First off, GIR this year was a tad disappointing as far as participating bands were concerned. There was absolutely NO band that totally smacked me over the head with how brilliant it was — like GMI did last year; and no band that I'd seen before which put up its best performance ever this time around. My favourites for GIR 2006 - DR would have been terrific if not for their lead guitarist who as of now seems an uncomfortable graft on the band, and who went very badly off-key on more than one occasion. Acrid Semblance were decent but I've seen MUCH better performances from these guys - GIR 2005, for instance. Also the sound was really spotty — the guy at the console seemed to realise that such things as keyboard solos existed quite late in the day and so you really couldn't hear these too well. Among the other bands, the first I heard was some lame outfit whose drummer seemed to have manged to nail down one lowest common denominator beat that he applied indiscriminately across songs as diverse as Mr Crowley and Evenflow (it was more suited to the latter than the former). Split were competent but not much more — their u2 cover was the most exciting moment in their set. Joint Family for all their swaggering and posturing on these forums (rsjforums, the original venue of this post) struck me as a decidedly average nu-metalcore outfit with a very above average drummer. In spite of the style being not something I care much for, i've seen PDV and Bhayank Mauth do this sort of thing with much more conviction and energy. Besides DR, I only got to see Prestroika on Day 2 and frankly did not like what I saw — apart from having an incredibly retarded name, I don't know why this band deigns to call its tepid and lifeless music 'originals'. This was the musical equivalent of Bombay's infamous 20 paise photocopies — one could hazard a guess at the source material but it was way too cheap and smelly to really want to be around for very long. The superfuzz: Dull dull rawk and rowl with the vocalist launching into the silliest stage banter I've ever heard (and this includes Sahil's legendary "HEADBANG MOTHERFUCKERS HEADBANG. In the meantime, here are a few free t-shirts for you!" at Independence Rock some three years ago). I really have no idea why these guys won — there seems to be a general trend over the last couple of years to pedestalise the most nondescript sounding bands at GIR.
Well at least both Superfuzz and No Idea are extraordinarily tight, so that's something i guess..

Nakshatra: Another band whose above average competence with their instruments somehow never quite translates into interesting music — me and my friends were able to predict every shift to high pitched vocals, every hyper-kinetic DT-esque breakdown with energetic drumming with such accuracy that it all just got quite tiresome.

On to the pro bands:
Orange Street: Ugh. The only redeeming factor in this hideous sonic abortion, this upending of the garbage can of musical ideas over the heads of the audience was the singer's ridiculous stage act which looked like a sloth trying to wank off.

El Caco: YAAAWWWWN. I had great hopes of this band when i heard a deep resonant Kyuss-esque guitar tone, but it all got ruined when the vocalist kicked in with his amateurish Daniel Johns imitation. The songs just glossed over me totally and I'd be hard pressed to remember even one of them two minutes after it was over.

Zero: Probably the sloppiest performance I've ever seen from Warren but STILL a fucking brilliant gig. This made Day 2 TOTALLY worthwhile.

yourcodenameismilo: I found the presence of the large sign from the British Council ominous and my worst fears were realised as soon as these guys shambled onto stage. It was a secret weapon, a last futile act of vengeance by the British Empire on its former subjects — inflicting on us a band of unparalleled and baffling suckitude. My other theory is that the British Council sends them as an instrument of torture to markets where the number of defaulters at their library is extraordinarily high. I'm not a bully (in spite of what a lot of these rants might lead you to beleive) but there was something about these guys that made me want to steal their lunch money, smash their Star Wars collectibles and burn their report cards and marksheets. I suspect this guy is their fashion idol and they spend all their time trying to get his 'look' down pat:

No Idea: Two years on, No Idea are still on their relentless pursuit of dullness as an end in itself. Halfway through their set, (the part when I decided I ought to get close to the stage for a ringside view of Freak Kitchen) I was almost literally bored to tears, willing to confess to crimes I had nothing to do with; pay up all the cash in my pocket and in my bank account; change religions — anything to make the hurting stop. No Idea are a great argument (like many other bands at GIR this year) for the fact that original compositions are not such a hot idea after all — a few years back, No Idea had a great setlist including such infrequently heard covers as Blood Red Skies and The Tower (by Bruce Dickinson), as opposed to this soporific thermocole flavoured lounge rock crapola with affected aretha franklinisms passing off for vocals. Music like this is the most acute torture — leaving one with an overwhelming sense of ennui and helplessness at its total blandness — even trying to find your way out the venue seems too much of an effort. It just goes to show that something that's boring is far worse than something that's bad but still has a sort of idiot energy animating it (The Salivation Crusade, for instance).

Freak Kitchen: The karmic circle of my GIR experiences closed with Freak Kitchen. I had sleepwalked through the valley of the shadow of death (the No idea set in case you were wondering) and woke to one of the most brilliant performances I've ever seen. I was almost totally surrounded by idiot nu-metal fans who kept yelling for slipknot and indulging in the sort of retarded fumbling and groping that passes off for high humour in nu-metal circles but they mercifully began to peter out halfway through the show. The set was perfect though I'd really like to know whose bright idea it was getting India's finest to jam with IA. I'm not sure what the rest of you feel about it but it was a VERY bad idea — first off, I don't think any of our local heroes had any say in the settings or the guitar they were handed (which was at a considerably lower volume than IA's guitar) and secondly just about everybody got out-played in the worst way possible. IA v/s Mahesh Tinaikar sounded like Mahesh Tinaikar v/s Jayesh Gandhi during the Come Together jam at the Indus Creed reunion — a horrifying display of a guitarist's limitations being exposed. It was downright disrespectful to them. I'd have much rathered a jam with all 3 Indian guitarists playing off each other with enough time to really get into the spirit of things — this could've been done instead of subjecting us to the horrors of Orange Street or Yourcodenameismilo. Net-net — GIR 2k6 would've been quite a disappointment and not worth the airfare and risking my life with the Delhi traffic had it not been for Zero and Freak Kitchen. These bands alone made it seem like a great decision — the rest of the bands were a sometimes welcome, frequently unwelcome incidental experience.