CAPITAL
[V] ROCKS THE CAPITAL
All
roads in Delhi, crowded and congested as they were, led to the Indira Gandhi
Indoor Stadium, where the prestigious Channel [V] Music Awards function was
being staged on October 18. Outside the stadium, excited Channel [V] fans
without invites busily queried most of the invitees about the availability
of passes, hoping desperately to acquire one or two. And although the awards
were running almost two hours behind schedule, neither the delay nor the
hordes of large mosquitoes that far outnumbered the 15,000 strong audience
were good enough to dampen the high spirits of the crowd or the bright evening
that lay ahead.
Finally, a so-called brother of Udham Singh kicked off the show and kept the frenzied audience, especially the one’s standing, upfront at bay with his Jat conversation, before making way for VJ Jaaved, the official emcee of the awards, who made an entry in a red but not hot suit. Raising the fever pitch of the audience to a maximum, he dolled out his quota of desi wisecracks and pun intended jokes.
After
which the Spice Girls, burst forth on stage in five rattling rickshaws, each
bearing their respective spice name and colour on it. Much to the disappointment
of the audience that was drooling for the girls, hoping to see a good amount
of spice skin show, Geri (Ginger Spice), Emma (Baby Spice) and Victoria (Posh
Spice) came in sarees while Mel C (Sporty Spice) and Mel B (Scary Spice)
wore some rather eastern looking outfits. A few words and lip-sync performances
of their latest Spice Your Life and their most popular Wannabe, all incorporating
an exact seven minutes, and the girls vanished as quickly as they had appeared,
leaving the crowd that had so eagerly awaited their performance, feeling
discontented and cheated of what they had expected to see.
It was, however, componseted by Daler Mehndi’s performance
of his smash new hit Ho Jayegi Balle Balle which got the audience singing.
And by the time, Jon Bon Jovi enthusiastically finished his live raw renditions
of his contemporary tracks Queen of New Orleans and Janie Don’t Take
Your Love to Town as well as an old Bon Jovi hit Wanted: Dead or Alive, the
crowd had forgotten about the Spice Girl’s hit and run performance.
Some where in between, Jaaved and Sophiya attempted to do a Fred Astaire,
Ginger Rogers act.
Later,
Lucky Ali mesmerised the audience with his live impromptu performance of
O Sanam, adding another verse to the song. Kapil Dev and Ajay Jadeja, who
were called to present the award for Best International Album to Spice Girls,
an official gave a shoddy excuse about the girls being unable to receive
the award, as they had to speed away on another of their Spice Missions,
both cricketers expressed their discontentment.
Rock — Abs and cool man Peter Andre had all the women folk swooning over him, including Anaida who performed a duet with him. While Peter curled his voice and modulated his tone to a maximum, exhibiting phenomenal breath control during his performance with Anaida of the Quincy Jones classic Secret Garden, the latter seemed to be pretty successful in undoing the fomer’s effort. Anaida not only sound off-pitch but some how failed to blend with Peter’s tone and vocal style. After the duet, Peter thrilled the crowd with the high energy performance of Mysterious Girl and lip-synched to one of his latest All About Us. Even Savage Garden’s performance of their hit I Want You and No Doubt’s Don’t Speak was hard hitting as ever.
Among the Indian performers Mehnaaz delighted the audience with
her version of Knock On Wood before joining Punjabi munda Sukhbir on his
peppy rendition of the swinging Gal Ban Gayee, which was probably the catchiest
number of the evening and had the entire crowd shaking a leg to it. The Colonial
Cousins enthralled the Delhi audience with electrifying performances of Krishna
and Let Me See The Love. Hari with his braided pony tail and Lezz sporting
a close to the scalp hair cut and a huge clip on earring looked cool-n-hip
as ever. Towards the end, a surprise performance by Code Red and Asha Bhosle
was good enough to make the crowd faint. Believe it or not, the performance
was a mushy duet between Asha and the boys called We Can Make It and that
too wholly in English. The night ended with a cool appearance of various
Magnasound artistes, who grooved to a recorded version of their smash single
Mera India.
On the whole, the awards were more glitzy and glamorous than
last year and the gap between awards was shortened to a bare minimum. Even
the lighting, sound, script and artiste performances were excellent. The
official Channel [V] band rather Karl Peters and his Rubber Band also stood
out. Featuring Karl himself on bass his prodigy 18-year-old son Kurt on drums,
Rinku on keyboards, Ace Keyboardist Daryll Rodrigues labouring at the keys
and back-up vocalists Cheryl, Andrea, Rosalind and Vanessa, the outfit provided
some excellent musical introduction for all the Artistes and VJ’s, besides
jamming impromptu with some Artistes like Daler Mendi and Usha Uthup who
also filled in those little gaps between awards with some funky tunes.
What could have been reduced though, was Jaaved’s usual monotonous pot-shots
at married men and slinky women’s wear. The only cumbersome aspect of
the awards was the length of it, something that Channel [V] has been labouring
at constantly, since the last year to improve on the time. Thanks to excellent
production by reputed producer Andy Ward, brilliant television direction
by Royston Mayon, excellent television production by Jeremy Azis, good sound
by Roger Drego
and
event management by DNA networks, besides all the hard effort by the Channel
[V] gang, the awards this year were miles better and much more spectacular
than last year. And judging from that, loyal Channel [V] fans are in for
something out of the world, next year...
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