I have been an amateur musician for about 8 years now and a large part of my education as a musician happened playing in the various venues in and around Bangalore. These were either college fests where my band Phenom competed or pub gigs where we played for measly sums of money, some places where we even had to pay and play but play we did! and we loved it and it was well worth it!

In a city where venues to play musc are few and far between, the few places that allowed bands to play were our saving grace! to us, the 20 people who were our audience, most of them friends we had dragged there, were the closest we would ever get to those videos of our favourite bands who would woo stadiums filled with people!

In one swift and stupid move, my city was culturally slaughtered last month! in a very strange twist of events, the Bangalore police banned live music in places that serve alcohol. Bad enough, they had banned dancing in clubs, they had to go do this ..

In many ways, I got out of this situation with my band now playing largely outside Bangalore inspite of being a Bangalorean Band! but its the worst feeling for those kids who put their heart and soul and every penny they can muster into their music. Like Girish Karnad, one of the finest playwrights from Bangalore had to say at the protest last weekend, “How on earth will listening to live music cause anything untoward to happen?” and just because accidents happen on the road, will you ban driving?

This is the 21st Century and we live in a free country but are still subject to such ridiculous restrictions that it makes me question the ability of the people who we have elected into power!

A bunch of us have put up a petition for online signing that we would like to take further once we have enough people supporting the cause. So if you feel what is happening in the city now is unfair, please head to http://bengalurubleeding.com/petition and support us!

How I got in there is a big round about scam .. I not only got in there but also made some money doing it! So in all, it was a profitable show for me! I mean, it was a concert worth attending if you made some money just going there! So the 6 of us including Sharvari, Jason, Jonty, Sherin and Bunny were ready with our skeptical minds to scrutinize the show to the minutest detail!

So on to the show … The Black Eyed Peas are a bunch of solo performers and NOT a band! They are decently passable individually but when they get together, you wish there was some way you could just mute the show. They started with a few familiar tunes from their album “Monkey Business”, I’ll be damned if I remember song names ..

When the show started, it was Fergie all the way! everyone’s eyes were on her and I guess thats the only reason they got past the first few songs and Fergie was all over the stage flaunting every bit of her surgically altered self and the few crowd shots on the big screen indicated clearly that the first few rows got more than their money’s worth!

They had some sort of an intro worked out for each song where they would do some rehearsed script readout thing and from nowhere tie stuff to the title of the next song! and that included a lot of “India is great etc…” to keep the audience cheering all along and forgiving them for those completely pointless and disconnected intros!

Then they went into a few of their ‘more popular’ numbers which included “My Humps” and others which I don’t recollect right now .. More girls joined them on stage for these numbers and it proved the old adage .. “the more the merrier!” .. some cheers got louder and we decided it was time to ‘Yenjoy’ the show, atleast I did.

The band then launched into some of the solo stuff that the band members are doing including ‘GLAMOROUS’ and ‘London Bridge’ (For the uninitiated, it is NOT about the bridge in london) and the lowest low of the night .. Will.I.Am’s disgusting “I got it from my mamma!.

They also went through an extended version of ‘Where is the love’ where they sufficiently pitched Nokia, the event sponsors and thankfully, and unlike their repeated threats, the show ended much before 11.30!

All in all … it was a good show ONLY if you are a fan, if not, it was not worth the trouble at all! I’d give it a 2.5/5 rating!