You surely must have heard of ‘Campus Rock Idols,’ the band competition at the college level. It’s blessed with the biggest of sponsors and not particularly the best of bands. Well, I attended one of the city finals of CRI and I am pissed off.
Let me tell you exactly why CRI pissed me off. Firstly, it has been given massive publicity all over television and the radio. Secondly, when you actually go there to watch, you realize that you have just landed in ‘Oh-I-wannabe-a-cool-rockstar’ poser land. And thanks to all the commercial popularity, that is the kind of shit that the music industry thinks comes out of our Indian rock scene.
Now, going into the rip-apart analysis. The list of participants itself had very few metal bands. Popular genres were funk, rock and bullshit (also euphemistically called ‘experimental’). There’s no denying that some of the bands were good, but most sucked. Also, the show was hosted by a fake-accented punk-rocker whose limited vocabulary was “awesome”. And recording and popularising all of this were multiple cameras, and big names from the music industry.
(Now’s the time I grasp my hair and scream in a theatrical manner- “WHY!”)
Why do all the wrong aspects of our scene get all the publicity?
Why don’t metal bands even qualify for the finals, if not win them?
Why are kids getting so caught up with the rockstar lifestyle and attitude, leaving the music behind?
One can argue with me on the basis that these shows actually encourage. Wrong, wrong, wrong. They put the bleh-est of bands in the limelight, award them with recording contracts, chances to make videos and kickass equipment, when our poor talented metal bands, literally and metaphorically, fade to black.
I can’t decide, however, whether I would ever like metal to get that commercial and adulterated. But I genuinely wish we could wipe out the posers.
There is no solution to this ‘problem’ but I took the opportunity to vent anyway. What a sad state of affairs.
