so many downloads, but no comments??

it’s strange.. either the album is rubbish, and no one wants to say it to my face, or it’s pretty good and no one wants to come off as kissing our asses, but i can’t understand, how an album can be doing so well online (over 500 albums downloaded world over).. hmm

Song Lyrics to “After the Rain” – as requested

Is it better? Now that your here with me?

Is it easier? To crawl inside those sheet?

Is it faith or has faithless become the word of now?

Do you disbelieve, in the belief that it will all work out?

 

Is it me or is it, everything about you?

That makes me rage, makes my blood sear within my veins?

Your memories and photographs, they tell a lie,

Of how “the art of happiness”. can bring you to your knees,

 

After the rain has fallen,

The sun comes out, 

And turns the darkest day,

After these foolish words,

Have left their burn,

You know, we just might be saved.

 

So is it constant, the writing on your walls?

Or is it momentary, right before you fall?

Into your fake philosophy, your torment and your seive,

Of generosity, of wanting what you’ll never need?

 

Am I animal, or am I just a cave?

Or am I an animal trapped inside this cave?

Your memories and photographs, they tell a lie,

Of how “the art of happiness” can bring you to your knees,

 

So maybe I come around,

And turn your world upside-down,

And I might hide, but I never conceal,

This love has got me on my knees,

Et tous les jours, Je Suis amateur,

A zene fog bejonni, valamikor,

Tale hon, Tikanis, Habibi,

Naan thaan sholdran, danoth dannethi!

 

“mage raththarang!”

I apologize in advance to those of you who do not speak singhalese, and i doubt if the direct translation will add any to the following true incident.. but “mage raththarang” literally means “my gold”. Maybe it would help not to speak singhalese, because i hadn’t the foggiest idea about what it’s secondary meaning was when i was put in to the situation, so it really shouln’t matter! I’ll set the scene.. Matara, well into the 3rd month of my surgical attachment, 34 beds, but close to or more than a hundred patients to be seen daily. It’s my on call night. I was in my room trying to shovel down my dinner around 11.30 p.m. before the damn phone rang again. Because BOTH my roommates were off duty, that phone ringing meant only one person was gonna get called… me. 11.35 p.m. – It rings. “Doctor, come quick, another gang fight, but this time with guns”. In the deep south, Matara, mainly a fishing village, the “boys” go out to sea for days at a time… when they come back, all they have is alcohol. Being fishermen, they have their different types of knives to gut the fish. After a little alcohol, it is not uncommon for them to start gutting one another. We are quite used to stab injuries involving rival “fishing gangs”, and they are always busy nights too, but most of the time, we would have only a single bad patient, with a deep wound, and about 10 others, which i would line up and suture, (one side of the gang at a time of course). We would separate the gangs, by putting them on either side of the center 4 foot wall in the middle of the ward, with the warning that if they were to fight, they would be kicked out of the ward and reported to the police, who would lock them up. Of course there is no point trying to threaten drunkards, so we would medically use little tricks to flush the alcohol out and detoxify them, so that most of them can understand what we I am saying, and make sure nobody gets out of control. Back to 11.35 p.m.I stop eating. Wash my hands and run. On reaching the ward under my care about a minute later (it’s pretty far from the doctor’s quarters) i find the ward in complete chaos. It is FULL of people, men, women, cats and dogs alike. I put my vocal skills to good use. “Everybody who is not a patient GET OUT NOW!” Most of them comply except the cats and dogs. That I can live with. There is blood everywhere. Cliche’, but true. About 7 gunshot injuries, 2 abdominal, 2 chest,  others looked superficial. I rattled off instructions to well trained nurses, and assessed all the patients, gloves on the go, and treating as i assessed, getting other patients and bystander’s to help apply pressure to the bleeding points, checking vital signs, and then I rush to the nursing station, to call for back up. Three of the 7 are going to need surgery I decided, and call my on call senior house officer and surgical registrar and pass on the necessary information. I send of for 12 pints of blood (4 each), and then start admitting then officially, meaning paper work, which is required before I can send them for the x-rays we are going to need, (yes, one really learns to multitask!).I have admitted six and the worst are off for the necessary investigations. Here is number 7. He looks drunk. His friend standing next to him by my desk looks even drunker. But there is no blood to be seen, just some on his sarong, so i check his legs. All o.k., and i have to run to assist the surgeries, cos we are going to do two at a time. I ask him, “what’s the problem, are u hurt?”. His friend speaks for him, “yes sir, he has been shot!”. I am not amused. I ask “where?”. His friend says “othana” (which means “there”). I repeat “where?”. Now getting a tad annoyed. Sensing this his friend blurts out “eyage raththarang!” (which means “his gold”). Now I must have had a puzzled look on my face. Now the drunk patients drugs must have kicked in because he suddenly comes to life and goes “aney doctor mahathaya, mage raththarang walata ung vedi thiyala!! (dear doctor sir they have shot my gold”). I am still confused until he points towards his crotch. Aaaaahhh… God i felt like an idiot. I found out later, after being the butt end of jokes for the week, that it is a southern term for, well, u know.. Long story short, he was lucky. Very very very very lucky! The bullet had missed, yes, missed his penis, gone through the front of the left side of his scrotum and out the left side, not damaging anything, well, you know..It was a long night, but had a hollywood ending. My former surgical registrar, who had recently come to Matara, performed more “Ex Laps”, or cutting stomachs open to look for things, in ONE WEEKEND, than he had done in his career thus far. I’ll never forget that weekend, that night, or that man’s “raththarang”!  

stranger than fiction

it’s really stange. there have been tons of downloads, almost 500 from www.rock.lk/10secondrule, several torrent sites who have put our album up (one asked permisssion!) and have had more than 200 downloads from them (approx.), and God knows how many from TNL’s website… but very little feedback. wondering if people love the album or hate it, and either way don’t wanna tell us!! either way things are moving…. getting requests to play gigs, which we are politely turning down, and would u believe getting hunted down by YA TV. either way, thanx to those who are giving us feedback… and a plea to those who aren’t, tell us what u think! good or bad… cheers 

Poles being pulled out of men’s rectums.

Most of the email’s I got, were about this! So I will tell this story first! Cut a long one short… it was friday afternoon… the time my roommate and I take turns, running for the border (colombo), and I was all packed and ready to go. hell, i was packed at 5 am, but we had to do our rounds etc etc… but the time was here.. and i was psyched! i grab by now hacked bright blue backpack and plan my sneak out of the back of the hospital. I was just locking the door, from the out side. now I had 2 choices here.. just ignore.. i mean, they would have called my partner in crime’s mobile, hell it might even be for my other roommate who was not even in out ward, but the sucker in me won over. mr. goody two shoes, unlocked the door, and threw the pack down and grabbed at the phone… “doctor, come quick, there is a patient with a pole in his ass” (in singhalese) “nurse? what? say that again?” “doctor come quick there is a patient with the pole stuck in his ass” ok.. now i was no longer a newbee. I had seen the blood an gore, literally to speak, and was phased by little. and this was one of those moments. so i couldn’t be bothered taking two trips back to the ward and then back to the room to pick up my pack before catching a bus back home. so i did the most ridiculous thing, i carried this bright blue back pack right thru the entire hospital (making my stealth-like escape a little “un-stealth”. I park the pack at the ground floor of my ward, at the telephone operators office, who used to always help us out. (another story). So here am in my morning clothes, the only thing giving me any significance is the steth around my neck. (here in sri lanka a path clears if u have a steth around ure neck. it doesnt happen in any other part of the world i have been too. you should try it, its pretty trippy) ok, the steth was not to give my self an ego trip but to literally clear a part to the victim, as it was visiting hours, and it was impossible to move. the downside to wearing a steth is that u get swapped by questions about when a patient can go home.. but i put a purposeful look and walked purposefully (yes i know i used it twice) towards “craytb”. ok i used to give my patients names. that way i could remember them on ward rounds, and to treat them in an emergency. “craytb” meant he was crazy and had Tuberculosis..ok now before i get emails saying this is unethical, it was just a way to remember over a hundred different patients all the time…constantly changing. maybe now my song names will make sense. anyways… he was all the way in the back in “isolation” (ok, i have to laugh, when i look at isolation at the hospital i’m at, where they FREAK if uhave chicken pox (ok, me two – i’ve acclimatized!) and the isolation room i was walking towards. just two curtains. i’m thinking walking towards him, that this is PROBABLY why we never SAW him pushing in the pole… turns out i was wrong.. as the story goes, he had found the pole in the bathroom (who take a pole to the bathroom and leave it there- the next day the head nurse told all other other patients not to take poles to the bathroom and leave them there), and decided how far he could shove it up his ass. all the way apparently. He was lying there in pain, but content with his sense of accomplishment, be it getting me there, or the pole up there. So we got it out. I HAD to measure it for legal purposes, from what i remember it was huge, 14 inches long and 3 and half inches in diameter. straight. thankfully, ot it would have turned the corner, and i wouln’t be on a baila playing bus in half an hour, but in surgery. but we got it out. u know what’s really funny… the music i’m writing this to is U2’s “one”. and the line “one life, you’ve got to do what you should”. er.. ok.

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.

Last album, last gig, what a blast!

After launching the last part of the monsoon sunday trilogy online (first ever by a Sri Lankan band) i let out a huge sigh of relief. This was the last part of my baby being born and let loose on the world. Within a week, we had over 200 downloads (available on www.rock.lk , it takes about 10 mins if u’ve got DSL, which includes the album cover and lyrics, if u want to burn and make u’re own cd) in a week. No its not all rock, but the angry songs are, which are about 4. Angry about the war, angry about our politics, angry about where the tsunami money went. But the rest is a mix of funky songs, some tepid, some in your face “james brown”, as one person described it. (not that i take the comparision seriously. But I am proud of it. If we had more money, we could have done a lot more. but as all musicians know, it’s hard to make an album in any part of the world, and fund it your self. People thought we were crazy when we said we were going to give it away online for free. but we did it. then people thought we were crazy when we said we were gonna give our fans a free gig, which we did. Cos it’s always been ONLY about the music! the gig was a blast, most said it was one of my best (gloat gloat!), but seriously, it’s the most fun I have had on stage. for sure. It opened with the talented TNL onstage solo artist winner CC, and ended with a Open mike night, which after Sri Lankan’s being typically shy at fist, eventually kept jamming until the club tried to shut us down, when i convinced those jamming to wrap up, the club owners suddenly wanted to get in on the fun and started singing themselves! So it went of for quite a while nd was tons of fun! for everyone I hope! it was all free, cos, for real, none of the musicians i worked with were ever interested in working for money. they liked the songs, and for my luck they were happy to learn them and play and record for free. The owner of the studio we recorded in a generous Singhalese gentle man Mr Surendra, who’s studio was called Shakthi Studios, in memory of the great band “shakthi” which he used to play in, who also came that night, and this sound engineer a wonderful Tamil gentleman Mr Rubin, who as far as I know is the only foreign qualified sound engineer in Sri Lanka, both went way out of their way to help us. Thanks to them you have an album of immense quality, for the money we put in. I have always tried to be groundbreaking, and i think i have acheived both those goals with the brass monkey band, and with 10 second rule. So i am blessed, to always have found incredible musicians to take my quirky little songs to another level. To always have somehow managed to pull it all off. I thank everybody who has ever been involved with anything i have ever done musically. it’s been 14 years, 6 bands, and now 7 albums. (if I count the once i have on cassette!!! – before there was a thing called a cd!@!) and now the last one is online. dare i say i have written songs, played and performed through an era of changes. and it has been beautiful. Too many people to thank, 14 years. so thank u to all. but the common denominator for most of my song writing, i believe is the trauma of growing up through the 25 years of war. I was 7 in 1983, and we hid some tamil friends in my room. I will never forget, cos we thought it was a sleep over, that is, until we saw the fire, and smelled the smoke. My singhalese friends who lived next door, also hid their tamil friends, and i have kept all of this in for 25 years. I finally had the guts to release it. come what may. u can here it on the song “this war” of monsoon sunday 3 :After the Rain, from www.rock.lk, or all over facebook. I think a lot of young bands have been infuenced by the war too. where do u think all these metal bands popped out of? did the devil himself do a fly by over sri lanka? no they are hurting, and this is their release. this whole beautiful country is hurting, and music has always been my “aeroplane”. If i had one wish, it would undoubtably be for peace for this country and it’s development. Sri Lanka will always be where my heart is, (the song “groove city”) and i hope i live to see my wish come true. I remember when we all lived as one in peace and harmony, when all my Singhalese, Tamil, Burgher and Muslim friends used to ride our bikes, go for swims and play cricket together. why can’t it be again? anyone reading this, teach your children, to love ALL Sri Lankans, whatever their race, cos this generation is lost, all we can do is put our faith in “Generation Next”. peace. seriously.

well my work here is done, almost.

I have always to do things differently. With the BMB (no I’m not resting on it’s laurels), I changed the system by introducing cello, piano and tabla into what was essentially rock music. groundbreaking at the time. now i, with a lot of help, put together, what will hopefully be sri lanka’s first ever free 12 track album download by any local band or artist. It is released today, february 4th,, independence day. 60th anniversary. a celebration of two bombs, and more people dead. it is also dedicated to ALL lives lost in the beautiful and amazing country of ours marking 25 years of ravaging war, 1983 to 2008. a second ground breaking event. the last one, will be a free concert to a select group of “real” fans, at zanziba on the 10th of feb. after that, i’m done. peace. please. i beg you.

first single off MS3 is online!

well, facebook for now… but accessible, not?

fun gig!

rockapoluza was a blast.. only was there for a bit, but it sounded like the bands were exploding off stage. we imploded with the first song, but word of mouth was it was our best gig yet. my old drummer, Anik from the BMB, helped us out, cos our drummer Jim is in india with his family for the season… on that note.. all the best for the season everyone.. and here’s to one good final gig…