Time for a change

Who: Avial
Where: Blue Frog
When: January 9, 2011
Verdict: Lukewarm show

Avial lead vocalist Tony John

In early 2007, when Avial described a scrumptious mish-mash of vegetables in a stew, and the word 'viral' was only associated with an infection, a Keralite friend based in New Jersey sent out a group mail about a Mallu rock band. It was a link to a grungy video and a headbanger song called Nada Nada. A band named Avial had made its online debut on YouTube.

The original video featuring gun-throated vocalist Anandraj Benjamin Paul had turned into a viral hit, but was soon lost in cyberspace. It went out with Paul's exit just before the band launched its spectacular debut album at the Bandra amphitheatre in 2008. The audience gathered at the open-air venue and swelled with pride as they watched Avial perform songs that drew from traditional Malayalam folk music in a language most of them hadn't heard before.

It was like Rabbi Shergill all over again, except Malayalam didn't enjoy the mass appeal that Bollywood brought to Punjabi, and these four men on stage didn't bother with English, unlike Shergill, who switched to English to introduce his music. For Avial, it was all Malayalam or nothing.

Tony John moved out of the shadows and away from his turntable to lead the band as a vocalist. Even back then, it was his cocky stage presence that turned audiences on. He made bald look cool, Malayalam sound cool; and being in a rock band was just secondary. His transition to vocalist could not have been easy. The cracks were audible but it was too early to judge.

Up next was an audition for Brit producer John Leckie, who was in India to work with young bands and practise some of his superb studio craft that had worked for bands such as Radiohead and The Verve. Avial were the first to go up on stage at the British Council auditorium and while Leckie recognised the potential of the bandu00a0-- original songwriting and tight arrangements, it was hard to miss the band's weak spotu00a0-- vocals.

Yet, this non-public performance was easy to put away when Avial wasn't selectedu00a0-- the acoustics sucked, it's tough being the first band on stage and it's time to leave even before you warm up. We didn't mind making excuses.

After two years of no-show in Mumbai, audiences were getting testy. Avial skipped Mumbai for Dubai. Finally, the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology, a suburban Mumbai college convinced the band to grace their college festival Zodiac in 2010. College fests are known for painfully poor sound set-ups, but this one wasn't going to win Avial any favour this time. John just couldn't hold his vocals up any longer so he pulled off a tricku00a0-- he made his worshipful audience sing along to most tracks.u00a0

Last Sunday, the band returned to Mumbai to launch its new website and promo a new song titled, Ayyo, at Blue Frog. The club, as we know it, is one of the best-engineered spaces in the city for a gig. The strain on vocals was all too clear. John still had the coolest stage act ever in his lungi, microphone stand-flipping avatar, but it was guitarist Rex Vijayan who was the hero with his flawless, rousing face-saving interludes every time John stepped backstage to rest his throat and a swig, maybe.

Avial couldn't have asked for a better audienceu00a0-- front row Malayalis hooting foru00a0 kuppi (booze) and kallu (toddy) as they sang choruses word for word. Vocalist Neha S Nair, unheard of till that night, shared stage with Avial supporting John on tracks such as Karukara. The night's WTF moment happened when Nair performed Nagumomu, a pure classical Tyagaraja number bang in the middle of the Avial set.

John had disappeared backstage, again. The audience stayed faithful, played along until the Chekele encore, doing John's worku00a0singing as the lead vocalist danced on stage.

But it was clear that if you weren't an Avial fan, the weekend gig wouldn't have won the band any new followers. It's too soon for the fun to stop. It would be a shame to start missing Anandraj Benjamin Paul. If John can't be possessed by the Malayali punk spirit that drove him to compose the seminal track Nada Nada, it's time to go back to the turntable.