MUMBAI: A new indie band on the scene has quite a few troubles to confront. We have Harshan Rahdakrishnan of The F1’’s speaking about the problems the band faced, how a band can make money and the reasons for the EDM boom in India.
What are the difficulties that new bands on the scene have to face?
Live music needs to grown in India. It is very hard for a band to grow big in India. We have faced a lot of sh*t we faced. Parents, money, getting screwed by organisers and not getting our pay on time. We still have an outstanding pay of 1 lakh; four cheques are yet to come in. We play and they pay us five months later. It makes things very difficult for us.
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But you put out your EP very early. How did you afford that?
We were broke as f@#k after that. We spent 80k for a simple seven track EP and did not even use live drums, we programmed it. It is not easy because it is really expensive and after all that expenditure and what you get for a download is like 15 Rs. You cannot make money selling music. That can happen only through live shows.
What is the live scene in Chennai like?
Chennai is sad. There is nothing happening here, save one or two venues that have live music. Plus, very few people listen to live music and the turnout is not that great. Definitely not when compared to Mumbai. But with companies like Indie Earth coming in, they are doing something good for the space. Slowly there is something happening every other weekend. I can only hope that it gets better.
So how does a new band make money?
You cannot make money in India by just playing at pubs. Even putting out albums does not help, because the cost of production barely gets covered. We put our EP on OK Listen, so 30 per cent of the earnings go to them. That is why we are trying to crack into the college circuit. They pay you a lot and you can quote a lot. That was our plan last year; put out an EP, play a weekender.
Being into electronic music, how do you think EDM works for India?
EDM is a big effing hit with the Indian audiences. In the past one year alone, we have
had acts like Tiesto, Avicii, Armin Van Buuren, Flux Pavillion and Deadmau5. Even Zomboy was supposed to come to Chennai but did not so we all really flipped out about that. You have all these big EDM artistes coming to India. People go mental and the turnout is great because people are very rich here. I think India is doing really well on that front. And why? Because people like to get high and party! It is as simple as that. Another thing is that EDM is commercial stuff; it is for the mass population and most people like listening to it. That is why it sells. There is nothing great in the music in terms of musicality. It is just plain party music that you would not mind dancing to at a club after you are three drinks down.
The F16’s recently won the NH7 Road to Converse Rubber Tracks contest. The five piece Rock n Roll act has a distinct Indie aesthetic and a hint of electronic and comprises of Joshua `Josh` Fernandez, songwriter vocalist, Vikram Yesudas, the former drummer of Intonation X, Sashank `Skank` Manohar, the group`s skinny, pop culture-junkie bassist, Harshan Radhakrishnan is The F16s keyboardist and electro-genius and Abhinav Krishnaswamy.
