After we finished “Disillusioned”, I felt a different sense of satisfaction. I mean, for me it was the first song that I had ever been involved in creating. There is a sense of wonder whenever you do something like that for the first time (and if you are really lucky, you will feel that wonder every time you are involved in anything creative.)
We kept practicing “Disillusioned” over the next few days, each time polishing it further and casually playing it between our set list that boasted mainly of songs from Iron maiden, metallica, dream theatre etc.
We had a small group of friends (Nithin, Ravi, Dan, Niyas, PP etc) who would hang around the Ancient Mariner and who gave us that initial encouragement that emboldened us and encouraged us to make another song.
The second song that I wrote was a song of social relevance which also held an undertone of personal realization. On the surface, it is a song about the Indian girl child and on a deeper level, a song about how we abandon our special talents in our race to lead a normal life as defined by society. (Check out, “I meet my maya” for the inside story)
“Maya” was in our initial opinion a slightly unimaginative song. All of the guys in the band thought it was boring with a few good moments here and there. The song never really had a melody that worked as a chorus. (This “defect” was rectified a year later during a jam session where we attempted a chord change that brought about what has now become the chorus.) Today it is one of our most requested songs at any show that we do! Just goes to show that in the creative process, one should not throw out the baby with the bath water.
We now had 2 originals, which was a pre requisite to perform at “strawberry fields”, a prominent national music fest held by the National Law school. We decided to go for it.
Practice involved songs like Aces high, 6’ O clock, Master of puppets, 2 min to midnight, Disillusioned & Maya. One day after practice, we were winding up and Baiju suddenly played a small piece that Rex had played sometime earlier. Rex immediately started playing some clean chords to back up the piece and Clyde happily joined in. I started humming a melody and we were moving along nicely. I think John got irritated with the predominantly melodic piece, because he walked back to the drum kit and completely changed the time signature of the song with a 4/4 beat that contrasted almost brutally to the 7/8th
pattern we were originally in. The immediate response from the guitars was to launch into a distorted riff and suddenly the skeleton of a song was ready.
We were all a little surprised at what had happened and I went home with the tune running thru my head. I wrote the lyrics for a song that night. The words just came tumbling out. Next day, I was at AM (ancient Mariner) with the lyrics and trying to sing them along with the music. I went along nicely and then got stuck at the chorus. I remember asking Baiju, “can you change the riff so that I can sing along?” He told me, “can you not layer the chorus over this riff without getting distracted by it?” I tried and “Mindstreet” was ready! The only thing left to do was to put in a solo. That took a day.
We had one more original to take with us to NLS. Things were suddenly getting exciting around motherjane!
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