I am in the UK as part of my band, The Raghu Dixit Project‘s UK Tour and when here, I got myself a local SIM. After consulting with various people, I went for the ‘Talk Mobile’ Pay as you Go SIM that was offered by the ‘Carphone Warehouse’ which gave me the best combination of unlimited (restricted to 25MB a day) Internet and International calling (10p a minute to India).

The settings that came with the SIM directly to my phone were all wrong and I just couldn’t get 3G working at all! Infact, it got worse because the “technical team” (that solves any tech issue one has with products bought from Carphone Warehouse) had no idea what to do! and without using the Internet to search, I couldn’t tell how to activate Internet access on my phone! – A perfect Catch 22 situation.

After much snooping around, I found the settings hidden in the Talk Mobile UK site under phone settings – 3 pages in!

If you want to skip all that and just go ahead, here is what you need to do -

Head to your Nexus One’s settings, then click ‘Wireless & Networks“, then select ‘Mobile Networks‘ and then select ‘Access Point Names‘. There will, in all probability, be settings for the Vodafone network type that will certainly not work with a Nexus One.

Delete the access point and add a new access point with these details

Access Point Name – Talkmob PayG Int

APN Address – payg.talkmobile.co.uk

Thats it! you’re done! – Please refer to this page for details

Hope this helps someone!

One thing that stands out is becoming a TED Fellow, a dream I have cherished from the first time I heard and read about TED a couple of years back!  I have always dreamt of speaking like those people on stage at TED, or atleast, sitting down and listening to them first hand and it seemed so unreachable until TED decided to hold a conference in Mysore in November!

I had a whole plan of getting in by hook or crook, my last resort was to try and convince the sound guys at TED to take me on as part of the crew! Which could have well worked :p – but becoming a TED Fellow seemed a much better way to do it!

I applied on a whim, not expecting to get in at all, but the selection was a dream come true and with a week to go for the conference, I couldn’t be more excited

Kiruba Shankar started the TED Fellows project trying to get all TED fellows profiled and Rohit Awasthi interviewed me a couple of days back as part of this project. Here are my answers to his questions originally posted on his blog at – http://www.rohitz.com/2009/10/keeping-the-groove-with-gaurav-vaz-ted-india-fellow/

1. How did Raghu Dixit Project help you in getting more perspectives about music and expectations of people?

The Raghu Dixit Project completely changed my perception about how the music scene in India can work. At a time when bands are complaining about the lack of gigs and various things that are “wrong” with the scene, we’ve played almost a gig a week last year!

When I joined the Raghu Dixit Project, I came from a much smaller band (my college band Phenom) and had a very constricted view of how things worked and about the type of music that I listened to and played. Infact, before I started playing with Raghu, I had never played a Kannada song on stage EVER! All that changed and how! Over the past 4 years that I have been actively involved in the project, we’ve toured 7 countries and played over a 100 shows and have taken our own original brand of music to places very few Indian bands have. The learning for me has been immense.

The Raghu Dixit Project is a testament to the fact that regional music works in India and also, the importance of being original with what you do. A decade back, a bunch of South Indians singing in Hindi and Kannada would have been brushed aside as a bad idea, but what we have managed to achieve in the last 2 years after releasing our debut album is quite extraordinary.

But frankly, that has been the easy part, these were songs we’ve played over a long time, and with them, have set the expectations of a LOT of people. Exceeding those expectations with the next album (due in the first half of next year) and giving the audience a whole new experience live is where we are focussing our energies and I am quite confident we won’t let people down there!

Q.2 What did the IT Industry (un)teach you?

When I was in Engineering College, I was told that I would not use most of what I studied there. I do was skeptical about that statement, but now I can completely vouch for it

Yet, it’s not that I didn’t learn much from the IT Industry. In reality, I learnt a lot from my first job at NetScaler; a dream-company, now called as Citrix. One of the most important things I learnt was that there is a LOT of money out there to be and it can be earned if you do things the right way.

Moreover, I was never the someone who could be coupled to his desk-job. I pursued my music and other passions along with my first job. My bosses there were most co-operative of my other pursuits and allowed me to take time off work. They redefined the concept of “flexible work hours”, i.e. all’s well as long as you get the work done. This is something I will never forget!

That job made me a happy man as I had the flexibility to work without interruption; was very productive at work then. I had a point to prove and the folks at NetScaler let me prove it! I will carry that work ethic with me wherever I go.

Q.3 Has Radioverve become profitable? What are the future plans? Is there any update about MuckWork?

RadioVeRVe was never meant to become ‘monetarily profitable’. However, the profit that we have gained is that we have achieved what we set out to achieve, i.e, to provide a platform to the Indian Indie scene and make “Indian Indie” a recognizable genre. This is an achievement because we started RadioVeRVe at a time when there was no other platform like it. Today there are similar, well performing platforms and that in itself is brilliant because we too are working towards the same.

Although, RadioVeRVe has been lying low for a year now (as Shreyas and I are figuring out our careers, and that there have been recent developments in the Indie music scene), I am working with OML Digtal (Part of Only Much Louder, founded by Vijay Nair). OML is supposed to be an evolved form of RadioVeRVe. The project has been named as NH7; after the longest national highway in India and should be ready by the end of this year. With NH7, we will work on Indie music, all over India.

MuckWork is currently on the back burner. But will be up soon as it is a fantastic idea; as some brilliant people alongwith Derek Sivers (my idol) are involved.

Q.4 From Phenom to TED India Fellowship, what has been the most challenging phase of your life?

I’m not sure I can point to one phase of my life and say, there, that was the most challenging! My career has shaped in such a way, that I am jumping from one challenge to the next. Managing my IT career, creating and running an online radio station and at the same time playing in one of the biggest bands in the country was quite challenging, but it was nothing compared to quitting IT and with it, letting go of that financial security blanket to work with someone you have admired for years! And then to the next challenge, building a brand new start up, setting off on a very ambitious dream and hoping to make a difference with it while working on how to take the band to a whole new level with our music and the way we market it in a music industry that is in such a state of flux and a world where physical boundaries are inconsequential.

All of these phases have been critical in helping me become the person I am today and I am lucky to have gone through all these phases because they ground you! The perspective you get when you carry your own equipment, wait for your turn, perform the show of your life, pack up and then go sell CDs to people after your gig can never be substituted when you try to build a store that will sell music!

Gaurav in a concert

Q.5 You mentioned in one of your interviews, “Be true to yourself”. Easier said than done. Has there been any time when you have given or almost gave to the easy way out?

Many times! There is always the temptation to stick to the “formula”. But today, its much easier, you can actually categorize and hold a ‘job’ that pays the bills when you work on what you are passionate about and have a good working balance between the two until you are actually ready and confident to go one way or the other. I’ve had a lot of things fall into place for me and that has helped me be true to myself but things just got started!

Q.6 The independent music scene in India is quite fragmented and you have been part of taking some initiatives to bring it together. How do you see it shaping up in the few years to come?

The Independent scene in India is all set to explode. It just requires the right trigger and its all building up now. The gigs have increased, the clubs holding these gigs have increased, there are a lot more original bands, musicians and most importantly, music has finally started to become an actual career for musicians and that is a sure sign.

People have started realizing that there is music beyond Bollywood, and infact, Bollywood has started recognizing that there is music beyond Bollywood.

Bands need to support each other and get more serious about their music, release quickly and release often and get more professional about how they go about their careers. The tools for all this are being put together by various people in the scene and very soon I am sure it will all come together very soon.

Q.7 Lastly, does the ring on the finger now makes it difficult to play the guitar or it is easier than before?

Well, I’ve played half a dozen gigs now with the ring on the finger and they’ve gone well, so I guess the ring is staying :p

But seriously, Shilpa has been the most amazing thing to happen to me. She has finally gotten used to the musician / entrepreneur lifestyle and even pretends to like it sometimes! and at this point, I can use all the support I can get. Also, guitar playing is never easy, it takes a lot of hard work!

When he told me he was coming to Bangalore next with his friend Loik, it was a chance of a life time for me atleast! I have always loved graffiti writers and the crazy typography, the colours and designs that they seem to so easily put up using really HUGE walls as canvasses!

After interacting with him and looking at pictures of his previous work, I was really curious to see the process of it being done from scratch. After a quick call to Carlton of Opus, who just loved the thought of it!, we were set to put some colour on the white walls of Opus and to keep Ivan happy, we decided to paint the outside wall that faced the road!

Now Ivan is not your regular graffiti writer, and he is extremely versatile in his style and approach to graffiti. He tries to imbibe the culture of the place that he is writing in and also in many cases mess with people’s stereotype notion of graffiti! He does this by doing things that are completely unexpected of a graffiti writer! My favourite being a guy with an angry face saying “Cut your Hair and Get a job!”

The only guidelines that he had to follow when he was deciding what to paint on the walls here were that whatever he does should not have any reference to Sex, Religion or Politics because all 3 are topics that could easily raise the ire of various factions here and we did not really want the attention or for what was being done to get vandalized later!

So Ivan came up with the idea of an elephant on roller skates, blowing a musical note out of its trunk and a very typical Indian Lorry style writing that says “Blow Horn Please”. His sketch on paper got all of us excited about what the final print on the wall will be like! So off we set to get spray cans to get started.

That was the first hurdle we faced also! Indian spray cans are not meant for graffiti, we get spray cans here whose nozzles are meant to spray on large surfaces and meant to cover a wide area instead of focussed lines with which you can make designs. And the nozzles that they brought from France would not fit the Indian cans, so after much searching and no luck, we decided to give it a shot with the cans we could find itself. Ivan had thankfully carried some cans from France which he would use for the borders and so he was sure he could get something decent in place.

We started around noon knowing that the office going traffic would have subsided on the roads and Ivan started by drawing the general outline of what he wanted to do which was then refined into a final blueprint.

The next step was to cover the larger areas of the design with simple block colours and have a basic illustration ready for detailing and shading or as he calls it – “Adding Volume”.

This is when we started getting a sizeable crowd interested in what was happening there and who was painting and why? When we tried explaining to them that it was an artist from France who was here to just paint for the sake of his art. He din’t want money, was not endorsed, was not promoting any brand, but just painting! Art for Art’s Sake! People were just dumbfounded!

They could not believe that someone would come from a foreign country and paint on the walls here and expect nothing in return but the fact that people would see his painting and smile! But the people who did get it were either in awe or just very happy! We got a lot of Auto drivers who told us that it was a nice thing that this was art that everyone could see and there was no fee for it, we were paid visits by the cops who were also happy that there was nothing offensive being painted and it was smooth sailing all the way!

We stopped for the day after we got most of the painting in place and decided to come back the next day for the lettering and the rest of the details.

The 2nd day posed a new set of problems, the usual way lettering is done (when you want a clean hard line for the letters) for graffiti is freehand and if you don’t find the right cans, you take the stencil route. We decided to try creating a stencil with tape and then spraying inside that stencil and then removing the tape. But when we removed the first line of tape, it removed paint from the walls and some of the graffiti as well! This was something that was not expected and threw us off completely! So it was a LOT of fixing small areas and Ivan, being the perfectionist that he is, could not live with anything but the absolute perfect best!

So after a lot of hacks, we figured out the right pressure and the correct amount of tape and finally managed to get the lettering in place with the last bit of lettering done with a brush infact because it was just impossible to spray and get letters that fine!

After about 8 hours of graffiti writing, where about 4 of them were just because of the quality of the raw materials, we finally managed a brilliant piece of graffiti which I think is a first in Bangalore! Here it is to see for yourself and also the proud artist along with his work

A huge round of thanks to the folks at Opus who loved the idea and were brilliant hosts and helped in so many little things during the making of this work. From here on, to find Opus, go down Palace road till you see an elephant on the wall on the left side. See it, backtrack about 50 feet, and there it is!

Also, cheers to Ivan and Loik, true artists who do things from the heart and practice their art purely for art’s sake in today’s highly commercial world! I made two friends over the past weekend and will hold you to your promise of hosting me when I come to France!

]]> http://gauravvaz.com/art-for-arts-sake/feed/ 14 http://gauravvaz.com/young-music-entrepreneur-award-the-review/ http://gauravvaz.com/young-music-entrepreneur-award-the-review/#comments Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:26:03 +0000 Gaurav http://gauravvaz.com/?p=193 About a year back, I won the ‘Indian Young Music Entrepreneur Award‘ conducted by the British Council and in many ways that changed my life and definitely shaped my career path! This is a long overdue post about the award and my experience in the UK where I got to meet and interact with the music industry there.

Firstly, I must start this with a round of thanks to Tasneem Vahanvaty, the co-ordinator of the awards for India and so much more at the British Council, India! She forced me to put in my application last year and was there to answer any queries I might have had along the way! And while I am at it, Claire De Brackeleer for all the help provided in the UK! It would never have been possible without either of you!

The application form itself is quite a questionnaire and they have smartly left the questions very non-specific to a particular project that you might have worked on. This means that you have a LOT of introspection to do and you get to pitch yourself for the award. It took me about a week to just fill up that form and get all my references in place, but I was glad I put that time in for it because ultimately when I had to make my presentation, it was all just a breeze!

London was a once in a lifetime adventure for me! It was the first time I had travelled out of the country by myself and there was just SO MUCH to do that I feared I would not want to come back at the end of it The British Council had taken the most excellent care of us and much to the surprise of EVERYONE I know, the finalists were put up in the Leceister Square area of London, the most central, most vibrant place in London!

Our schedule was packed with meetings with various different people from the music industry in London who gave me a whole new perspective to the entire music business. Like I realized after discussions with them, what we see in India today with regard to the Indie music business is what the scene was in London about 20 or so years back! And also, with technology and opportunity becoming more and more widespread, the gap can be closed very quickly!

All the finalists got to head to Liverpool and Manchester for a different perspective from the people who run their businesses from there. But the underlying thread that we saw in all conversations was how people from every single domain in the music business take thier work so seriously and how there is value attached to every little bit of work that goes in! Something that has to start and grow in India.

Many of the friends I made in London and in the trip across the UK, have been very helpful to me over the course of the year when I sucessfully shaped my career in the music businessand the few partnerships that have formed and are forming show a LOT of promise! Infact, if I was to sum up the whole experience of the Young Music Entrepreneur award in one word, it would be ‘PROMISE’. And I would like to thank everyone from the British Council for doing their bit in showing us that promise!

Go over and read my “Thank You” list for everyone who has helped me win this award. And if you are doing something interesting in music in India today, then please head to the British Council Website and get the forms and apply at once! Its well worth your time

http://www.britishcouncil.org/india-arts-yme-award.htm is the link you want to head to now!

Possible Muckwork Logo

Its the most fun I have had working in a LONG LONG time and the learning curve is tremendous but then, its only getting better every day. We are currently in the process of setting up various backend systems required to get this up and going and also have been talking with various people for partnerships and collaborations for when we start. And we should start soon!

Like it has been mentioned before, and I love this way of explaining it, when the music industry started becoming an industry a little earlier in this century, the musician just made music and played gigs. The people around the musician took care of everything else that was to be done. We then in the last 10 years or so moved into the phase of the DIY musician who started doing things himself / herself.

The DIY musician eventually ended up spending more time doing the things around the music than the music itself! So now we are at a phase where, technology has made it so easy for many things to be done which previously required a LOT of people doing a LOT of work and as a company we feel that a musician should concentrate on doing the music side of things while they smartly use a lot of resources around them for the rest of the work.

This is where Muckwork comes in. We plan to be the people to go to for the rest of it! The dream is to be able to become a company where a musician comes with whatever vague requests for work, right from “create my press kit” to “make me famous” and we have some way to do that! Though “make me famous” will depend a LOT on your music and many other things

So we start small and start sometime soon and then take it as it comes! its going to be a brilliant new year! so watch this space ..

The show has been postponed to the 24th of December, 2008.

[End of Update]

After a LONG LONG hiatus, The Raghu Dixit Project is all set to play in Bangalore later this month. We are playing at Opus on the 24th of December 2008. There are other shows that might happen which are not confirmed yet!

I will update you chaps with information about the shows that are open to public and while I will remind all of you again, please do keep yourselves free and if you are in Bangalore on those days, please make it for our shows and stop by to say Hi! after.