An Evening of Reunion - The Tankbund Blues Band is getting back On The Road. Remember when we had so much fun, out at those happy trails? It's that time again. The Tankbund Blues Band - it's a whisper from the past in a way, but the nth harmonics continue on. And, evolving from there, it’s quite a morphogenetic entity now. Some of the deck hands are ghosts, yes, but the fleet has a few material schooners as well, to accompany the Flying Dutchman.

When did it all begin? Some proto-vibrations were there in the late eighties, but essentially, it would tag back to one point in the early nineties. There was an open stage event at the YMCA in Secunderabad, India, where local performers were given time slots to do their stuff. Several pop acts did their thing, with due dosages of flash and pizzazz, but the crowd wasn't tuned in, somehow. Next, these guys came up, a drummer who was totally spooked, and probably looked like he’d just stepped out of a morgue, and a trio of nerds on the guitars who asked for folding chairs to sit down on. Then they announced something to the effect of "We're going to do a song called Hidden Treasure by a band called Traffic". And the sound technician at the side of the stage, he spontaneously erupted in whoops of joy, like as though an oxygen cylinder had been thrown at a drowning man. And the audience caught on as well. Well, that day the band didn't shake any trees or much else, what with the drummer coming down with frozen calf and ankle muscles, even for such a basic beat. But they did do a couple of originals following Traffic. And the audiences opened their hearts to them, gave them rope, and room to grow. That was the night The Tankbund Blues Band was born. They were not even called that yet, but the concept of triggering "Back o' Town Blues" where it was totally unexpected, it sealed the fate of that name. It was unexpected because, out there, there wasn’t much of a context for taking up classic rock as a medium. The only name that was heard of in India back then who were doing this stuff, was Rock Machine, later known as Indus Creed. But other than them, it was a few bands strewn around the country (many of them extremely gifted and talented no doubt, but essentially cover bands with maybe some original work in their back-pockets but nothing that reached out to the wider audiences), and pretty much no one else who was ready to make classic rock their primary thing in life. To be sure lots of really great stuff was going on in India around that time in other fronts, fusion, jazz etc., but not classic rock per se. Today the scene is quite different though, but that was the deal back then. In such a context, calling themselves a Blues Band was, so to speak, a brown man’s adaptation of the equation which the black man had with the white man run world. Inter-positioned with that were the South Asian aspects of the love/hate relationship with the Caucasian ethos, arising from out of the turmoil and travails of British occupation. Adopting classic rock was the “love” side of the coin, for there is no denying the power it possesses – and what the other side of the coin would do to the inside of the person, was one of the drivers of their blues. They had no real exposure to the original blues (the cotton pickin’ and Chitlin circuit based music), but these kinds of considerations were what led to a brown man’s take on classic rock to go by the name of a blues band.

Meanwhile, the drummer continued to deal with the demons in his muscles and the rest of the guys had their own demons, and over the next few years they had a few more such shows that inexorably shaped out to be abject misery. And then somewhere in the mid-Nineties they had one magic night at The Black Cadillac. That helped keep the torch alive. For years the drummer plowed on in true pig headed fashion, trying maybe to be a tragedy act, doomed by fate to keep attempting impossible tasks, and by the constraints of his muscles. But he wasn't really cut out to be a tragic figure. So gradually he made peace with his demons, to some extent at least. And eventually he was able to hold the beat. Some of his current work can be seen, with buddies from The Long Shot, out at www.youtube.com/user/duhalchi Now, back then, why did he persist with his tragedy act for so many years, so very recalcitrant? Why did he not drop it and go do something else? Well, he was following the instructions of the root genius of the band, the guy who is now at happier hunting grounds, who had laid out the dictat, "dude, you're the drummer and that's that. Now make it happen". And so it was.

To many of the guys from the band from back then (affectionately known now as VPs of SFOTO), here's hoping you'll tune in again more actively. And of course this event at Lamakaan is the opportunity to do so  :)

The Band now aims to channel the fervor to the cause and glory of Brihan Dasht, which is explained further below.

Koi veerani si veerani hai, Dasht ko dekhke ghar yaad aaya -Ghalib Translation: There is some kind of desolation in my head, Looking at the wilderness, I thought of home. Dasht means wilderness. And Brihan Dasht means wilderness in a larger sense. Or in other words, a superset of what it means in a local context. Sort of like how you have Toronto, and then there is GTA, which is the Greater Toronto Area. In the same way, Brihan Mumbai is the Greater Mumbai Area. So, if you extrapolate out from our world out to all existence, and look at the sum total of order and chaos and everything therein within totality that is wilderness, then that would be Brihan Dasht. Brihan Dasht is raw spirit. The Tankbund Blues Band songs speak to this. Think Steppenwolf - they used to be known as Sparrow, and then they renamed themselves, and came up with Born to be Wild. And so it is with Dasht. In Indian lore, tales are told of King Janaka who while being well adjusted to what was known as "bhog" based life (the equivalent modern term is consumerism) and to his kingly duties, was simultaneously able to maintain his inner dwellings in rarefied regimes of transcendent being. In like manner, someone who is in a state of Dasht, is reasonably at peace with the evolution of the corporate cubicles based lifestyle, and regulated suburban mode "civilized" human existence - but the essential spirit remains raw. And thus is the music of The Tankbund Blues Band. Entry - Free