I was on the road with the reverbnation.com-anointed
#1 Hard Rock of Dubai, Vin Sinners, for their two-city India tour across
Mumbai and Chennai. After the tour, I wrote a special story for India's Number
One Indy music website and print magazine, The BIG M. A story they couldn't run
in its entirety.
But here's the complete story, and more than what I sent The BIG M. If you love classic hard rock, check out Vin Sinners and their music. It's An Element of Surprise. And meanwhile, here's the portrait of the rocker and the corporate honcho as an ordinary man. Vin Nair, aka Vinesh Venugopal Nair.
Frontman and lead singer of Vin Sinners.
FOUR MONTHS back, when I called him on
his Dubai number in the afternoon Mumbai time, this towering fella who thrills
while belting out super hard-n-heavy rock songs as frontman of a hard rock
band, was “in the back of beyond”, as he put it. “Hey, Pavan, I’m crossing a
path flanked by tall grass in some remote Indonesian village!” What was he
doing there? “Distributing school bags to poor village school children!” he
boomed back happily. No, his band Vin Sinners, recently voted Dubai’s #1 Hard
Rock Band by reverbnation.com isn’t a rich outfit that does CSR thousands of
miles from home base. It wasn’t Vin Sinner the band frontman at work; it was
senior corporate executive Vinesh Nair, Global MarkComm Head of Xpress Money in
over 140 countries out of Dubai, doing CSR and reveling in the happiness it
gave him.
For Vin Sinners’ CSR, Vin Nair reaches out to School children in Dubai and anywhere else he and the band are touring or performing, telling them about the importance of a substance-free life. “You don’t have to be smokin’ to be rockin’!” he tells them, giving them his own example – no reed, no weed, no smokes at all.
Another big recent achievement -- to him as big as Vin Sinners being anointed
the #1 Hard Rock Band of Dubai by reverbnation.com, and one he takes beaming
pride in -- is when his talented 12-year-old daughter gave him her verdict on
the quality of his musical contribution to craft the ending of her debut
original song composition for a school project. “Dad," she told him the
morning after he'd sat up the entire night finishing the song for her, "I loved
it!”.
Recently, he spent over a week away
from her, leading his talented band of five musicians into their first India
Tour across Mumbai and Chennai. Vin Sinners’ An Element of Surprise tour saw the band play four gigs -- two each on consecutive nights in Mumbai’s
The Bandra Base and Chennai’s The B Bar in end Feb. It was a culmination of a
20-year-old dream with a 14-year hiatus. But more on that later. The India Tour
of Vin Sinners first.
Mumbai. Two nights unplugged hard rock at The Bandra Base.
Loud, Heavy and Melodic, is how Vin Sinners describe their music. So when their Mumbai gig kicked off, the pre-event publicity took music lovers by surprise. How can a Hard Rock Band play acoustic and unplugged hard rock? Acoustic and unplugged has an inherent ‘softness’ implied. “We’ve re-engineered the sound,” Vin said, “and we’ve deliberately chosen a small venue, with a very warm and fuzzy lived-in feeling, where music lovers could sit together and enjoy our sound which we’ve consciously re-engineered to achieve a living room effect, and we couldn't have found a better place than The Bandra Base, if we'd looked for a month of Sundays.”
...As they did that, it was like a culmination and a beginning for Vin Nair, full name Vinesh Venugopal Nair. Who learnt his music being a part of a church choir when he was just 9 years old and went on to form a covers band while in college. That band was Acanthus.
Loud, Heavy and Melodic, is how Vin Sinners describe their music. So when their Mumbai gig kicked off, the pre-event publicity took music lovers by surprise. How can a Hard Rock Band play acoustic and unplugged hard rock? Acoustic and unplugged has an inherent ‘softness’ implied. “We’ve re-engineered the sound,” Vin said, “and we’ve deliberately chosen a small venue, with a very warm and fuzzy lived-in feeling, where music lovers could sit together and enjoy our sound which we’ve consciously re-engineered to achieve a living room effect, and we couldn't have found a better place than The Bandra Base, if we'd looked for a month of Sundays.”
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| Vin Sinners, ready for Mumbai: Vin, JB (Jing Bongato on his right); Aldo Rock with the Superman T behind Vin from left, with Cmythonika aka Smithy, Naveen The Skinner and big bassist Joe D Mon |
And true enough, on the night of their
first performance at The Bandra Base, a room
that could pack in around 80 people standing, saw 35-40 music lovers
sitting on dhurries and mats, lolling
against the walls of the soft-red-and-yellow lit room, eyes shut, half smiling,
swaying to excellent original hard rock tracks from their first album An Element of Surprise. And sure enough,
they enjoyed the experience of lying inert, soaking acoutstic-soft hard rock
that, as Vin said he'd re-engineered for a living-room-like experience. “It
will sound a little softer, yes,” he had promised, “but the nature and the
essence of the hard rock beast will rear its handsome head h once in a while!”
And it did, throughout the 2-hour gig that six usually foot stomping, grimacing-smiling,
wild-eyed musicians high only on hard rock but now actually sitting on chairs like
genteel classical guitarists, keyboardists and druGrasshopper Greens, which
opened for them in Chennai, told me “we
have all grown up on".
"Vin Sinners’ kind
of music is very rare today," Sunil said. "There aren’t many hard rock bands that play classical hard rock music. They either
dive into the morass of wild heavy metal, or traipse around in the
soft-poppish-alternate wishy-washy kind of neither-here-nor-there sound.”
That, really, describes the real USP of Vin
Sinners: the kind of music we grew up on.
...As they did that, it was like a culmination and a beginning for Vin Nair, full name Vinesh Venugopal Nair. Who learnt his music being a part of a church choir when he was just 9 years old and went on to form a covers band while in college. That band was Acanthus.
“I had Acanthus in 1991 with my
friend and classmate Gerard. Acanthus played at college events in
Bangalore, Pondichery and Coimbatore, focusing on cover tracks of the top bands
like Iron Maiden, Bonjovi, Pearl Jam, Radio Head, Nirvana and Guns N Roses,
among others”, says Vin. “We created just one original track then, but we did
that because it was mandatory to qualify.
Then, Acanthus disbanded. And Vin’s
music went into hibernation as he concentrated on building his career, but also
kept writing lyrics with no specific intent. “See, I admire musicians who could
persist and stick on, trying to make a career out of their underground music.
Me? I had to put food on the table. I focused on my career, kept writing lyrics
with no specific intent in mind.” Vin had begun to write lyrics for
songs and created quite a large stash while he pursued a career in
advertising.
By
the time Vin met Atif Ali, his co-producer in 2010, he had already set up a
fairly successful Internet consulting business in Dubai where he had been
living for 5 years. Vin and Atif went about putting melody to the large stash
of lyrics that Vin had written over the years. When the third song was done,
Vin decided to upload it on a music social network called reverbnation.com, and the
song straight away topped to No.2 on the local UAE charts - that song,
incidentally, was Something To Believe
In. This was when Vin realized that this could be a lot bigger than just a
production exercise.
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| 'This train's here to roll!', says Vin |
While
the launch was originally slated for Christmas Day, 2010, Vin had to
postpone all plans owing to serious pressures on his work front. In March 2011,
he eventually had to wrap up his consulting business and was immediately
hired by a company called Xpress Money to head their Global Marketing &
Communications portfolio. Over the next 7 months, Vin focused on recovering
from his own business debacle and some members of the band exited.
Vin
Sinners regrouped in October 2011 and Vin set a launch date of December 9,
2011. There would be no change this time. The new line up of musicians worked
tirelessly towards making a 'show of it'.
Vin
Sinners attracted partners such as Rock Radio UAE, Sify.com, UAE
Exchange and in fact even Vin's employers Xpress Money joined in
to support his initiative. The venue chosen was The Music Room, a popular
'local band' hide-out in Dubai. Fans sported exclusive Vin Sinners T shirts and
bought copies of the album titled An
Element of Surprise. As the lights dimmed, an intro video to the popular
theme song from the movie Inception called The Dream is Collapsing began to play, slowly bringing to the
fore the line up of Vin Sinners. The stage filled with smoke but remained dark
as the first song on the album called Hail
Ya Sinners began, and with the vocals, the stage lit up to introduce
a seven member line up on stage with Vin Sinner, dressed in black leather,
wrap-around blue glares as frontman. The band put up an epic show
that night.
The
launch was followed up with another show on Dec 23rd, 2011, and over the months
that followed, Vin Sinners played at the Wheels of Steel show Unzipped and even opened for Indus Creed and Motherjane.
While
the line-up had some changes, Vin ensured the focus remained on the set
size and quality of the 'experience'. Which is why the band calls its genre 'experiential rock'. And that, really,
was the experience Vin and his boys were trying to give to fans and music
lovers in their first gig in India...
...Cut back to The Bandra Base in Mumbai.
The six Sinners are on the small stage. Aldo Rock, brilliant
virtuoso lead guitarist – considered one of the best lead guitarists in the
Middle East. A full time professional guitar teacher too. ‘Smithy’, or Cmythonika, diminutive, extremely talented keyboardist by night and facilities manager by day. Jing Bongato, or JB, as he's fondly known. A super-clean-playing, super talented lead guitarist who considers Aldo Rock his guru and guide, and whom Aldo treats like a protege. The talented JB is the only non-Indian in Vin Sinners – he’s a Filipino working with Vin at Xpress Money. Naveen (The Skinner), advertising executive by day and flamboyant drums gymnast by night. Joe D'Mon, a strapping big lad, the band's hopping-plucking bassist-by-night who heads an Interiors company by day. (Joe and Naveen have been "bumchums" all their life, starting from school.) And then, of course, there’s Vin -- frontman, lead singer, lyricist, composer and big-brother to the five.
...Cut back to The Bandra Base in Mumbai.
Vin and his boys played tracks like Hail Ya Sinners,
the intro to An Element of Surprise Album;
the classic rock tracks Something To
Believe In; Return to Solace, a unique grunge-metal fusion
satisfyingly equidistant from both, Industrial and Classical metal; the classical rock ballad The Wise Man - Vin's dedication to his father, and also the
first song the band recorded and released on the Metal Asylum 2010 Greatest Hits of the Middle East. This track had guitaring
dervish Aldo Rock play some killer melodies. Then there was Barack Hussein Obama, the song that Vin
wrote as a tribute to current American President, and styled on the lines of
classic metal; a track with a head-banging mood, but, surprise, played softly
enough. And some medlied covers from GNR,
The Doors, Police, and more. And closing with the title track, An Element of Surprise, which Vin
describes as a song that tracks down the various sentiments in your life, the
phases that make them and the understanding that it is all a surprise. A slow
track that builds, and grows on your mind.
Vin says, “We created an experience for
our fans at The Bandra Base. The
formula has worked over here and can work anywhere. It’s the difference between
listening to a CD at home and remembering an experience.”
The second night at The Bandra Base was even more languid.
Both days, Feb 20 and 21, were the national bandh days, and even though the
bandhs had been called off, most people in Bombay seemed to have decided to
take it easy. The roads were empty, people didn’t stir out, but the real rock
lovers did, and The Bandra Base had a
laid back, languid air middle-of-a-working-week.
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| Dee Wood |
Chennai. Two nights of searing, deeply-plugged super-amplified hard rock at The B Bar.
From the languid moods of soft
acoustic unplugged hard rock – yes, a contradiction in terms, much like Groucho
Marx’s ‘military intelligence’ jibe – very early in the morning, Vin Sinners and
I made our way to the Airport and to take an unearthly-hour morning flight to
Chennai for two nights of full-blast, deeply plugged super-amplified hard rock
music that had the eardrums ringing and hard rock fans’ hearts singing… even
singe-ing.
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| Blues Conscience opening for Vin Sinners |
On Night One at Indy bands' favourite
hangout and showcasing stage, the genial Vipin Sachdev's The B Bar, the melodic music of the beautifully tight and soft
blues band, Blues Conscience, led by
another advertising-exec-by-day, Aum, opened for Vin Sinners. Blues Conscience excelled with their
lively syncopating jazz-blues-with-a-hint-of-rock blend replete with
heart-stepping rhythms and the excellent guitaring that ranged from the meanderingly
languid o virtuoso-dextrous; ever crisply clean and melodic. Blues Conscience is made up of Aum Janakiram - Guitars/Vocals (by day Founding Partner of MMU Communications, a digital servicing agency), Anek Ahuja - Bass/Vocals (by day Founding Partner of Whoa Mama Design, a design agency), Neil Smith - Drums (by day a manager at Amazon.com) and Sid Kumar - Keys (by day a content writer for an international firm).
And when Vin and his five Sinners struck their first hard-rock power chord -- coming as they did after Aum and his Blues Conscience boys -- the sheer breadth and diversity of the variety of musical genres being dished out to the packed house at The B Bar was as starkly obvious as Vin Sinners' performance was brilliant.
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| Aum of Blues Conscience |
Hindustan Times, Chennai Times, DNA, The Hindu, India Today, The New Indian Express, Times City, Outlook Business, Asian Age, Afternoon… most mainline and other important media covered Vin Sinners on their First India Tour. That augurs well for the future of Indy Music being kept alive by bands that seldom, if at all, receive Radio playout support, purely because at least 90% -- if not more -- of private FM Radio networks are sticking to Bollywood.
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| Prem Kumar of Chennai Live |
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| Vin with the Chennai Live Book Club listener-readers at The Burgundy Restaurant which hosts club meetings each Saturday afternoon. Giving out autographed CDs of An Element of Surprise and receiving books from Book Club host Jane Ram. Chennai Live RJ Rohan (in checked shirt) is beside Jane (dark top). Effervescent Burgundy Restaurant and The B Bar comm head Neha Agarwal can be seen behind and between Rohan and Jane. |
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Another young journalist, who is also
a lead singer in her own band, Nirmika Singh, too met up with Vin, and happily
for us, decided that editorially, a
story on Vin Sinners would make interesting reading for the lakhs who read
Hindustan Times in Mumbai every day. DNA's Sarita Tanwar and Shreya Badola, and
RadioAndMusic.com's Anil Wanvari and Poonam Ahuja and Afternoon's Carol Andrade
too ran excellent stories that would not only have interested their readers but
also helped the cause of Indy music from private bands.
Popular Indy music-supporting website thebigm.co.in and its sister print publication, The BIG M, too supported Vin and his boys with a 3-page story in their March 2013 issue. Editor Mihir Malani wrote: "Across the borders, Vin Nair of Vin Sinners has been belting out some heavy and 'melodic' rock that has caught our attention. We speak to the man behind one of Dubai's top bands as he promotes hs latest album through performances across the country". If you like what the Indy bands are doing, and want to support the mission of publications like The BIG M that in turn support Indy music, go out and pick up a copy of their March issue. Available at all the Landmark book stores at 50 bucks apiece -- half what you'd pay for a good cup of coffee today.
And now, cutting back to Vin Sinners. They're back in Dubai, and Vin Nair and his boys are working on their second album. Vin swells up even more, if it were possible for this 6-foot-two heavy-set giant to do so, when he speaks about it. “It’s an 'epic' project that will showcase the diversity and dynamics of this band.” It’ll be a double-CD album that he claims will “blow your mind... I have a huge slate to clean with lyrics for more than 50 songs in the bag. That assures us of at least a few more albums. "This train's here to roll!”
He’s confident it will roll. Because, he believes, “God delivers to those who have intent.”
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