22 and still rocking!

Recently celebrating the journey and togetherness of 22 years was Parikrama – one of India’s best known rock bands at Hard Rock Café. The band, arguably one of the biggest names in Indian rock, celebrated its completion of two decades plus with a tour across all the Hard Rock Café outlets in India – Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad.

This New Delhi-based classic rock band is synonymous with independent music scene. But for these musicians, there’s been no reason to call it quits. “We still feel like it’s only been six months or one year. We don’t feel like 22 at all! We still play with the same zeal and the number of shows are just increasing by the day. Till the day we are having fun, we will continue playing music. The day we stop having a great time, we’ll call it off,” shares Subir Malik, who plays the synthesiser.

The Parikrama@22 tour enthralled the audience with their performance Xerox – their first original

composition. This unreleased track has been played only once earlier, in October 1991. And on this special occasion the band performed the track for their loyalists in each city.
The song is all the more special because it stands as a testimony to 22 years of the band which has till date stayed together – not a simple feat in the Indian music
industry.

With their kind of experience in hand, what does Subir feel about the current music scene? “It is the best time to be musicians in India as people are eager to listen to various kinds of music and there are people willing to put up their money too.”

As for the increasing number of international artistes coming to Delhi now, the musician felt that, “I don’t think anyone except Guns‘n’Roses any really big name has come to town. The red tapism and the permission procedure also scares away people from coming to the power capital. It is a big headache actually to be performing here.”

The band, which is known to create fusion music using Indian and Western musical instruments like the mridangam, tabla and flute alongside the guitar, drums and keyboards is the only Indian band to represent the country at the 50th year celebrations (in 2011) of John F Kennedy’s coming to power!