A nationwide hunt for the best college bands culminates in the city this evening
Underground Authority rocking it on stage
There was a time till around 10 years ago when playing in a college festival was a pretty big deal for an indie band. The biggest acts in the country, say of the stature of Parikrama, would headline these events, and the crowd — comprising, for instance, engineering students generally so bogged down with coursework that they had little opportunity to let their hair down — would go frenzied with excitement. We personally remember catching Indian Ocean live in Kolkata’s Jadavpur University back in 2006 and the energy level of the packed audience was such that, for a moment, it seemed as if a riot would break out.
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But things changed gradually. The indie space broadened its scope to include multi-act festivals like NH7 Weekender. More and more venues started opening up to the idea of hosting live bands, giving them increased avenues to showcase their craft. And eventually, the advent of the electronic music boom hammered the final nail in the coffin of rock and roll at college festivals, because the likes of Nucleya now replaced Parikrama as the preferred headlining outfit.
That’s how the cookie has crumbled, but the point remains that all those moons ago, college fests were indeed a fertile space for indie aficionados to discover new acts — be it rock or metal — that were worth their salt. So, the fact that there is still at least one nationwide competition that is dedicated to finding the country’s best college bands means that all hope is not lost just yet. And after scouting the four regional zones and identifying the finalists, the grand finale of Parx Hunt 2018 will be held in the city this evening.
The acts that will vie for top honours are Hidden Identity (Kolkata), Oddsox (Chennai), Alchemy (Mumbai) and Common Thread (Delhi). They will each play a short set before the judges, after which Kolkata heavyweights Underground Authority (UA) will bring the curtains — and the roof — down with their action-packed brand of rap-rock music. Curiously, UA is a band that cut its teeth in college festivals when they first started around a decade ago. Dhanbad, Asansol, Durgapur, Bhubaneshwar — they considered no city or town infra dig enough to build their popularity in. And this eventually served them splendidly, because over the years, the sort of numbers they have racked up in their fan base would make most existing indie bands pale in comparison (their Facebook page has 2.4 lakh likes, for example).
But when we speak to Adil Rashid, UA’s guitarist, he agrees that the heydays of rock music in college festivals are well and truly behind us. "I think that the graph of such fests has properly dipped. I mean, when we were doing these competitions, the headlining act was the highlight of the festival. It was also a place where people actually searched for indie music. But the nature of the beast is such that Bollywood artistes have started playing with bands now. And colleges are getting more sponsorship money than ever before. So, they have to justify it either by getting a famous [and not indie] name, or by inviting a popular DJ to cash in on the electronic music rage," he says, pointing out how the times indeed are a- changin’.
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