Tag: 260910

Bollywood music

Din Check performs for India rural school charity

Many members of the Boston-based Bollywood band Din Check come from a generation born around 1947, India’s first year of independence from the British Empire. Rebuilding the country from scratch, they looked to education as the best gift to give their children. Their bet paid off.

“That was our ticket to come to America,” Din Check co-founder and singer Jolly Bhatia said in a recent Zoom chat. Bhatia moved to the U.S. and earned a master’s degree at St. John’s University. He and the band’s members all have careers; he serves as VP of Quality at a clinical-stage biotech company in Watertown, Mass.

With that in mind, the group is giving back. Its 100th show, happening Sept. 13 at Nashua High School North, will be the inaugural fundraiser for the local chapter of Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation, an international charity that funds schools for underprivileged children in rural India.

It’s the kind of helping hand that Bhatia’s parents’ generation strove to bestow upon their children.

“Just like [they] invested in us to give us that path to a better life,” he said, “we want to enable that opportunity to the people who may not get that access ever.”

Arti Khurana and Manisha Jain head up Ekal Vidyalaya’s New Hampshire chapter, the Sept. 13 show’s beneficiary. They had seen Din Check perform at the organization’s Massachusetts and national events, and reached out directly to bring the band north.

“New Hampshire,” Bhatia joked, “is the little brother of Massachusetts.”

The concert’s musical theme is Assi Nabbe Poore Sau. “It means 80, 90 and the hundreds after that,” Bhatia said, a nod to a setlist spanning four to five decades of Bollywood music. It also underscores the 100-show milestone of a band hatched in a basement in 2010 and still playing for a love of music and fun.

The band’s origin is “a series of coincidences,” Bhatia said. He and future bandmate Sameer Bhambhani met at a Halloween party for their elementary school-age kids in 2010. A mutual friend introduced them, mentioning the two had attended the same engineering college in India, 20 years apart, without ever crossing paths.

They bonded over their shared love of music and, with percussionist Sam Rao, officially formed Din Check in April 2011. Anandini Sekhar joined in August. The American-born keyboard player and singer had found the band online and was drawn in by memories of her mixtapes from India.

A year later, singer Meenakshi Kulshreshtha, who’s also Bhatia’s wife, joined the group. Unlike her husband, who learned music by ear and a passion for Bollywood, she’s classically trained. “A phenomenal musician,” Bhatia said. “She’s the person who kind of kicks me and teaches me technically and makes me a better musician every day.”

A rhythm section of drummer Kamal Dasu and Mike Grover on bass solidified five years in.

“It completed the band like perfect-fit puzzle pieces,” Meenakshi told online magazine Women Who Win in 2021, adding, “The foundation of Din Check is a bunch of good human beings who are also great friends, full of passion, fun, talent; the spirit of our band is sharing joy and happiness with everyone through music.”

The band’s biggest turning point, Bhatia said, came after Din Check played a party in Rhode Island to honor doctors and nurses. The host was a big fan. Fortuitously, he was also the owner of the nearby Park Theatre. “One of the top sound systems in the country,” Bhatia recalled. He offered it to them gratis, and they played a successful show there.

“That was a major stepping stone that brought us to the Boston limelight,” he said. They then began leaning into a model that keeps them busy and playing shows across the country: a locally grown, yet authentically Bollywood band doing galas for organizations that otherwise might fly in performers from India at a higher cost.

“They end up saving more money for their noble causes, and we get to go share our message of joy,” Bhatia said.

Din Check also writes and records its own music, releasing a song a year for the past three years. The latest single, released in May, is “Tumhein Roz.”

Their shows sprawl across Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Gujarati music, carried by members fluent in several different languages. There are occasional detours into rock and pop mashups. “There’s going to be a lot of color and energy and songs people will want to sing along with,” Bhatia said. “Come be a part of the show.”

Din Check – A Benefit for Ekal Vidyalaya of New Hampshire
When: Sunday, Sept. 13, at 2 p.m.
Where: Nashua High School North, 8 Titan Way, Nashua
Tickets: $40 and up at ekal.org

Featured photo: Din Check. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 26/09/10

• SNL Pals: John Mulaney plays the Lakes Region with a bill includes Fred Armisen, who was on hand the night Mulaney became the first comic to sell out Wrigley Field, along with SNL star James Austin Johnson. Mike Birbiglia and Nick Kroll were with the tour early on but later bowed out. Thursday, Sept. 10, 7:30 p.m., BankNH Pavilion, 108 Kimball Road, Gilford, $25 and up, ticketmaster.com.

• Two squared: The White Stripes began a few years before Sirsy, and while the upstate New York duo may not be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, their raw power is clear, with Rich Libutti’s Rickenbacker and Melanie Krahmer’s drumming and singing creating a sound larger than its parts. The show partners with a local charity that helps vets, first responders and others with PTSD through equine therapy. Friday, Sept. 11, 9 p.m., Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester, sirsy.com.

• Body doubles: Born and raised near NBC’s Burbank Studios, The Edwards Twins — brothers Anthony and Eddie — are “celebrity illusionists” who transform into a range of stars in the course of their variety show. The rotating lineup includes Sonny & Cher, Billy Joel, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Lady Gaga and Celine Dion, all sung live — no lip syncing. Saturday, Sept. 11, 7 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $45 and up, palacetheatre.org.

• Helping out: Honoring the memory of a local sports hero, Two To Lou Rocks raises scholarship money for students pursuing athletics or music in college. This year there are two tribute acts: Earth doing Black Sabbath, and Gypzy Mac with Stevie Nicks’ music. Rounding things out are Witch’s Brew, Preciphist, Hot Pasta, Aden Perin, Casey Clark and Krystn Elliot. Saturday, Sept 12, 3 p.m., Sandlots Sports & Entertainment, 56 North Road, Sandown, $25, eventbrite.com.

• Virtual reunion: Among tribute acts, Welcome Back My Friends – An Evening with Emerson, Lake & Palmer is special because it’s not. Drummer Carl Palmer, the only surviving member of the prog rock supergroup, drums along to footage of a 1992 Royal Albert Hall performance by his old group, as his ELP Legacy Band plays in sync along with him. Sunday, Sept. 13, 7 p.m., Colonial Theatre, 609 Main St., Laconia, $46 and up, etix.com (also Sept. 10, Tupelo Music Hall).

Raygun and Whisper Man

A look at new Netflix flicks

Two new Netflix releases don’t demand your close attention but are acceptable relax-the-brain watches.

The Whisper Man feels like a study in contrasts. With its cast featuring Robert De Niro, Adam Scott, Michelle Monaghan and Michael Keaton, this movie about a retired detective (De Niro) joining the search for a possible copycat to the serial killer he put away years earlier is not nearly as fresh and compelling as it should be. But I also think all those people and their ability to bring top-shelf acting abilities to well-liquor material makes this grim and moody endeavor feel meatier than it would be with lesser talents.

To recommend the movie as a lazy-day crime drama is Scott as Tom Kennedy, author and overwhelmed recent widower and sole-parent dad to Jake (Acston Luca Porto), a kid whose mother’s death has left him with an imaginary friend and a fear of stairs. Why not relocate to a creepy multi-floor Victorian that had previously been (and is maybe still?) occupied by squatters? I feel like better real estate decision-making on Tom’s part could have saved him, and us, a lot of grief. Tom is retired detective Peter Willis’s (De Niro) estranged son, and so when Jake suddenly goes missing Tom immediately remembers his father’s super-disturbing case catching The Whisper Man, a serial killer who preyed on lonely young boys. Tom and Peter’s very strained relationship is one of the better parts of the story, as is Peter’s brothers-in-detective-ing partnership with Amanda (Monaghan), the detective working a new set of similar murders who asks Peter for help even before his grandson is was taken.

While the movie’s slow beginning suggests one of those grim eight-hour prestige crime series, there is a “get down to business” energy in the middle part of this movie as Peter and Amanda, and, on his own, a frantic Tom, try to figure out the connection between the old killings and the new killings and race to save Jake. But this movie spends too much time setting up a lot of, like, Chekov’s leaky-roof situations whose payoff is not nearly clever enough or expeditious enough to make up for the slog of showing us all the elements of the magic trick before the movie slowly performs it.

For a much peppier Netflix watch there’s Raygun: Breaking Badly,part of the Untold series of sports docs. This particular entry sympathetically tells the story of Dr. Rachael Gunn, aka Raygun, an Australian Olympic competitor in break dancing in the 2024 Paris games. By the looks of the Google search results, I am not the only person who searched “Baz Luhrmann Raygun movie” — because how is this story not a spiritual sequel to Lurhmann’s Strictly Ballroom just waiting to be made? Among the talking heads are Rachael’s sweetly supportive if befuddled parents and two fellow Australian B-girls talking delicious amounts of smack — all who read as straight out of Central Casting: Luhrmann division.

Rachael and her husband and coach Sammy Free are a cute, if somewhat in their own world, couple, both enamored of each other and of breaking, a style of dance they seem to maybe 45 percent understand. Rachael competed and frequently won in Australia, so it wasn’t really until she took her moves outside Oceania that she started to suspect how “not strictly breaking” her dancing was compared to the other dancer-athletes she’d be competing with. Who among us would be able to give up being an Olympian in Paris even if we realized, kinda too late, that actually we had no idea what we were doing? In the doc, Raygun walks us through her breaking career from her initial interest in this style of dance to the Olympics and into the horrors of going internet viral. Throughout she comes off as a friendly, enthusiastic, dorky lady who seems to have chosen — chosen correctly, for the sake of her personal sanity — to try to stay focused on the positive parts of her experience.

There is a “Raygun is bad for the break dancing community” element to her story that I’ve seen other reviews mention and that this documentary doesn’t really address in any meaningful way. I do think this doc does sell the idea that athleticism and skill are a big part of breaking — Raygun didn’t have skills at that level but her competitors clearly did. I feel like we’re watching Raygun show up ready to play her best game of T-ball not understanding that she’s playing baseball with MLB all-stars, which can make her seem sorta clueless but not necessarily, to my viewing, disrespectful to the game. And the documentary does work that Olympic magic of making me suddenly very interested in a competitive realm I’d never considered before. Time to rent 2007’s Planet B-Boy?

Featured photo: The Whisper Man.

Brighter Than Before by Courtney Walsh

(Thomas Nelson, 352 pages)

Courtney Walsh’s newest novel, Brighter Than Before, was the right escape at the right time for me. Main character Claire is 46 (same), unexpectedly single (same) and an empty nester (same). The journey to the inevitable happy ending that awaits Claire was a balm for my soul. That’s not a spoiler — this is undeniably a happily-ever-after novel.

The book starts out a bit heavy-handed with a scene that has Claire, the jilted ex-wife, eating an absurd amount of junk food in her car while stalking her ex and his new girlfriend. Let’s just say she ends up soaking wet and the subject of a very embarrassing viral video. It all felt a little dramatic — and yet, the emotions behind the actions are so real that I can see how Claire’s actions may not be so far from reality. I personally have never resorted to stalking an ex, online or otherwise, but I hear it’s a thing.

That moment for Claire is, at least, her rock bottom, and she realizes it’s time for her to make some changes and move on. So she does, literally and figuratively. She starts by making a list of what she really wants in life (a question that her therapist asked her months prior that she couldn’t answer at the time):

“I want a job or career I love.

I want friends. Real ones.

I want to live in a new city.

I want a dog.

I want to figure out who I am — apart from a wife and a mom.

I want a place where I fit in. I want a place where I belong.

I want a hobby …

I want to do the things that scare me.”

Claire crosses off No. 3 on her list immediately, selling her house in Denver and moving to an apartment in Chicago, where she’s always wanted to live. With her daughter Minnie attending college in London and her country-club “friends” casting her aside, she has no reason not to.

Claire meets some fun, quirky people in Chicago, often thanks to her list, which encourages her to make friends, try to belong and do things that scare her — like meeting new people. She meets neighbors as well as a stranger who quickly becomes her friend after standing up for Claire in what could have been another publicly humiliating incident.

And, of course, there are some love interests as Claire navigates the new-to-her world of dating via app. Without consulting Claire, Minnie creates Claire’s profile and sets up dates for her (another change in relationship dynamics that shakes Claire’s sense of self as she ultimately gives in and allows herself to lean on her adult daughter for help). She racks up quite a few terrible dates — so real — before finding a man with a little more potential who makes her feel safe.

And then there’s Miles, who owns the apartment building Claire is living in. She pegs him as a player from the get-go as she watches women come and go from his place night after night. Somehow, though, he ends up being an ally, even joining Minnie in her attempts to jump-start her mom’s love life. Against Claire’s better judgment, she allows Miles to join her ever-growing group of new friends.

Claire also takes a leap of faith career-wise, opening a bakery with money from the house sale as her ex continuously tries to tell her she’s going to fail and he’ll figure out how to bail her out before it’s too late. And she does fail, at first, with a distracted mistake leading to some pretty gross baked goods that, of course, make quick social media news. It could be devastating — but obviously not in a happily-ever-after story, so don’t expect a big plot twist. Do, however, expect some heartwarming feels as Claire’s newfound friends step in and help.

It’s hard to be middle-aged and have your whole life turned upside down. The question is, when the dust settles, what are you going to do about it? Claire grieves, deeply, for a year, then pulls herself out of it and creates a life that is most certainly brighter than before. The story is full of hard truths but also plenty of hope for those of us who could use it. B+

Featured Photo: Brighter Than Before by Courtney Walsh

Album Reviews 26/09/10

Melissa Auf der Maur, BASS WOMB ROOM: My ‘90s 4-Track Demos x Field Recordings (Envision Records)

Pointless postmodern self-indulgence ahoy, cripes do I not have the stomach for this, not that I enjoy sounding like a Jordan Peterson-worshipping fuddy-duddy which, I assure you, I am not. I’m not saying this Canadian-born ’90s-indie It girl hasn’t racked up a formidable resumé over the years, having toured with and played bass for Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, but I fail to see the point in this collection of tuneage that’s basically an aural diary for her own amusement. What have we even got here: A recording of a leisurely Hole crowd-warmup in which Courtney Love babbles something (“Courtney Chimes In”); a Captain Beefheart-flavored exhibition of off-key vocals and instrumentation (“Desire Is Critical”); a tiresome two-note display of bass effects whose time is kept by a dripping faucet (“Water Wars”); a Throbbing Lobster-begging noise loop from a Pumpkins show (“Bill Seoul Crowd”) and other self-congratulatory nonsense. I really don’t know if there’s a selling point to any of this at all except to maybe a Hole/Smashing Pumpkins completist. F

Soft Cell, Danceteria (Republic of Music Records)

Kids today would be amazed at the plethora of entry-level jobs that were available to us older folks back in the 1980s. Let’s see, there was restaurant work, oddball manufacturing positions, and telemarketing for starters, and for the brave few who wanted to learn COBOL and BASIC, data entry jobs. I was a manufacturing flunky doing all sorts of awful tasks as the New Wave dawned, and my memories of this U.K. band’s then-alternative-radio hit “Tainted Love” are all blue-collar work-related and awful; none of the hoodlums I hung out with would have been caught dead voluntarily listening to it on the radio, but over the years my tastes have evolved to where I lump this band in with Pet Shop Boys, which means I like them just fine as synth-poppers go. This will be Soft Cell’s last album; original co-founder Dave Ball passed in 2025, which leaves singer Marc Almond not wanting to continue the operation but nevertheless desiring to go out with a bang. The vibe derives from the hedonistic Manhattan club scene of the group’s heyday, where they hobnobbed with the likes of Andy Warhol and Madonna, an atmosphere captured succinctly in the pure disco, vocoder-affected title track. Thus it goes, with things like “The Space Inside,” a sad-blissy krautrock-oriented joint, and its twin, “Times Square,” and on and on. This could have come out in the ’80s, which is both the good and the bad news. F

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• This week’s all-in CD-release Friday falls on Sept. 11; hopefully we’ll have some good music to cover this week (hope does spring regardless of the stubbornly repeated precedent that’s been in place of late), so anyway, as I’ve groused about a zillion times now, I’m on basically every music industry-related spam list in existence, which this year includes the one for the U.S.-based Unsigned Only Music Awards, a yearly event whose deadline for 2025 submissions passed a couple of months ago, but it’d be something for bands to keep in mind for next year; you’ll be able to sign up for the 2026 competition sometime in December by visiting unsignedonly.com, where you can enter as many songs as you want as long as you’re willing to cough up a $25 entry fee for each one (if you’re under 18, you’ll need a parent’s signature). Of course, usually such things are nothing but scammy, meme-worthy nonsense meant to line the pockets of sketchy industry outsiders, but this one is real: This year’s artist of the year was the first blues-man ever to win, Artur Menezes, a Brazilian guitarist based in Los Angeles, and the judges this year included Aimee Mann and The Cure’s Robert Smith. Since it’s a legitimate affair, I was interested in knowing how they’d be handling “AI artists,” meaning I was hoping they’d simply ignore them as they should, regardless of the fact that AI is holding the sword of Damocles over the entire world’s economy (industry player Anthropic recently announced that their “addressable target market” is $30 trillion, basically the same size as the United States’ gross domestic product, in case you were wondering how catastrophic the next stock market crash is going to be). With regard to that stuff, people in charge of these awards do prohibit the use of AI-generated vocals, instrumental performances, or live accompaniments, but they do allow the use of AI tools for production support (e.g., mixing assistance, mastering, or sound design) and songwriting (melodies, chord progressions, lyrics, and arrangements). Personally I’m OK with the first part of that but not the second, but admittedly the reality is that no one could reliably detect an AI-written song if the artist gussied it up enough, and that’s something we’re all going to have to live with going forward. If anything it’ll be a net positive, given that there’ll be far fewer popular songs that sound too much like something that’s been done before, and speaking of that, Welsh indie rockers The Tubs have a new LP out this week titled Hard Life, whose single is “Who’s Gonna Love You Now,” which sounds like someone asked an AI to make a tune that sounds like a cross between Elvis Costello, Imagine Dragons and New Order; it’s as unexciting but mildly listenable as it looks.

• Wow, we haven’t chatted about U.K.-based art-punk legends Bloc Party in a while, have we? You know them from their 20-year-old Police-nicking hit “Banquet”; their newest album, Anatomy Of A Brief Romance, features the single “Coming On Strong,” a robotically danceable number with a bassy, pretty neat rubber-band beat.

• This Is Lorelei is the stage name of Vermont singer Nate Amos. His band’s new full-length is The Singer In My Band; the single “Billy Came Back” does nothing for me but it might do for you if you always wanted to hear an Aughts-aware version of Guster. They’ll be at The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., on Nov. 2.

• Last of all is London, U.K., electronic afro-funk octet Ibibio Sound Machine with their sixth album, Chopping Mountain. Leadoff single “Concept Of Love” is a club banger composed of wub-wub, ’70s soul vocals and a big fat horn section, it’s awesome.

Featured Photo: Stryper, Throne Of Thorns and Brennan Wedl, Brennan Wedl

Paris Between the Wars

  • 3/4 ounce Campari
  • 3/4 ounce scotch, or maybe Buchanan’s Pineapple Drink (see below)
  • 1/2 ounce simple syrup
  • 1/2 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
  • 1 ounce super-sparkling wine, like prosecco, to top

On the face of it, the recipe is fairly daunting.

For one thing, a lot of scotch drinkers would look at the whole idea of putting Scotch whisky in a cocktail as pretty blasphemous to begin with. Scotch is supposed to stand on its own – maybe with ice. That would be like using, I don’t know, Champagne in a cocktail.

You mean, like a Champagne Cocktail?

Oh, right.

But equal parts scotch and Campari? The bitter, red, Italian liqueur? That seems like a lot of intensity in one place. Sure, there’s simple syrup and lemon juice to drag the mixture back to civilization, but still.

On the other hand, you’ve been looking for something a little outside your comfort zone, and this sounds like it would be far enough outside it to send it a vacation postcard.

So you drop a handful of ice into a mixing glass and add everything but the bubbly. You break out your special long-handled spoon and mix and chill it thoroughly, then strain it into a coupe glass. You top it with an ounce of prosecco.

Wow, that is red. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. “To your very good health.”

Yeah, that’s a choice, right there. It is, as expected, PDB (Pretty Damn Bitter), but nuanced, with a complexity under the bitterness. You can see how this might become somebody’s go-to drink. But golly, that bitterness sure goes on and on, doesn’t it?

So, let’s try this: Set it down on the counter. We can come back to it; it’s not going anywhere. Let’s try swapping out the scotch for something scotch-adjacent. Buchanan’s Pineapple Drink is made from scotch, with a few tropical ingredients added in. Maybe, without the scotch and the Campari ramming into each other like big-horn sheep, this will be a little less bracing.

Let’s try that again.

**Sounds of rinsing mixing glass, the clatter of fresh ice, and a hum of concentration as new Campari, Buchanan’s, lemon juice and simple syrup are poured. The rattle of everything being stirred, the strained. The fizz of the sparkling wine.**

Hmm. That looks very much the same as the first one. Taking a tentative sip.

The first thing you notice is the fizziness on your tongue from the prosecco. And then, yes, this is a little sweeter, slightly fruitier. Less, “I’d like to speak to your manager!” It’s still bitter and red, though. There’s still some complexity there.

And yet.

The first version sits on the counter where you left it, openly mocking you. “Oh, good! I hope you have fun with Little Miss Country Club Over There! Go on! You were made for each other!”

(Of course, it’s bitter. It’s half Campari.)

Sometimes you want a drink that challenges you. On the other hand, sometimes you just want a drink.

And somewhere, a devoted scotch drinker stokes their sense of righteous indignation that you’d put scotch in a cocktail in the first place.

Featured photo. Photo by John Fladd.

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