 9:00 pm and this would repeat. I never had the time to practice and the only time I got was with the band rehearsals. I still have no clue as to how I found the energy to do this! 

Slain practiced hard to get the shows. One of the shows was Sunday jams that happened once a month on the first Sunday of every month. This concert was free, often sponsored by brands. Each band got 30 minutes on stage that included soundcheck.  While we were doing one of the sound checks, the audience started heckling! Calling Bryden a Hippo! While we huddled together, pre show, Bryden shared that he was disturbed by the audience heckling. We had our faces painted and I felt very comfortable behind the mask! But as we started playing, we sounded so good, that the heckling crowd were just silent,  When it was time for Bryden’s solos, there had their jaws dropped to the floor. It felt good to have won the crowd! Ever since that show, we had everyone’s respect.

Bryden was the guitarist of St Joseph’s P U College. The band was called Shamans! Judah had heard of his guitar playing prowess and offered him a deal he couldn’t refuse! Be the guitarist of Slain! Bryden was amazing! He was playing Iron Maiden solos with his eyes closed. What I liked about Bryden was he also was into Acapella and pop music like MLTR.  He was this tall huge guy! We spent lot of time playing music and talked very less. The only thing we spoke about was about bands. I had the amazing opportunity of introducing Nuno’s music from extreme to Bryden! He still thanks me for it from time to time. I have one incident that deserves a separate blog post, that and more later! 

Now that Stan was not in the band anymore, Judah asked me to play the guitar! I was already getting into the whole Steve Vai, Extreme  & Mr big kind of music, but Judah was more into the death metal. He was quite smart to use this genre to reel in the Christian crowd.  We suddenly had a gig and I had to step in! I played a sick lick and told Judah this was inspired by the prodigal son, so we wrote Prodigal and Gates of Hell we had a few other songs from the previous line up. These songs were quite progressive and had some serious riffing!  I was not a moving rockstar, Judah taught me how to stand with feet apart and keep my guitar low! He taught me to rock on stage. Naresh also joined the band as the new Bassist! Now we had a full band. I did mess up a few licks but I was so embarrassed at the end of the show. Everyone said it was great but I went hiding, as I thought everyone were saying it just to be nice.  Judah told me to be confidence, and gave me all the support. But he had a

 Judah wanted to bring in new members in the band and because I had played classical guitar he asked me if I wanted to play bass in the band. I refused at first but Stephen convinced me and I was in a band and I had played no bass other than Jayanth uncle’s red bass. I played on borrowed bass, mostly from Naresh! The lineup now had Stanley on guitars, Jared on drums, Judah on keys and vocals and myself on bass. We had a few gigs, I don’t recall any of them, but these were small gigs. I was not quite into the metal, head banging and growling that Slain did at the time, but I went with it, the crowd seemed to be liking it. Stanley left the band soon and suddenly we had no guitarist. 

Stephen wanted Petrucci’s “State of Grace” played during the bridal march, at his sister’s wedding. That’s how I met Judah. It was him on the piano and myself on the electric. I had my trusty Supra distortion all wired up and ready! We never had much practice! But Judah was amazing and an intuitive player. He was just 16 at the time and was already playing amazing arpeggios. Stephen guided him through the chord changes and he nailed it.  Judah was quick to tell me about his band Slain and how they were winning college fests! Being the  college fest victor myself, I wanted to tell him winning college fests were nothing! Instead I told him that, there’s a band called “Haven” if you can beat them, you’ve made it. I never thought they will beat the band. He made it his personal mission to beat them.  Few months later I get a call, it was Judah! (By now I had a basic Sony Ericsson phone) “We beat Haven”. The news papers had the original members of Slain on page 3 the next day! 

Stephen was my friend from school. In the assembly we stood together, he was slightly taller than me. He played a little bit of guitar and we sometimes talked about chords. After I moved to Kammanahalli, I was near Stephen’s place. We jammed on a few songs, I also showed him some chords. Stephen gave me the GP4 software, and I was on it, learning songs, doing exercises! It was an amazing software, that had tabs of almost any song you could think about.  Stephen and I played a lot of guitar in college, we were called in to play invocation songs every time there was a college event at KJC. We also started a gospel group called signature which later had Bryden Lewis taking over after we passed out of college.  Stephen also invited me to play at his sister’s wedding march with A keyboard wizard kid in his 11th  standard!  That’s how I met Judah! 

 After my little adventure at the YFC camp, some friends wanted to make a band! Stephen, Johnin and myself called ourselves Stones Cry Out. We were also joined by two of Stephen’s friends. I don’t remember their names, but we practiced a few DC Talk songs, In the light and What if I stumble, we played this as Coffee House. 

 This was a fun camp that Johnin took me to. He paid for my tickets as well. Not everyone knew I played classical guitar, so I held back when they were taking names for the talent night. There were these over enthusiastic Hyderabadi gang who were cheering and booing others off stage. So I took it personally and booed them off stage, they also sucked and no one liked them anyway. There was a cute girl there in their gang. She challenged me, saying instead of booing others off stage i needed to have some guts to be on stage, and she said “ learn to respect others talents”  So my friends signed me up and they called my name. I played my own composition with some jazz chords and I named it “Learn to respect others talents”. As everyone else hated them, my piece was a big hit and everyone loved the fingerstyle guitar that I played. I became quite popular at camp overnight.  This girl came to me the next night saying she wanted to talk to me. I said “I don’t want to talk to you” and walked a

Juliana David was leaving to UK, and she gave me her yamaha guitar! It was an amazing guitar! It even came with a tremolo bar, but unlike the Floyd Rose tremolo this one could only drop the pitch. I started practsing on this guitar. I also bought a small Marshall amp! Though my playing did nit sound great, it was definitely and upgrade from the Givson. 

 I took my time to learn this song. I must’ve listened to this song a million times that I learnt the harmony and could also play the song fairly well. I always wanted to play this song because of the acoustic percussive style it had. Ebi showed me the intro to this then it was all me, rewinding and working on this song back to back. I enjoyed learning this song.   The ending tapping work was too fast for me but I eventually found the tabs to it and learnt it! This song was a hit when Mahesh and I performed this at almost all our acoustic gigs years later! 

BSM was quite strict about the student concerts. We were asked to attend all concerts held at alliance, but thanks to Kenny I could just sneak it. I saw many orchestral performances lead by Naranyanswami. Finally it was my turn to play. I played etude in D. I was so nervous, this time it was just me on stage! The spotlight was on me. I was very nervous, I somehow finished my performance and my nervousness showed. But everyone at BSM was quite encouraging and I only cared about what my teacher thought. He said I didn’t do very well. It was ok, he told me to improve next time and to pretend there was an audience listening at all times even when I’m rehearsing. This got the jitters out eventually!  So when I have a bad performance, I go back to this day and say I have come a long way! 

 As usual one day I was early to my guitar lessons at BSM and I heard amazing violin that happened to be from the guitar duel Steve Vai did for the movie Crossroads. I walked through the winding stairs towards the sound and saw someone playing with amazing virtuosity! It was Carol George. He’s very popular now in the film industry and he’s one of the main Violinists at the symphony orchestra of India!  His technique was flawless! He was travelling to Bangalore on all weekends to teach at BSM. I became a regular listener, just watching him play the pizzicato and the harmonics he is a true virtuoso. 

 I was walking back home one day after church and I saw a guitar body being hung out to dry at a workshop! I walked in and it was Arul’s guitar factory! He was building a classical guitar from scratch! He was kind enough to allow me in and he even showed me a harp guitar that he’s making for someone! I had recently seen Andy McKee playing one! He explained to me the process of making guitars and I became a frequent visitor there! He was kind enough to answer every question I had patiently. He made this shop in the memory of his son.  I would’ve learnt to make guitars from him had I stayed there in Kammanahalli.  Arul passed away during Covid. He had helped me set up my classical guitar and it still plays so good. 

 I listened to Frank Zappa after Kenny gave me a vcd, a documentary of Frank Zappa and the Mothers, it was a crazy documentary with an insight into how this band worked. Also I was very curious because Steve Vai was in that band!  Thermal and a Quarter also happend to quote them in their song Paper Puli! So I was quite fascinated. This documentary was not for me, but I discovered the exposure of politics in their art form 

BSM started getting a little too expensive for me. They increased the fee all of a sudden. I spoke to Kenny and he agreed to teach me free of cost. I learnt music at the new BSM campus and then moved to the Arul’s guide workshop.  It was only because of this I was able to progress much further in classical music. I later moved to jalahalli and the classes became difficult to do.  

 Kenny, was my music teacher at BSM! He was relieved that I already knew how to read. Kenny showed me through the formal way of learning the guitar. The posture, the foot stool, the nail files and everything! Classical guitar grounded me, I was not free to do whatever I liked! My teacher was not drunk anymore! He paid attention to everything, and corrected me. He gave me the discipline of what a music teacher must be. He instructed me to be 10 minutes early and prepare for the lesson by tuning and keeping my music stand and foot stool ready! I was an hour early, I practiced and spent time at the library at BSM, reading about Mozart, Beethoven and Paganini! None of them played classical guitar! I preferred learning to play caprice 24 over Tarrega! But Kenny brought my attention back to the book and helped me progress through the lessons quickly though the school wanted him to teach slowly to retain the students and the fee.  I have more to write about Kenny, more in the next one! 

 After a few more lessons with Along, I decided to join BSM, so I found out the address at #32 Cole’s Road and walked in! I met the receptionist Shanti, she told me I had to talk to the director, Mrs Aruna Sunderlal! I waited for her to arrive and there she met me, and was not happy to see me. She asked me where my parents were! And told me to come with them for admissions. I told her I will return, and spoke to my mom.  That weekend, my mom came with me, and spoke to her. Mrs Aruna Sunderlal was suddenly friendly and noticed that I had “thin long fingers” And I would make a good musician! I was thrilled to meet my music teacher, I specifically asked for Kenny because he was Along’s teacher. Mrs Shanti made us fill the form and collected the cheque for 3 months fee in advance. I decided to give it my all from that day. I’m grateful to my mom, I think she had to convince my dad a lot to help me do this.