Monsoon Sunday: The story behind the music.

I have been writing “songs” since I was a teenager. However it took me until the age of 19, when I moved to Budapest to study medicine to pick up a guitar, and after a girl broke my heart that I wrote my first song. It was simple, three or four chords, but the people I played it to were awestruck by the intensity of it. I think that’s what defines my songwriting “intensity”. One day if time permits I hope to put down the lyrics of songs in a book. But where would the intensity come from? Well, for one, I am hoping the lyrics themselves will have their own intensity, and two, possibly make the reader, you, will go and search out the songs to see how the lyrics fit into the landscape in my mind!

 

 

I fell into music quite by accident. My father used to play the drums in a band during his university days, and my mother was an accomplished piano teacher, but both let their passions fade away, as life became reality and one had to make a living. But I think the passion never dies in you, which is why my dad bought my brother an old Jazz drum set, which I used to mess around on, while studying for my Advanced Levels. The year after my Advanced levels some friends of mine that happen to hear from someone who happen to hear me play, outside my brothers room. All these led to me being reunited with a couple of kids I went to primary school, St. Thomas’ Prep with, Anil and Shehan. They had Anil’s cousin with them Oliver Priyanka, or O.P. for short, and had about three songs that they wanted to record, for which they needed a drummer.

 

Back in 1994, being a drummer was a rarity, and owning your own drum set was unheard of. Now before meeting them I had only drummed over Phil Collin’s and the like, which according to my brother, I was apparently quite good. I know now, that I was terrible. But I think none of us knew of any standard at the time, so standards didn’t matter. I remember memorizing lyrics to “La isle Bonita” and “smooth criminal” and other pop songs while in St. Thomas’ Prep. With the guys, a school I suddenly left at 13 to prepare for my London Ordinary and Advanced Levels at Wycherley International School.

 

Now remember this was when there were all of 3 international schools in Sri Lanka, and suddenly to be thrust from an all boy school to a mixed school was a shock to say the least. And 13 was a heck of an age to do this at. I don’t know if I should blame my parents or thank them for this! Either way it was a steep learning curve, where I pretty much tried to pick up tips from the older boys on how to interact with the opposite sex. I saw one boy put his arms all the way round a girls waist while slow dancing at a party, and of course thought this was the norm, and when I had my first slow dance, I did the same, only to be the talk of the school for the next few days as some kind of a sleaze ball. Poor girl.

 

 

But I learned fast. I realized it was far easier to be friends with girls than to try being funny. And after a while I realized they were pretty normal! This led to several friendships some of which continue to this day. Of course there was the odd awkward crush that I never had the guts to act on. I think I went through my entire Junior and Senior School with nothing but crushes until my senior two years, when suddenly me and my 3 best friends, Suhail, Rory, and Namik were  pimple-faced “studs”! Between us we pretty much ruled the school. It was fun, and for the first time, we attracted the opposite sex. No longer was I the “cute” younger brother, who my brother’s female friends would say “call me in 10 years!”. Now we were pimple-faced supermen, and we could do no wrong. Terrible haircuts, fluorescent green shoelaces, and anything I could find to tie around my wrists! Here however my music tastes expanded, after a boy I used to know in a parallel class at my old school St. Thomas’ Prep. One day, rumor has it, shot and killed both his parents after they wouldn’t let him go out to a party, suddenly we were all asked not to listen to this “devil music” called Heavy Metal. This single incident made us curious. It’s like telling the little kid not to put his hand in the cookie jar. Of course he’s going to do it. The irony is, that until the backlash against this type of music, we had never heard of it. So there were me and Rory, after school, skateboarding down his road, while is cousin Stephan gave us experimental haircuts, and we rocked out to G n R, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Tesla and even Poison. We couldn’t tell the good from the bad, we just knew we weren’t supposed to be listening to it. We even tried playing them backwards, but to no avail.

 

 

Looking back, if that’s where I got my rock influences from then my pop influences certainly came from my brothers adjoining room. Before I was even ever into music he was a “DJ”, which was oh-so-cool at the time, and I would hear him mix some really funky stuff together. I guess subconsciously this has been twisted into the mix. But also beyond pop, when he was in university in London, he sent me a tape, which I must have spent hours listening to. This music was different to anything I had ever heard before. It was the album “nevermind” by “Nirvana”. Suddenly about 6 months later Nirvana hit Sri Lanka, all the kids in school were going on about the music I was lucky enough to know inside out by now, and gone beyond to Pearl jam, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, Sound garden etc.

 

Finally I left Sri Lanka, only to realize how much I loved this country. Budapest was great, but my fondest memories were spent alongside the river Danube, which reminded me of the see that I used to swim to daily to a shipwreck at Kinross, in Wellawatte to escape the world.  Musically it was paradise. It’s where I discovered live music, body slamming, stage diving, but also jazz and blues bars, acid jazz, and the most amazing music in the world – classical, and opera. I had ushered classical music concerts in Sri Lanka before I left, but this was a different world. You would spend 20 minutes staring at the Baroque styled opera house ceiling, then the acoustics would hit you. Where were the amplifiers and microphones that I had seen at other concerts? Was that woman’s voice really that loud?? It was mind-boggling.

 

One of the biggest mistakes I made in my life was choosing minidisks over MP3. And I will regret that forever. My minidisk collection is complete. But useless. Just memories now. I guess that’s what life is, just a series of changes. And it’s bigger than you. You just have to roll with it.

 

 

Budapest, as I mentioned, is where I started teaching myself to play guitar. And I started to write songs. They were terrible. But when I came back to Sri Lanka my Dad did me the greatest thing and bought me my first electric guitar, it was a Samick, but for me at the time it could have been a Gibson, it was electric! I could plug in, and with my 15-watt amp, I called up Anil and asked him over for a jam. I was too shy to sing. So he was my savior. We formed “Wreck”, my first real band, finding a gem of a lead guitarist in Ajith and my brother on drums, Anil on vocals, and O.P. on Bass and me on Rhythm guitar and over the period of one summer we recorded over 15 tracks, were interviewed on radio and made 4 music video’s thanks to YA TV. Only 2 were aired, but for the only English band in Sri Lanka at the time, we felt like we had won the Grammy’s! The icing was when we were auditioned for our first live “gig” to be at the “Vihara Mahadevi Park Auditorium. To non-locals, I will explain this as the closest thing to an amphitheatre we have, to the locals, I will say that this is the part that the umbrella couples stay clear off because there is no shade. But for a certain 20 year old this was a dream of playing stadium rock to thousands! We played to about a hundred people, I sang my first ever song live, and that was it. We had played our first ever gig. It was awesome.

We ended our “tour” of Sri Lanka by playing at Rock Saturday, for those of you that don’t know what this is, it’s well, rock music played by a DJ on a Saturday! We opened the night, and then, a few days later it was back to Budapest for me. As I left my brother put out the Colombo Tribe Project, which was all the English rock and hip hop music in Sri Lanka and the time. I have two songs, “Disillusioned but Pretty” and Co wrote “Round and around” which was strangely but well sung by brother Afdhel. Wreck had one other killer song on that album written by Anil called “Fly”, which to this day remained one of my favorites all time songs. Perhaps for the memories.

 

 

The next summer I was back, all pumped up and ready to go. But Wreck had moved on. Shehan was back from New Zealand, and had replaced me on rhythm guitar, and the band decided they wanted a new identity and reformed as “Independent Square”, and won the first TNL onstage (a local battle of the bands) and were instantly famous. Somehow I felt cheated, as I had started Wreck with Anil, but regardless was ecstatic that my friends had won Onstage! It was a strange feeling, it was like an amputee, and I was the leg that had been amputated. I still felt connected. Yet I wasn’t a part of it. 

 

However I had no intention of taking away from the momentum they had built up, so we formed a side band called “Black Tou”, with me on Vocals for the first time, and guitar, Shehan on Bass for the first time, and Ajith on Drums for the first time! It was a highly productive summer. Playing 2 gigs, and recording 4 solid tracks and the usual media hype. I think it was also when Shehan realized he was a Bassist at heart, hence “powercut circus” in 2007.

 

 

This summer over and knowing I was no longer apart of the non-existent band Wreck, I put an ad in a Budapest newspaper, and the response was enormous. Eventually I formed two different bands… but one seemed to be progressing better, so this became my staple diet. The band was called Slowburn. And I was by far the weakest link. If not for my songs I had nothing. I struggled to keep time, and to pitch while doing so. Eventually the band asked me to take singing lessons, which I did. The lessons were great at first. I was thought how to breathe. I didn’t even know you had to learn this! Then the exercises. They were funny. Then they were repetitive. Then I realized I was being fleeced, because I could do the exercises at home. So this is what I did. I trained my self to sing.

 

Songs came whenever there was an exam to study for. I would just take a break, write a verse, read a chapter, write the chorus, read a chapter, write the second verse, etc. This was the one thing I didn’t struggle with. Editing came later. That’s when I actually thought about what I was saying, When I was writing, I wouldn’t think, it would just “fall from up and beyond”. Slowburn consisted of Csaba Major on Guitars, and is probably the most awesome sound engineer I have ever met. He recorded the album in his house. And the sound is better than any of the other albums. Amazing. I wish I was still in touch with him. Gergo Drapos was on bass. He was 19 when we met, but he was super talented, and still is. We are still in touch. Our drummer was Baszinka Istvan, a fantastic wizard with his two wands. Together we were invincible. Until I graduated medical school and left them. If I never said it before, and if any of you ever read this, I am sorry.

 

The next few years were a mess; I was all over the world doing different exams trying to find my feet. But I always had my six string and was always turning out songs. Most of The Brass Monkey Band album was written in Washington D.C.

 

 

The Brass Monkey Band, a name thought of by Anik, our drummer, and a name I went with to prove to myself that a name didn’t matter. Our first concert was at the BMICH, which is the biggest indoor auditorium in Sri Lanka; I still have the video footage, when they introduced the name, the audience cracked up. Bands were not supposed to have funny names, and if they did, maybe it was a funny act. But we sang our hearts out. And left the stage to a grand applause. One of my proudest moments. Suddenly it was on autopilot. One performance led to another, and kept going. We met through Dilshan, a mutual friend, who knew I had the songs, and told me about this Pianist who he described as “a Sri Lankan Alicia Keys”.  Anik, had set up his drums, at her place, and I went with Dilshan, and after formal introductions to her, her mum, Anik on drums, and Oshan on cello, we messed around a bit, and then I showed them Sin. I think Swinly was challenged, yet free. It was complicated to play, yet no one was telling her what to do. There were no notes to follow. I think this is what intrigued her. But I guess you would have to ask her. Either way the band had obvious chemistry especially once Ravihansa joined with tabla and Dillon on scratch pads and bass guitar. I wanted to do something different. Even though my roots were rock, there were too many rock bands. The BMB was something Sri Lanka never expected and we I think we blew everyone away.

 

A few months later one of my dreams came true. We were signed to a label and released “Monsoon Sunday 1 :Warning Signs”. Every musicians dream. A year later my dream ended, as I had to go away to Matara (In the south of Sri Lanka) to do my internship to get my permanent medical license. It was like boot camp. Oh the stories I could tell. From my first day where this mans face was sliced into 3 parts by a sword, so much so that his chin was dangling on his chest, to the 18 inch pole I pulled out of a man’s rectum. I think you get the picture. I will the rest to your imagination or another book. All I know is I spent a year eating fish rice packet for lunch and dinner, and lived with two other great guys Dishan and Dasun, who would laugh at my Singhalese but corrected me, and we helped each other through it. Three guys in one room, sharing one filthy toilet, for one entire year. It doesn’t sound so bad now looking back. I made some great friends, and the memories will remain forever.

 

When I came back The Brass Monkey Band had not moved in any direction. The record label had somehow decided not to promote what they had invested in. The fans wanted more songs, but the label was not willing to record another English album. I had no choice to change the name of the band, so I could go on with releasing songs.

One day jamming with Aftab, who went on to be the lead guitarist of 10 Second Rule, a pun on how English Sri Lankan bands never seem to hang around for more than 10 seconds, I found chemistry again. Things slowly fell into place as Uvindu, from Thriloka joined us on Bass, and Aftab asked Navin from majic Box Mixup to step in and drum for us. We had no money, and decided to continue to story of Monsoon Sunday with a second release called “Storm”, which was basically slowburn material re-released under a new band name, but fitted in perfectly to my story. The 2^nd part of my “Monsoon Sunday” the angry “eye” of the storm.

 

Along the way we Aftab met Jim Sykes, who was in Sri Lanka doing his PhD in Sri Lankan Music Culture. After some interesting conversations, we jammed, and that was it. For some reason, Jim and I had a similar taste in music growing up. Now having release MS 1 and 2, Warning Signs and Storm, it was time to record MS3 : After the Rain. We selected the songs, kept it simple. I had dabbled enough with alternate time and complex musical dynamics. This time I wanted simple powerful songs. And that was the focus. No one was showing off. The focus for each of us was showing of the songs for what they were. Maybe if we had more money and more time the recording would have been better. But it is what it is, and what’s done is done.

 

To give you an overview of what you are going to hear it’s basically a mix of Sri Lanka, life, the tsunami, it’s wrath, the emotions involved with it and apart from it. Its love, it’s hate, it’s confusion, and it’s clarity. It where did all the money go after the tsunami, it’s fisherman not able to rebuild their own homes, it’s mad politics, it’s when will things change, and most importantly it’s that we CAN end this war. But first we have to change our mindset.

~ by aadhilaziz on March 4, 2008.