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For those who want to call themselves seasoned gig-goers – front-row at venues, dancing and mouthing the words to a song only a few hundred have heard before – you probably started out discovering music at a college festival.
After all, the likes of Mood Indigo at IIT Mumbai, Strawberry Fields at National Law School (Bengaluru) and the inter-collegiate travelling gig Campus Rock Idols are still recalled fondly, especially by the bands it served as a road to bigger things for bands like Zero, Prestorika and Thermal and A Quarter.
Whether you came to support your friend’s band during their competition phase and walked away impressed by the likes of Parikrama, Motherjane, Indian Ocean, even more recently, Spud in the Box (now graduated to music festivals and clubs), college “pro-nites” are pretty influential.
That explains why a band competition like Channel [V]’s Launchpad turned its attention to college kids, setting up shows across the country to host electro rock giants like Pentagram and Shaa’ir + Func. Despite its current absence, college rock shows are still well-populated and have that ever-enthusiastic crowd, ready to wave their phone flashlights or sing a chorus with an artist.
Bands continue to travel from all over to take part, other bands are now very much settled into the circuit, promoting original music to a crowd that even a decade ago, probably just wanted to hear that Nirvana, Pink Floyd or Red Hot Chilli Peppers cover.
Beyond the usual run of veteran headliners, here are bands who have become college show mainstays in smaller towns over the last three to five years.
The Kolkata rap rockers may have got their first break on reality TV show India’s Got Talent, but their previous bands - !Banned and Skydive – were already ruling college shows in West Bengal and Jharkhand. It’s a politically-charged yet fun brand of emotive rap rock that probably wows anyone who sees Underground Authority live. It evokes everything from Linkin Park to Imagine Dragons, names that (rightly) all college students become familiar with.
And although they’ve released an album (You Authority, 2014) and an EP (Propaगेंडा) in 2016 and got their chance at playing NH7 Weekender a couple of times, with every jump and fist pumped in the air as vocalist EPR Iyer runs through an razor-sharp critique of the state of world politics, Underground Authority still remain regulars in the college festival circuit. From Assam to West Bengal to Jharkhand and more parts of the North East – the band has it down.
There’s something about nailing fusion music that makes audiences roar with approval. Bengaluru’s Lagori know that for sure. From vocalist Tejas Shankar’s indefatigable harmonising to jump-around guitars courtesy Edward Rasquinha and Geeth Vaz and rhythm by bassist Shalini Mohan and drummer Vinyl Kumar, Lagori probably got a bit notorious for their high-energy sets at Bengaluru club venues.
They made enough of a show of it to become college favourites by the time they released their 2013 self-titled album, performing to huge numbers in Bengaluru schools and institutes, Mysore, Tumkur and a lot of south India – from Andhra Pradesh to Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Since they’ve got that multi-lingual edge of singing in Hindi, Kannada and Tamil and Malayalam, it’s taken them to own stages at IIM, Indore and Bhubaneshwar.
Don’t let the Transformers font fool you. Delhi rockers The Local Train have built up an impressive set that soars like few other rock bands who have been around since 2008. Although they do just as good a job at corporate gigs or packed club shows, it seems like the band really was meant to play big stages all the time.
After releasing their 2015 debut album Aalas Ka Pedh, you have to see the footage to believe that The Local Train have had a lot of their songs sung back to them at colleges they’re playing for the first time, including the hit ‘Aaoge Tum Kabhi’. That refrain’s got it going on whether they play college festivals in Patiala, their homeground in Chandigarh, Roorkee or Allahabad.
The most recent entrant to make college young-‘uns sing and clap along, Bengaluru band Aathma have only been around since 2014, but are already beginning to become that band that wins a competition one year and comes back to headline every other band night the next year.
Of course, unlike a lot of other bands mentioned on here, Aathma only have a handful of originals, with their current draw being covers of Raghu Dixit and a few regional film songs. With a three-track debut EP Yeh Hai Zindagi launched in 2015, the fusion/pop rock band’s flute, guitar, bass and drum combo has put them on the winner’s list at college band competitions in BITS, Goa, Mount Carmel College, IIT Madas’s Saarang and more recently, co-headlining National Law School’s Strawberry Fields show.
Mumbai’s prog-influenced alt rockers Daira are taking rock to cities you might not have heard of, like Shirpur. Bet you had to google that. But more than introducing Indian rock to smaller towns and their college crowd, Daira is as much about playing clubs and releasing videos, singles and albums. Within a year of coming together, they released their self-titled album in 2015, showcasing what they like to call Awadhi rock ‘n roll, taking from a language spoken in Uttar Pradesh and turning it into lyrical jolts for the equally peppy music.
From Kozhikode to Nagpur to Varanasi – Daira seem to have a solid hold on college rock scene, playing an entirely original set – sometimes with an added cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ – that restores a little faith in just how far independent bands can go, just like every band on this list.
