Cricket + Thrill = Invalid Combination, Try Again

The SAF games 2006 is on in Colombo at the moment. After the South African cricket team decided to "chicken" out from the triangular series many sports enthusiasts in the country were deeply dissapointed in missing out on some cracking sporting action. Well, think again ! What did you miss ? Did you at all miss anything ? Anyone who watched the Sri Lankan table tennis team battling it out with the Indian team in the Women's Team event would have had a time of their lives. It had everything on display. So many come-backs, the agony, desperation, frustration, enthusiasm..YOU NAME IT, THEY GOT IT. To think of all those days where we wanted to wait until the last over of an ODI match to see catch some adrenaline pumping action. (if you call that a thrill) The TT finals were so awesome, every damn minute of the games was so damn amazing. A treat to your eyes. Afterall it takes only around half an hour to decide on the fate of the game and the atmoshphere at the St. Thomas College sports complex was just second to none. After a desperate attempt at getting the so called "invitations" (as tickets were not sold due to security reasons) ending in a failure, I was forced to sit down and watch the match on a mere 21" box. Damn, i felt so jeallous of all those people who were witenessing the action Live ! The screams galored at the Radikal Headquaters (my home) when the match was in progress, screams that even Chester will be proud of.

Eventhough, Sri Lanka lost the match 3-2 after an immense fightback (which was followed by a howl for death from the vicinity of Radikal HQs), the adrenaline pumping action was just great. It ruined any chances of relaxing before a brand new week begins. Especially, I wanna recognize the performance of Ishara Madhurangi who was 2-0 down at one point but trashed her way back to win her event 3-2. Kalpani Herath was bit off target today, whilst Deepika Rodrigo did her level best to bring Sri Lanka to a whisker within getting their first ever international-scale Gold medal through a table tennis team event. This may not sound like a blog entry, but what the heck, here's a hats off to our "ping-pongers" ! Let the world take the heat ! All the best SRI LANKA for the coming games.

Linkin Park back with some frickin' Stuff....

Alright partners...it's time to rock n roll once again. Linkin Park is back and is back with a totally out of the world track which is currently code named QWERTY. The album will be out somewhere in the early 2007 after which they will tour. Damn, isn't me counting days for those tour dayz !! The dream of me "rocking, shocking and meeting LP Live" WILL finally come true !

But for now just check out this....it's freakishly hot, it's magically happenning...
http://www.lprussia.com/music/LPRussia.com-qwerty.mp3

The Greed for Freebies

After sending out an e-mail regarding another local artist's album release, the replies I'm getting are pretty much the same. I sent information on the release of the ex-Independent Square vocalist aka Anil's new album (Pieces of April) somewhere down the line last week. And presto, all i'm getting in return to the message that I wanted to emphasise (which was GO & BUY THE ALBUM, SUPPORT THE ARTIST) was some mere, ridiculous, and shameful (i repeat shameful) queries on where to download the album for free or whether I can upload it somewhere. Some rotten idiots even gave me the URLs to the upload sites. When I offered them some free sample tracks only they were not satisfied. The greed for freebies was immense.

Isn't it a ridiculous experience to be a musician in Sri Lanka ? Especially, an artist who is in to English language stream ? I mean from the whole population of over 19 million in Sri Lanka i'm pretty sure only around 2% are listening to English music which is perfectly fine by me. That means, effectively artists who are working with original english music are left with only a 2% fan base to work with to market their products. And out of those 2% nearly half won't like the kind of music he/she is producing and that leaves the artist just a handful to work-on to promote his music and recover his/her expenses. BUT...

But even out of the mere percentage who are interested in the music that has been released, most of them seek it for for FREE. Damn, now that is what you call a pighead. The artist spends several hundreds of his hours, effort and money in putting out an album with the intentions of capturing a fan base whish is a bare minimal and when the album is out, instead of going to the store and buying it, brothers and sisters want it for free. Imagine, I uploaded the whole album and spread the link around to the people who wanted it uploaded. They will surely send it around and the songs will be heard and enjoyed by thousands of people around Sri Lanka, but the artist will not feel a thing. Is this the "pat on the back" he deserves for the effort he put in ?
The artist won't recover the money he/she spent and that will definetely discourage him from putting out more releases. Afterall, an album is just 500 bucks.

I am all OK for Sri Lankans downloading albums off the net of international artists. International artists have huge fan bases and just a handful of people from Sri Lanka getting hands on their music through "the backdoor" will not make a big difference. (although I agree that it is too, IS unethical) But we should start from helping our artists. Come on people, we should encourage them. Buy their albums, show them what you feel about the album, most of the albums do have an email address to contact the artist. So drop in a line on how bad/how good the album was. Even one word from a fan will do a world of good for an upcoming artist in a country like Sri Lanka. Appreciate what you hear. And if you don't like it, be constructive and let the artist hear your opinion. Afterall we are Sri Lankans !! Respect y'all...Peace !

The Bloggy Weekend

So so so....It's the bloody weekend over here...and quite strangely Radikal Zee decides to go blogging after some serious thought. I was a constant "anti-blogger" until the recent past where for some reason I began to think that blogging is infact not that anti-kool. So anyway on with the show then...to the wicked and wild world of Radikal Zee....

Am I jobless writing a blog on a so called weekend ? Hmm..come to think about it. Nah...It was never supposed to happen this way. Up until Thursday, all was fine, weekend was fully booked, two private parties, two singing stints and damn, shit happened. Come to think of lives of vocalists. The cold hit me. And it was going big time on Friday. Eventhough those days I would take no notice, or take no action to counter-attack a "mere" cold, nowadays are different. The cold struck me and my mind went through all sortsa excuses I can give to the "bosses" of the parties that I was to perform at. I've been doing my best, trying my best to drink whatever possible to make my voice sound normal, but the occasional cough is not making things easier. And definetely I can't afford to hop on a stage and scream "In the End, it doesn't even matter" with occasional jerks (in the form of cough) sure to provide a scratching effect for the songs. Damn it will sound weired as hell. So much for my plans.

I had the courage anyway to pick up the phone and tell 'em (obviously trying to sound totally down as ever) that I'm having a total vocal screw up. The responses were not that welcome. Someone wanted to come and do at least the DJ stint. A DJ stint without a voice to host ?? Nah, it was not my style. And to add more, all I wanted to do tonight was to sleep tight to the max, especially after the damn workout on the wee hours of today. So I said NO, and promised to do something extra on another day may be on a so called special rate. (extra and special..? yeah my foot)

I feel very sleepy even now, but as always the music is keeping me roaring to go. (not exactly roaring may be...but somewhat) But one thing is for sure, being a vocalist is not only about singing. U need to drink the right HOT stuff. So much for my desire for extra-chilled coke cans. Everytime, I catch this cold my mom comes to the rescue with all "her kind of medicine" at "my kind of place". So much fuss for a mere cold....When did I ever think ??? Afterall, I am a so called vocalist. Sounds messy...