Konark Reddy & Dylan Fowler, Live at the Opus, Bangalore Options

[imjagdish]

Hi guys,
I dont know whether this is the place to post this thread, but am still posting. I happened to attend a short and live music concert by Konark Reddy and Dylan Fowler at the Opus, close to palace grounds, Bangalore. My friend Ajay, who I accompanied has written a blog on this and I am pasting the same.


After a considerably long break from the gigging and moshing (I was told I missed a couple), myself and Jagdish found ourselves at the Opus once again. There was some confusion in my head about the time the show was to open….”Classic Rock band from Hyderabad (no name??)”…were to start at 1 PM…or so I thought…and after that little battle all of us Bangaloreans have on our ways to work and back, after cursing the traffic atleast 650 times, we finally reached an hour late, only to find that the “Classic Rock band from …” were scheduled for the Sunday…one whole day early we were!! So there we were…considering ways and means of killing time till the evening…till the main event…KONARAK REDDY AND DYLAN FOWLER seated and not always acoustic!!! So we headed out..for a biryani…and were back around 5…and then the loooooooooooong wait till 9:30 night!!!! The good part was…we got to witness the prelude to the “Reddy-Fowler effect” … checked out the gear, which is not much … Line 6 amplification and effect processors, Peavey (I think) console…Konarak played both acoustic as well as electric guitars (for the life of me I couldn’t recognize his acoustic and his electric was a Parker in pearl black!!)

Also, there was another confusion …for some reason, up until yesterday, I was under the impression that Konarak was in some way associated with the song “Neele neele ambar par…” (remember the song from “Kalakaar” with the killer acoustic solo??!!) … turns out Konarak didn’t play this, as confirmed by Jagdish.

The crowds lingered in between 7:30 and 9:00 … and finally after that terrible wait, it began at 9:30 PM…As usual, acquiring guitar picks was on the agenda…but not this time….both Konarak and Dylan play finger style (although I did notice the ring style thumb pick Mr. Reddy was using)!! I cannot put this any other way…This duo is acoustic brilliance!! How easily we make “finger style”/“classical” and “orthodox” synonyms!! These guys are far from orthodox…they play classical, flamenco, jazz, which is wrapped by blues and Indian classical…just mesmerizing…my shredder friends…lets go finger style for a bit!!

Any concert I attend, I always make an effort to learn something… at least one lick or chord…yesterday…after about a song and a half…I just moved from learning licks to learning progressions…it was a little simpler!! The licks….what lick….the guy appeared to be playing a chord!!! I had this feeling when I saw Ranjit playing finger style years ago, when I had never seen this style being done live. And then there were lots of antics…Dylan Fowler using his guitar for percussion…either ala slap bass or ala tabla!! Absolutely brilliant!! All that while, crowd went “whooo hooo”, “Oh…that’s it!!”, “Holy Shit!!”, “WTF!!!!”, “huh??!!” … people all over had their beers going flat, cigarettes going untapped, food going cold …

Met Mr.Reddy and Mr.Fowler at the end….speechless…got Konarak’s CD (they are working on their joint effort currently), came back home, wondering what I’m going to blog!!!

There’s nothing more to be discussed .. people next time these folks are in town…please don’t miss…it may not be educational, but I assure you, it will be a truly mesmerizing experience…