The gatekeepers of Indian indie music

When a drunken fan shouted out a request for “Sheila Ki Jawaaaani” at Pune’s indie music fest, Pentagram's frontman, sweaty, growling, beefy Vishal Dadlani, called him up on stage -- and then just shoved him back into the audience.

Moral of the story? Don’t mess with the uncrowned king of indie rock.

The Pentagram boys were performing for the second time at Pune's new indie music festival, Bacardi NH7 Weekender, which Dadlani part instigated.

Much of India is more familiar with the non-growling, non-beefy, non-stomping side of the Pentagram singer -- that is Vishal of Vishal--Shekhar, leading Bollywood music directors.

Dadlani’s life is defined by Pentagram and Bollywood. And though he claims to love both kinds of music equally, it’s no secret that the grand daddy of Indian rock’s first love is his own band.

Pentagram is Shiraz, Randolph, Clyde, and Vishal, extreme right.

Coming together

Pentagram started out in the early 1990s, when black T-shirt wearing, ganja-smoking, rum-drinking rock fans converged on Rang Bhavan every Independence Day in August, for the infamous Independence Rock concerts.

At the same time, college music festivals and a tackily decorated glorified “party hall” called Razz Rhino were defining the rock music scene in Mumbai.

Here, in part, the seeds of the Indian underground indie music scene were sown, and every Thursday hundreds of head bangers would land up to listen to whoever was playing.

In reaction to the stagnating rock music pond, which was inundated with covers, new bands like Zero, Pentagram and Parikarma came together.

In 1994, Shiraz Bhattacharya and Dadlani stumbled into their first gig for a naval crowd in Navi Nagar, Mumbai. The duo, plus new members Randolph and Clyde, were busy trying to create original Pentagram music.

Not long afterwards, a geeky teenage Vijay Nair started to get involved in the world of live gigs, while also hanging out with the folks over at gigpad.com.

He joined the online music community, moderated discussions and traveled around with bands “just for fun."

“I was instantly sucked into the music scene," says Nair, now 27, co-founder of last December's inaugural Bacardi NH7 Weekender festival and CEO of artist management company Only Much Louder (OML).

“When Acquired Funk Syndrome won the Independence Rock competition they came to me and said 'manage us.' I said, I have no idea what that means,” remembers Nair, fresh in the glow of the adrenalin rushing, banging Eristoff Invasion Festival headlined by The Prodigy. Nair’s career as an artist manager had begun.

Then bands Zero and Pin Drop Violence also decided to take a leap of faith with him. And seven years after Pentagram began, Dadlani decided he too was going to put his reputable rock band in the young, inexperienced Nair's hands after a five-minute meeting.

The next obvious step

Their next obvious step was OML. Only Much Louder became Dadlani and Nair's shared vision to play doctor to what the Pentagram front-man calls “the many shortcomings of the Indian indie music scene."

The first big challenge was working with four bands who wanted to play their own music. "We would literally force our way into gigs, and make sure no one had to do covers," remembers Nair.

Nair would promise organizers the moon, and a number of covers. Instead, guerrilla style, they'd end up playing only OCs a.k.a. original compositions, in college parlance. And Nair would, with the requisite amount of confidence, get away with telling ignorant organizers that the band had “played a couple of Nirvana songs."

The key factor in their success was that the audiences, despite being weaned on covers, loved the new material.

“It was a struggle," says Nair. "Organizers didn't want to deal with a savvy business manager. They preferred bands who'd settle for any old payment, and refused to deal with the ‘middle man’.”

It wasn’t all brickbats though. Pentagram released their second album "Up" in 2002, with electro-rock as their forte.

Simultaneously a movement towards both experimental and regional music, was coming to the fore in indie rock.

No longer strong-armed by sponsors and organizers or intimidated by big record labels like SaReGaMa and Bollywood's profitable music industry, indie music's counter culture had finally found a willing representative in OML.

Bands who sounded different from the usual fare of classical rock soon got snapped up. In the mid 2000s, the ethno-influenced singer songwriter Rabbi Shergill's instant popularity signaled another trend.

"The problem today," says Dadlani, "is that everyone thinks too small. There is a potential to reach a lot of cool, young, urban people -- a section that isn’t interested in Bollywood. And that is what our new album "Bloodywood" is about.”

Pentagram live at Rock On For Humanity concert in Mumbai in 2008.

NH7 Weekender to Eristoff Invasion with The Prodigy

Learning from the good and the bad of previous Big Chill and Eastwind festivals in India, the Bacardi NH7 Weekender is now the youngest and largest indie music festival in the country.

It was inspired by Glastonbury, where Pentagram was the first Indian band ever to perform.

The other gripe OML hopes to solve is that no big contemporary international acts manage to find their way to India.

The recent success of OML’s Eristoff Invasion festival, headlined by The Prodigy, is meant to put all that complaining to rest. And somehow, in all their self-described headless chicken states, they managed to get "their act together" in Dadlani's words. "In the scary, haphazard organizational nightmare that we know India to be."

The Invasion Festival gig, which drew more than 5, 000 people, proved that India is ready to host a contemporary (non-Bryan Adams, non-classical rock) concert.

Held at Huda Grounds in Gurgaon last January it featured not only The Prodigy but a host of Indian bands -- Jalebee Cartel, Midival Punditz and Pentagram -- playing worthy supporting roles.

“We bust the myth that infrastructure isn't good enough here. We proved you can pull it off. If you really want to,” says Nair.

People didn't want to take their wrist-bands off, some dreamily wished life was just the festival, and even bands left claiming this was the best festival they’d attended.

Reports of a ruckus on the last night sent Nair rushing to the bar, where he found a man waving a thousand rupee note around.

"I was surprised, because everything had been relatively calm until then. And then I realized this guy was trying to shove money into the money box, and he kept saying he didn't feel like he had paid enough for the festival!"

Nair kept the money.