My Modern Rock Conspiracy Theory - 2008

Over the last two years, I have done my fair bit of introspection. Besides the obvious things like may be I need haircut, a girlfriend or may be my existing pair of jeans is little too faded to pass off as cool and fashionable, may be there are people who are smarter than I, that I started using more Hindi words in my daily speech (unfortunately not the sort of vocabulary you would fancy picking up), and many other things like I'll need a lot more money than I could possibly ever make, homely good looking girls are not manufactured anymore(apparently god lost the mould he used to use, may be the feminist faction in heaven objected and the democratic set up that they follow up there ruled in their favour or it could be that he decided to put his best people to the test like he tested Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice, so this is supposed be some test that I am expected to pass, as if 18 years of education wasn't enough)...... the list is long.

Hey, give me a break will you. Stop being so critical, I am sure you are still harping on the faded jeans and haircut issue. This is my comeback to the world of writing after a two year self-imposed exile, you should be jumping for joy that the king of good times is back, not cribbing about faded jeans, "Oh Puli, what happened to your creativity", "Puli you've lost it man", "Blah blah blah". Sheesh, grow up.

Now moving on, I expect a little more maturity.

As I was saying, among the numerous things I realised during my introspections, no I didn't turn Buddha, thank you, I figured that there is a total dearth of good music today. As I lay in bed, breast feeding my laptop, rummaging through my music collection, it dawned on me that I was stuck in 1989, plus or minus 3 years. New music, not songs that I haven't heard before but sung in 1974, but music sung in recent times, may be a year or two old, barely featured on my computer. I was disgusted. There was this picture forming in my head, Pulickal in bell bottoms, long unkept hair, smoking weed, listening to Bob Marley, wait, I can't go any further. I jumped out of bed and ran to my good friend's room. He's an avid rocker, and a great guitarist. He had good taste in music. As I stood in his room, expressing my absolute disarray about possessing barely 10MB of fairly recent music amongst 10 GB of music and all those nasty visions in my head, (oh there was one with me dressed in a fluorescent orange shirt with green floral petals all over them, absolutely hideous), we arrived at a conclusion that, somewhere along the early nineties, when good music ceased to be produced, there must have been some natural disaster like a drought in the marijuana or poppy growing regions of the world, we've all heard of bush fires….or may be all the distilleries got together and signed a pact, much to the delight of the feminists or human right activists, that every drop of whisky produced henceforth would be alcohol free; alcohol free whisky, alcohol free rum, alcohol free vodka, alcohol free arrack (just like you have alcohol free beer), now all they could do to get high was drink lethal cups of coffee or sniff gasoline, or may be, just may be it was Osama Bin Laden who is responsible. I am sure, Washington, if pushed, can link the two. Moreover you can't blame Deva Gowda* for everthything that goes wrong, one must be reasonable.Somehow, the first few obvious theories didn't seem feasible, because every third guy I run into is either drunk, or is describing that high he experienced when he smoked up and lay on his back side starring at the stars in the sky. One even told me how they waltzed around in the clear sky, while Super Bitch (the Moon) looked on. She's still single and likely to stay so for some more time to come.

( * Deva Gowda is this local politician in B'lore, a former Prime Minister and an absolute bastard.)

Can you even imagine alcohol free arrack? Alcohol Free Arrack........Damn, I am good! Two weeks in Bangalore and it's all coming back to me now.

Where was I, ah yes, we then propounded this theory that of all myriad explanations we had, the Osama one made the most sense. But why Osama? 9/11 came much later. The US was probably air dropping new consignments of surface to air missiles and AK47s to the Taliban at this point of time. Ok, so not Osama, but something on the same lines. We figured that somewhere in the late eighties or early nineties, some one in power must have got really pissed off with all these bands producing such good music; and that his ugly eighteen year old daughter couldn't even come up with a decent rhyme, or may be all the women's underwear that was mailed to his son cast a doubt that his son might be turning into a transvestite, may be his wife ran away with a guitarist if a rock band, may be he just liked to see cute, "little boys" squealing on the TV.; that he must have started some stealth organization to weed out all the good artists from the music industry, entrusted the job to the CIA or their equivalent. The artists must have been taken to some prison and tortured, given electric shocks, had their tongues cut off, and fed on vegetables. Actually I think they must have served them vegetables on Christmas, on others it must have been just Daal. I don't know how people in certain parts of my country eat daal on a daily basis. May be that explains why they have an IQ equivalent of a Pomeranian. Getting back on track, this went on for a while, and when finally released, their mutilated genes were responsible for creatures like Britney Spears.

The CIA equivalent in the music industry? Well, it must be, how else would you explain all the crappy music? Every once in a long while, when you find one good song to hear, why am I not surprised its by the Red Hot Chilly Peppers, R.E.M, Pearl Jam or some band of yester years. It's like they just sneaked out of their caves high up in the mountains to tell the jokers in the music industry, "You missed me motherf****r, I am still alive". We are dealing with rock stars here, they are not known to be politically correct.

To cut a long story short, I put this theory to the test with my close friend, no wait a minute, he put my theory to the test. He is this little-overqualified-but-could-do-with- more-qualifications close friend of mine. He has more letters running alongside his name than his name itself. And he's muslim. So, that means, he has seven middle names you may only be able to pronounce when you are choking on a fish bone. Don't worry, I am not a back stabbing beast. He's copied onto this email, but don't fear for my safety, I am safe, for now, for it'll take him a while to rope in all his jehadi friends.


As I was saying, no sooner had I presented this theory, he mercilessly tore it apart. Nope, I didn't present it in printed form, the usage is purely figurative. Idiots! Just keep reading. He kept telling me it was baseless! "Do you have proof?", "How can you make a statement like that?", "You need to back it up with evidence".

I think my retort was "Can't you hear what's on the radio?". "Its absolute garbage", and some very animated gesticulations to go with it. But it was in vain. I was humbled. All my arguments were flushed down the pot. He told me that today artists rely heavily on research and market findings. I tried arguing that may be it's all that research is what's screwing up all the music. In a new artist's first album, he sings whatever came naturally to him, he creates good music. Subsequent albums cater to the record companies and he is forced to follow research findings and what teenagers "want to hear", most popular themes, break ups and loneliness is "happening", and more bloody advise and they screw up.

Of course, my friend gunned me down because he said it was rubbish, "You can never defend yourself with a theory like that". Point taken. My theory is garbage. There are numerous good artists in this world, and I suffer from a generation gap. I yield. I take back my arguments.

In the meanwhile, enjoy listening to Justin Timbalake's "What goes around, comes around".

Evidence? Who needs evidence when Timbaland's is #6 in the Billboard.

Dire Straits' The Sultans of Swing - Enqueue All.