It was a colourful and energetic affair at Hard Rock Café recently when Bangalore-based comic, parody band ‘Live Banned’
performed recently.

From the time they hit the stage to the encore, the energy levels of the band was commendable and kept the audience jumping to their tunes. Being an innovative band, they often mash up popular music, both Indian and Western, into an entertaining medley of music.

From pop and Bollywood songs to regional numbers and ad jingles, there’s an exciting element of surprise at their gigs. Add to that the quirky costumes and amusing headgear, and there is a memorable gig to write home about. For this particular gig, the set included an equal mix of originals and mash-ups, ranging from ‘The Auto Tune’, Ey Mama, ‘Fake You’ and Sikkapatte Shake to their hilarious ‘Barbie Girl’ or an interesting mash-up of Rahman songs.

The set also included their popular rendition of Pettai Rap as a Punjabi mix, ‘Death Dance’ and even ‘Swat Kats’, which made for an unlikely but enjoyable number.
The audience seemed to absorb the band’s energy and showed their enthusiasm to their heart’s content.

 “It was mad fun! I anyway love the band but this was an extremely energetic show and they got the crowd going from the first song itself. Any first time listener to these guys would have their mind blown. As one of the people put it, it’s double bass dappan kuthu! Nowhere else will you listen to Jinke Marina played to a ‘Pantera’ track in the background,” said Arjun, an audience member.

Tejas Shankar, another audience member, said, “They were supremely entertaining! I guess they take their tagline of ‘Indo-international mass music’ quite seriously because the audience out there went pretty mental with them.”

 Not only the crowd but the band too had a lot of fun and frontman Amrit Rao went so far as to call it ‘one of the band’s most energetic gigs till date’.

 “The turnout was awesome and the sound was much better than our previous gig there. We played to a packed house and the sight of the entire crowd jumping and singing along from the stage was fantastic. It took a couple of songs for them to get into it but when they did, the energy was great and we fed off it,” said Amrit.