Dubai Desert Rock 2007!

After eternally terminating Chemistry from your life, there is nothing more positive you can hope for. But then Desert Rock comes along, and redefines everything. Morally, what Ali and I did was wrong. In the middle of your board examinations, ideally, you shouldn’t be allowed to attend an 80DB+ concert. It’s not right. But our blessed parents don’t exactly resonate with that notion. Thank God.

Essentially, we went there to fulfill half of Ali’s dream – IRON MAIDEN. We made no compromises. We were the first few people to line up, and planned to maintain our 100% record of standing in the first row for every single Desert Rock since its inception in 2004. However, around us, in the lines, were clearly the most annoying aspects of Dubai – the people. You can’t get faker and more loser-ish then them. Their definition of fun is weird, and the only constant pain-in-the-asses for the entire of this Desert Rock are the people. Having reached there 4 hours before the gates opened, we were trying our best to entertain ourselves. So, well, just for fun, we started singing some Backstreet Boys stuff, you know, to see the response of the faggots around us. And it was exactly what we thought it would be. They ridiculed, abused and laughed at us. Their sense of humour really seemed to be up their bums. One of these cool-wannabe rockers, this 15 year old kid who thought he was the son of the Metal Gods, started pulling our leg bordering on pure harshness. So to get the plot – “What the hell is your problem?” asked Ali.
“My problem is that you are a fat-ass Indian,” was the reply. Haih? What was hilarious to see was the enormous joy that he experienced having cracked what he thought was a purely brilliant joke. Ali and I were unaffected, but bemused. Wow, some people are so shallow. The British girls next to him seemed to be having a ball of a time too, ridiculing us with their haughty and gay ascents. One Arab female started mocking our Indian ascent, and everyone was having a blast, with us being the sources of fun. That freak 15-year-old told the non-stop-singing Ali to sing some Punjabi-MC stuff, trying to drown us in embarrassment using his sarcastically sadist Indian accent. We don’t even talk like that. Anyway we were amused and had our own ball at how ridiculously fascinating people can be.

Finally we did enter the arena, and there was no controlling our exuberant energy. We needed to be in that first darn row. We needed to run our asses off to secure our positions, and we did. Joy, unconfined! But we forgot to get our fluorescent green arm bands, and therefore, essentially, we were “illegal” for the entire of the concert. Anyway, what was fascinating to see was that half of Modern High was there – loads of 11^th graders and 9^th graders and a chunk of 9^th grade girls. The latter bit was confusingly amusing. Fine Tandon knew her stuff, but the other girls seemed a bit lost. Anyway it was interesting none the less.

At 2:00 PM, Junkyard Groove took control of the stage, and surprisingly, they were really good. Yes technical difficulties did muck it up a little, but their front-man, Ameeth, covered up really well. I found their music really soulful, and the band-members very genuinely passionate. I just loved their music, and am really looking forward to getting their album, which is out soon. From their Myspace profile: “What do you get when you put a drummer with heavy metal roots, a guitarist with classic rock roots, a bassist crazy about Jazz and a very drunken vocalist, in 1 band? Junkyard Groove!” It’s worth giving them a listen. Amidst all this, some “Metal” fans, or well “Wannabe Rockers” were “moshing” to their music. Now Junkyard Groove are essentially an Alternative band, so there was no real reason to mosh, but hey man, “it’s cool.”

The Groove were followed by the most untalented celebrity singers of all time – Lauren Harris. Fine she is sexy, hot and all the rot, but that woman is in no way a great singer. She sings all her songs on a low register and tries to make a very desperate effort to come off as a rocker with her fake grimace, singing some “Take Me Home” shyte or something. She is the epitome of ‘riding on your father’s back’, and I was in no way entertained by her, though her accompanying band (i.e. a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer) were not bad at all.

Mastadon follwed Harris and weren’t that great either. They seemed to be lost in their own world. They literally came out, performed and left. There was no crowd-interaction, no uniqueness and basically no performance as of such. Ali did defend them later on saying that they are all about the music and beyond the crowd interaction, and when it came to music they were quite brilliant. But hey, I am at a concert, and I am paying to watch you. The least you can do is half-entertain me. Anyway, SK, who was in the first row till now, got squeezed out after almost having been squashed to death. The crowd is insane for these Metal concerts. They are aggressive, arrogant, self-righteous and so fake, most of them anyway.

In Flames, who were up next, were much better and seemed to have a decent fan-following. This really attractive chick next to me knew all their stuff. Personally, I found them to be quite decent. As a group, they were good performers with some good songs and enough amounts of energy. I liked their lead singer, though he somehow reminded me of Vivek Malhotra.

Stone Sour didn’t disappoint either. It was obviously all about Corey Taylor. As Ali said, Corey was one solid sob – energy personified, and one of the best bald head-bangers ever. Just looking at his vigour was entertaining…wow! He was so spell bounding that I don’t even remember the other band members’ faces. Anyway, I really enjoyed “Through The Glass” and loved the way Corey gave music some substance, though I was a little disappointed that they didn’t play “Bother” [the only other song I knew :P].

Prodigy, for me, were just bad. I hated every moment of their performance, which is quite contradictory to what most of the other people felt. Initially, they seemed promising, with their fancy light set up, and this new-generation DJ-Console-like thing. But all they played was non-stop dhin-chak-dhin-chak heavy metal bet that really got to you after some time. They were so loud, and so monotonous, Ali and I just couldn’t get a grip of them, and subsequently ourselves, as our heads burst into dhin-chak-dhin-chak pain . The lead-singers didn’t do much. They were just screaming the entire time, and their crazy guitarist seemed weirdly insane.

Iron Maiden were a complete contrast to Prodigy. After a long wait, and total stage revamp, they finally erupted on to stage and sent the crowd into orgasmic ecstasy. Their unlimited energy, legendary status and supremely-entertaining music capped off a brilliant night. They seemed to make everything worth it. With a war-like stage-dress-code, the infamous tank and Eddie, they gave Dubai the full on ‘Maiden Experience‘. They literally blew the living daylights out of us. Usually they perform their e
ntire new album when they tour, but they made sure they played their classics too. ‘Number of the Beast’, ‘Run to the Hills’, ‘Iron Maiden’ and ‘The Trooper’ really got the crowd going. Ali, with his supreme Maiden knowledge, knew exactly what was going to happen next. He flipped when Bruce Dickenson cried, “Scrrreaam for me, Dubai!” Wow! They were mesmerizing, especially when the infamous Tank kicked into action, and when Eddie walked on to the stage, in his trademark lanky death-walk. WOW! In addition to that, Bruce’s limitless amount of energy and Mcbrain’s guitar-throwing exploits made it even more awesome. Their stamina for high-energy level performances at their old-ish ages is awe-inspiring. They were simply brilliantly brilliant.

Wow, it was one memorable night, the 9^th of March. We did become partially deaf immediately afterwards, and did have a temporary 2-day period of Tinnitus later, but hell, it was worth it! =)

That was day 1 of the 2 day festival that was Dubai Desert Rock 2007. We didn’t make it to the second day because we were half deaf, pretty worn out and filled with guilt at the aspect of not studying enough. Ahh, life!

P.S. A friggin’ long post, but a memory successfully created. As a matter of fact, this post is essentially only for two people.