India Psychedelic by Sidharth Bhatia

Author:Sidharth Bhatia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The first band to play at the newly opened disco, Blow Up, at the Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay was the Jetliners from Sri Lanka. Their music was pleasing and danceable and they became very popular in the city, not the least because of their lead singer, the beautiful Mignonne Fernando. The Jetliners cut two LPs during their stay in India.

The repertoire of the Jetliners consisted of songs that were in demand during the period but nothing that would be considered serious rock. Harshad Gandhi, who was invited to be the first DJ at Blow Up—not the least because he had a vast collection of 400-odd LPs—was not impressed by the group’s playlist. ‘They played “Sugar sugar”, “Mony mony”, stuff like that.’ Gandhi played his music—soul, Motown and rock—between the two sessions of the Jetliners. But, along with their go-go girls (two girls moving on stage in tandem with the music), they got the crowd moving and Blow Up became the place for the hep—and rich—crowd to hang out. HMV released two records, The Jetliners a go-go at the Blow Up and The Jetliners at the Taj Mahal. The songs on the latter gives an idea of their playlist, which was more tuned towards soft, melodious numbers than hard rock: ‘The Last Waltz’, ‘Summer wine’, ‘Black is black’ and ‘Zorba’s dance’. India was just one of the many destinations where they played and after their contract got over they moved on to the Far East.

Soon, the hotel management invited local groups to come and play. Among the earliest local bands to play at Blow Up was the Combustibles, a Bombay group formed in 1967 that had played in Poona, Calcutta and Kathmandu, making a name for itself in the party and club circuit. They had represented Bombay twice in the Simla Beat Contest (but failed to win) and continued to get regular gigs. In early 1970, after one of the band members, Christopher Valles, left to join the Mystiks, the Combustibles brought in Nissim Ezekiel, a young guitarist who had just moved back from the US to his native Bombay.

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