purpose

I was reading this Reader's Digest article that's in the May 2009 Asia edition about this German dude who's been biking the shit out of the world and doing God knows what like running and climbing mountains and everything so as to raise awareness and money for AIDS victims. I mean, he covered literally 23 THOUSAND kilometers in 35 days. I mean, holy shit. I get tired DRIVING 60 kilometers in one day and..damn.

Then there's this dude who's making this boat out of plastic coke bottles and some other weird plastic thing and planning to cross the PACIFIC OCEAN in it so as to raise awareness about pollution and global warming and the shit it's causing.

That really makes me think about what my contribution to the world will be. I mean, what difference will I be making in the world at large if, and that's a significant 'if', I accomplish the goals I've set and have been set for me and shit? Sure the boat guy inherited a huge fortune but the German was an overweight smoker drinker person who worked in a VW plant! There are other stories too about people helping others and trying to make the world a better place. It's all well and good to have success and a comfortable life for one's self and one's family and stuff but by the time I've grown up there will be around 7 BILLION people on the planet. Even on a smaller scale there'll be 200 million people on Pakistan or smaller yet, 30-35 million in Karachi! What will I have done or what can I do for them? If I end up a filthy rich CFO/CEO/whateverthehell by the time I'm 60..what will all that mean in the broader view of things?


Flam! updates:

We did a gig at IBA towards the end of last month. Saad and I, that is. Instrumental only. Played this blues jam and an interpretation of Explosions in the Sky's style of music. Was pretty fun. Also, we're sort've recording our songs at the moment. Where and how I'm not sure if I should say.

Owais is leaving on the 17th to join the army, Anes is also no longer with us. Saad will do vocals until and unless a suitable singer is found, we might need another guitarist as a result. Hope stuff works out for us. I plan to turn this shit into high gear as soon as my exams are over.

Don't give this hate a chance
We've got all this love to give, you know
That this dream's alive, we’ll still survive
Until no more people have to cry

PS: I've grown a deep affection for Jamiroquai's work. It's a really nice band.

dear, dear me..

Listening to Explosions in the Sky makes any experience, no matter how ordinary, seem transcendent.

The Only Moment We Are Alone


Your Hand In Mine


I am absolutely in love with this band as of late.

The PPP attacks the Shanaakht Festival, destroys the exhibit at the Arts Council

This is taken from Omar Bilal Akhtar(OBA of ADP)'s blog:

The PPP attacks the Shanaakht Festival, destroys the exhibit at the Arts Council

We have just been informed that a few hours ago, around 7:3o pm Pakistan time, a large mob of PPP activists stormed the Arts Council which was hosting the Shanaakht Festival. The mob was protesting the display of a photograph in the art exhibit section that showed a photo-shopped image of an infant Benazir Bhutto sitting in the lap of General Zia-Ul-Haq.

The mob destroyed the entire exhibit and physically threatened the workers of The Citizens Archive and all the volunteers/workers for the Shanaakht Festival.

We were slated to perform on the final day of the festival along with Fuzon, Noori, Taal Karisma and The Kolachi Quartet. As of right now,all the events for all the days of the Shanaakht Festival, has been cancelled.

Now that I've given you the news, I can't begin to tell you depth of the anger me and my band members are feeling. The Shanaakht Festival is extremely close to our hearts as well as the people organizing it. We performed at the original one and we were looking forward to sharing the stage with our idols Noori and Fuzon. We are sitting in my living room, and I have been on the verge of tears on numerous occasions. Some of my closest friends were in The Arts Council when they were attacked by the mob. According to them, the more they pleaded with the mob to stop the more they destroyed.

There is no difference between the militants in the North and the Pakistan People's Party today. None. We have two groups of people who have spread a doctrine of hate, intolerance and violence. The people who were putting this show together have been working at it for the last 2 years. It was by the people of Pakistan for the people of Pakistan. The theme of the show was 'identity' and we were looking to establish, ro take back the Pakistani identity. I guess all we have to show for it now is an identity of violence and victimization.

If the show goes on Aunty Disco Project will perform. We stand right behind The Citizens Archive and Sharmeen Obaid.

I feel personally attacked. We cannot believe that the concern of our parents which we keep dismissing has been vindicated. They have attacked our show, and our people, our friends.

For those of you who are going to come and say that it was stupid to put that picture up in the first place, you may be justified in your thinking, but there is NO justification for the kind of violence that happened as a result.

Today they attacked ART. They attacked culture and humanity. But worst of all, they attacked and threatened innocent people who were trying to do something good for this country.

I have no more words, except my love and support to the people of The Citizens Archive.

the state of the nation

Yeah. It's rant time.

The following is what I remember from today's newspaper:

Flogging in Swat:

A 17 year old girl gets publicly flogged in Swat, an area that used to be a tourist resort and is now taken over by Taliban and similar fundie fags. A situation the government has all but officially given up on. The Taliban deny they flogged the girl, admit they did flog somebody else.

Domestic quarrel leads to violence:

Some dudes in Karachi mutilate their aunt/stepmother/motherinlaw and leave her hospitalized and in very bad shape. I forget the argument but I think money was involved.

Bomb blast in Islamabad:

An alleged suicide attack takes place outside a popular Islamabad supermarket. I don't think anyone died.

Encroachment rampant in Nazimabad:

Nazimabad is an area in Karachi. Some peolpe have taken over a public park and in the space of a year (2004-2005) managed to construct a number of buildings on it. I counted around 30 in the "satellite" photo shown. The local government is aware of this yet no measures are being taken.

...and then there's this:

ZAB still deserves apology:

Some French journalist dude tells some people at some conference that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto deserves an apology for the shit deal he got at his time.



I mean, who gives a flying fuck about the apology?! Is there NOTHING more important in the country at this time?? Why is this country to brain dead? SO much shit is going on ALL the fucking time why doesnt anybody give a shit?? The government and the opposition spend months and months and millions of rupees on the so-called fight for the judiciary(which was actually just a result of Punjab not really being in the government per-se and them realising they had to pull some shit to get back into power, and NOT a nationwide uprising) and removal of governers rule and this and that WHEN THE HELL IS TERRORISM AND CRIME AND CORRUPTION AND ALL THIS OTHER CRAP IN THIS DISASTER OF A NATION GOING TO BECOME AN ISSUE WORTHY OF CONSIDERATION?!?!


We live in dark times, made darker still by the silent majority that refuses to move a muscle. We deserve all the insults we get for regardless of how many are untrue, there are more that are true and as yet unspoken.

jiya jale, jaan jale
naynon tale dhuaan jhale
raat bhar dhuaan jhale

the great gig on the second floor, by pink flam.

Finally i get the time to pay attention to this here bloj. Time to blab!

The Second Floor gig:

So as I mentioned a few posts ago, we were invited by the great Omar Bilal to play at The Second Floor and help them raise money to help them move and stuff. Which we were pretty excited about. The set-list was as follows:

Covers(english):
Blur - Song2
Backstreet Boys - Larger than Life (oh we so did)
HIM - Wicked Game
HIM - Killing Loneliness
Live - Lightening Crashes
U2 - Where the Streets Have No Name

Covers(urdu):
Awaz - Jaadu ka Chiragh
Fringe Benefits - Tanhai Mein Chain
Junoon - Heeray

Originals:
Shab-e-Hijr
Tuu Haseen
Paas


We had a keyboard player brought in in the form of Sohaib Ali of IBA, holy shit is that guy nuts lol. He was supposed to play this wicked keyboard medley of Lateralus, Vicarious and the Stairway to Heaven solo thingy.

The only concern we had was we wouldn't really be able to get people to show up. We'd seen this happen on the 7on3rd show, which was part of the same series of events and also on the Spoonful gig. So it wasn't really a suprise that 125 people confirmed on facebook, 160 were maybes and only about 50 showed up. The number of attendees was pretty consistent with the figures the above bands gained but considering that we had more time to publicise and shit it was sortve depressing. I guess being a relatively unknown band worked against us. Though why would people confirm shit when they dont plan to come? Thats just lame.

A lot of friends didn't show up either for stupid last minute non-reasons such as 10 people waiting for one of them to take the initiative and declare they're going and only then would the others join in. Sheep. This lent further credence to the fact that we can't really depend on friends to keep supporting us forever if we are to be a band seriously.


The show went okay. Started really late though. It was supposed to go at 830pm, we accounted to people being tardy and thought 9 would be cool. The audience showed us up and arrived a further 30minutes late. This and the issues with the sound setup due to either our or their equipment and mutual understanding levels led us to cut around 3 songs from the setlist since we wanted to wrap up by 1030pm.

This also led us to a sort've shaky start since sound setup issues always acts like a needle busting into the balloon that is our confidence, but we managed to pickup the pace and by the time we were around 4 songs down we were playing hard and fast without a care in the world. A few screwups did go down and some were noticeable but most were covered up. All in all it was fun. Here are a few pictures from the show:






Other stuff:

Since the recent flurry of gigs and my newfound interest in the music scene revolving around The Second Floor, I thought we should take a few pointers from the people in Lahore and create our own version of "The System". Apart from being something with an unimaginative name, that is also the operation of sorts where musicians don't wait around for sponsors and stuff in these trying economic times and through a proper organization and fraternity of sorts make their own gigs. Which makes a lot of sense and though people do already make their own gigs happen, there is no structuring and hence a lot of randomness and inefficiency. Since nobody would listen to me I forwarded the idea to the OBA today and yeah so now this is me waiting to see it something works out.

By the way, a shout out to all to The Heebie Jeebies. An awesome awesome jam band made up partly of the people from Spoonful and a few other dudes. These guys are amazingly skilled and really cool musicwise too. Hope to see them around for a long time to come.


Monday will see us going to The Open Mic Night and playing without our singer, Anes. He's sick and has been so for a few days since he insists on taking stupid homoeopathic medicines. Hope stuff works out and we and the audience has fun. Seeing as how this is going to be it gig-wise for a while to come, we need to make a few good impressions so that in future people arent too unsure about helping us out if we need them to.

Oh it's heartache every moment
From the start 'til the end
It's heartache every moment
With you
Deeper into our heavenly suffering
Our fragile souls are falling
It's heartache every moment
Baby with you

When two people like the same girl.

R.Kelly feat. Usher - Same girl



Flight of the Conchords - I'm in Love With a Sexy Lady




Flight of the Conchords are super hilarious lol. Usher and R.Kelly are lame.

of devils and demon women..

Cliff Richard - Devil Woman




Flight of the Conchords - Demon Woman