June 23 was truly a day of celebrations of music and art at Someplace Else. Calcutta-based Hindi rock band, Punch celebrated its first anniversary with a lot of head-banging moments. This was a truly unique and memorable evening for the band as it celebrated the true essence of music and the camaraderie that comes with sharing the same passion. It was truly a rare occasion as the band gave opportunities to other bands in the city to perform — musicians who do not get enough opportunities or the right platform to showcase their creations. “We want the music to do the talking, we want a brotherhood to build, which was prevalent during our time (2000-10s)”, said vocalist Wriddhayan Bhattacharya.“It is unique because no other band plays anniversary gigs with other musicians in the city. Here we are trying to build a community that existed in Calcutta in the mid-2000, probably the golden time of the rock scene in the city,” added Bhattacharya.
Although their band is “new”, to describe Punch in its own words, “Punch is an offshoot of yesteryear bands Kryptic and Dark Pegasus with Wriddh on vocals, Aritro Ghosh on vocals and guitar, Ayan Mukherjee on backing vocals and guitar, Rupsha Roy on vocals, Tamal Bhattacharjee on bass and vocals, Anindya Maity on drums.” Together they were a sight to behold on Fridays as they performed covers of songs like Alvida by KK, Still Loving You by Scorpions, Dil Chahta Hai and G3’s My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama, to mention a few.
They also debuted two original songs, Sau Saal and Khwaab under the progressive rock genre, which will release on Spotify come August. “Sau Saal is a song that celebrates friendship and relationships which have a lot of grey areas, and Khwaab is a song which talks about dreams in a big city... the song is basically trying to encourage people to go and chase their dreams,” shared Bhattacharya.
The band justified their name as they packed a powerful punch with their performances. They had the audience enraptured by their set and people swayed, danced and rocked it out with them. Later they were joined on stage by Subharaj Ghosh, a renowned guitar player, who has performed with the band in the past. He celebrated Punch’s anniversary with the band performing covers like Enter Sandman by Metallica, Radio Ga Ga by Queen, etc. Apart from this, the event featured a diverse medley of artists who were there to celebrate Punch and show the world what they had to offer. Artist Debabrata Paul Chowdhury did a live painting of rock music icons like Freddie Mercury, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai during the performances. Between the Blanks, an alternative rock band with Avik (vocalist/guitarist), Rohit (guitar), Rishab (drummer/keyboard), Arpan (bass), and Sounak (guitar), had the first act of the night and they performed covers of Lift by Poets of the Fall, Kaise Jyu by Local Train, Crawling in the Dark by Hoobastank.
Fickle Freelancers comprising Rahul Ganguly (lead guitar), Debayani Sen (vocals) Sougata Hari (percussions), Titash Chakrabarti (guitar/vocals), is a classic rock band with a blues touch that performs in English and Bangla. They performed originals like No Good Can Come from Music, Chains, Cholesterol, Have it All, and a cover of Ohio by CSNY.
Acoustic duo Tathagata and Shreemoyee Guha Mazumdar took the audience by storm with their live renditions of Kiss From a Rose by Seal, I Don’t Wanna Be You Anymore by Billie Eilish, Agiye Nau by Nemesis and Creep by Radiohead.
Aaheli Choudhury (t2 intern) Pictures: Rashbehari Das