Strumming away into history

record break

The drums stopped rolling, the guitar strings stopped twanging, the amplifier finally faded into unheard echoes and history was made with 100 hours of non-stop rock music. The Virgin Mobile 24X7 Rockathon ended with a pulsating performance by the Raghu Dixit Project. But the crowd hadn’t had enough yet, and went on trilling ‘once more, once more’, to which Raghu cheekily replied, “Our CD is sold here, maybe we can play that.”

With the culmination of ‘Rockathon’, three attempts were made for the Limca Book of Records — for the longest live audio cast on cell phone, close to 90 hours, longest live webcast of more than 600,000 minutes and finally and most significantly 100 hours of live music and jamming by some of the best rock talents in the countries like Illuminati, Silver, Sinful Oath, and Electric Pendulum.

The event also was an opportunity to showcase some unusual performances. Ledge 13, a band from Pune consisted entirely of doctors and dentists, were one of the instant favourites with the crowd. Dr Rajesh, the lead vocalist of the band, drove down all the way with his members, Dr Krishnan and Prateek on drums and bass respectively mostly to support the cause of hearing disability taken up by the event.

“It’s been a great experience waking up and playing at 4 am, where the whole world is so silent, we play mostly covers of bands like Audioslave and some of our own composition,” says, Rajesh, just before rushing off for his performance.

Another unique feat at the rockathon was by local drummer Kishan Balaji, who continuously jammed with different band for 20 hours, and not a trace of exhaustion on his face, as he enthusiastically cheered the new band about to perform on stage. “I just love jamming, there is so much to learn from musicians, they all have different styles of their own, and once you catch their beat, its pure magic,”  says Kishan. Another band consisted of youngsters from Chennai called ‘Tom Violence’, barely out of school. “This is one of our first performance out of Chennai, and we’re thrilled to meet so many legends of Indian rock,” said one of the band members.

The green room behind the stage was an informal area, which was continuously stalked with fresh food and beverages and also a place where musicians and technicians lounged.

“I loved the fact that the atmosphere is so informal yet so professional, said one of the musicians.”

After the five eventful days, the Rockathon halted with the scores of musicians taking back with them a piece of history, in which they ‘played’ an important part.