Saturday Night Blues Band became a signature line-up at Someplace Else (The Park) in the early 2000s after it was formed in October 1999 by Jayanta Dasgupta, Arunima Dasgupta, Chiradeep Lahiri, Stuart Munro and Raja Narayan Deb. Life happened to everyone, they lost their pal Stuie in August 2022 and it came as a shocker for everyone. But December turned out to be memorable for the band as the members reunited and were joined by some of the new faces on the line-up at Hard Rock Cafe on Park Street. Saturday Night Blues Band has always been an emotion and its revival attracted known names from the live music scene in Calcutta and also from outside the city. Everyone enjoyed the band’s covers of artistes like Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
“We never really broke up; we took a breather. Such is life,” said Arunima, who joined the band after almost a decade. “It wasn’t a possibility in my mind to reunite and be on stage with this band. After Stuie left us, with whom I played for more than a decade, so I was in shock and pain. But Chiro (Chiradeep) coming back to India acted as a catalyst. The band has all the main ingredients except Stuie. But I wanted to hang out with the band, because I usually don’t go out or see anyone, I stay in one room with a guitar, but with the other members and their enthusiasm, I wanted to stop thinking for a bit and just come play. Playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band isn’t about letting people know how much you know, it’s about giving them a good time. This is the first time I shared the stage with Josh (his son) and it was like déjà vu,” said Jayanta.
