We were there! It was a new feeling for us. We were the only
band from kerala and we were seeing guys from Bangalore,
Mumbai,
Next day we were on stage! We had an early slot, being one of the unknown bands then. Most of the bands playing before us looked like bands! They had attitude and flaunted it with a confidence that spoke of lots of practice. We were getting jittery and feeling slightly out of place. I remember telling the guys that what we had in our favor was the way we played and our music. We decided to concentrate on playing well and forget about everything else for the moment.
motherjane got on stage, took a look at the small gathering of long haired metal heads and music lovers there and started its set. 2 min into our set, people started popping out of the woodwork! The third song we played was our original “Mindstreet” and suddenly we were connecting majorly with the guys out there.
motherjane walked off that stage to an entirely different world that day. People started walking up to us and talking to us. At the end of day 1, we were known and looked upon with liking and acceptance by a lot of the musicians and audience there.
We were also learning fast. We watched all the other bands and started to sub consciously pick up important tips from the way the other more experienced bands behaved. We knew that we would be much better off the next time we got on stage,… if we got the chance.
We did. We scraped thru into the finals scoring with nothing more than a quarter of a point over another band. motherjane was in the finals along with four other awesome bands -Threindoy( the ultimate winner), Zero (who are still around as one of the top bands in India today), Cryptic and Angeldust
We were the first to play and played with a lot more confidence than the prelims.The audience loved us. We then got into the crowd and watched the other bands play. We were learning again. (We have never stopped since then!) Each one of those bands taught us something new and gave us food for thought.
That year at Strawberry fields, Baiju won the prize for best lead guitarist and Rex won it for the best Rhythm guitarist. The band experienced its first taste of recognition outside of Kerala. Most importantly, our originals were rocking and a new phase of our journey as a band had begun!
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