A lil gear info about The Scratch Card Winners

For all you out there who might think how we manage to get our awesome tone and sound on stage, here are the following gear info :

JAE
Guitar : Greg Benett AV3
Amp : Marshall MG 15CD
Mike :Shure Sm 58

ZOE
Guitar : PRS SE Single Cut with Trem
Amp : Behringer V tone 103
Effect : Boss Ds1 + Zoom g7.1ut
Mike : Shure Sm58

GD
Guitar : Washburn Bass Guitar
Amp : Kustom 80W Bass Amp
Effect : Zoom Bass Unit

Shashi
Drums : Jhonson kit
Cymbals: Basix cymbal stand
Paiste 18' ride crash
Paiste 16' crash
Sticks : Vic Firth signature series- david garibaldi

My new Musical Endeavor

Well on a fateful day of April 18th 2009, I finally managed to create a band that would stay for a long long time. We initially named ourselves as THE YOUNG GODS but now we call ourselves as SCRATCH CARD WINNERS.
I am currently doing vocals and lead guitars for the band. Jae, my friend is doing main vocals and guitars, GD on bass guitars and sound guy and Shashi on drums.
Having loads of fun in this band. All great friends and good musicians. An amazing jam room and ever supportive parents of Shashi. Its his place that we use for the jam. His bro Kirti is the ever enthusiastic fan of the band.

Keep in touch with this blog to know more about THE SCRATCH CARD WINNERS.

Our official email is : scratchcardwinners@gmail.com
Also join us at Facebook :http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=84992968171

Little Billy

Just a forward message i got through one of my friends. Too good to be left out

LITTLE BILLY ON GETTING OLDER

Little BILLY was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after
another.

After the 6th one, a man on the bench across from him said,

"Son, you know eating all that candy isn't good for you. It will give you
acne, rot your

teeth, and make you fat."

Little BILLY replied, "My grandfather lived to be 107 years old."

"Oh?" replied the man. " Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a
time?"

"No" replied Little Billy, "he minded his own fucking business!!"



LITTLE BILLY ON...PHILOSOPHY



A teacher asks her class, "If there are 5 birds sitting on a fence and
you

shoot one of them, how many will be left?"

She calls on little BILLY.

He replies, "None, they will all fly away with the first gunshot."

The teacher replies, "The correct answer is 4, but I like your thinking."

Then little BILLY says, "I have a question for YOU. There are 3 women

sitting on a bench having ice cream: One is

delicately licking the sides of the triple scoop of ice cream. The second

is gobbling down the top and sucking the cone. The third is biting off
the

top of the ice cream. Which one is married?"

The teacher, blushing a great deal, replies, "Well, I suppose the one

that's gobbled down the top and sucked the cone."

To which Little BILLY replied, "The correct answer is 'the one with the

wedding ring on,' but I like your thinking."


LITTLE BILLY ON... MATH



Little BILLY returns home from school and says he got an F in arithmetic.

"Why?" asks the father."

"The teacher asked, 'How much is 2x3?' I said 6," replied BILLY.

"But that's right!" says his dad.

"Yeah, but then she asked me, 'How much is 3x2?'"

"What's the fucking difference?" asks the father?

"That's what I said!"


LITTLE BILLY ON...ENGLISH



Little BILLY goes to school, and the teacher says, "Today we are going to

learn multi-syllable words, class. Does anybody have an example of a

multi-syllable word?"

BILLY says " Mas-tur-bate."

Miss Rogers smiles and says, "Wow, little BILLY, that's a mouthful."

Little BILLY says,

"No, Miss Rogers, you're thinking of a blowjob."


LITTLE BILLY ON...GRAMMAR



One day, during lessons on proper grammar, the teacher asked for a show

hands from those who could use the word "beautiful" in the same sentence

twice.

First she called on little Suzie, who responded with, "My father bought
my

mother a beautiful dress and she looked beautiful in it."

"Very good, Suzie," replied the teacher. She then called on little

Michael.

"My mommy planned a beautiful banquet and it turned out beautifully."

The teacher responded, "Excellent, Michael!" Then, she reluctantly called

on little BILLY.

"Last night, at the dinner table, my sister told my father that she was

pregnant, and he said "Beautiful, just fucking beautiful."











--
I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life ... Procrastinating and rationalizing.

Still Looking but not found

Well me being the average musician, getting a gig is almost next to impossible, I mean a worthy gig that pays. Anyways, most of the time I am in the perplexed state if I can really get something I really want as gear for my musical inventory.
Now I am from the north east, and getting quality musical instruments is a thing only the rich can afford. Well the scene is not that vastly different here in NAMMA BENGALURU as well. Some of the decent musical shops here take you for a ride. They charge exuberant rates for something you definitely dont want to give. But you have to. Well take for example, a pack of 6 strings from D'addario(nickel) costs a whopping 350-400 bucks in Bangalore. Okay, i guess maybe its same in rest of India. But do you think its fair??? In US it costs as little as 50 bucks. Beat that.
I am very pissed at the Indian Government and their motto of SWARAJ. Balls. Developing something indigenously is good but what about some products you cant afford to make at home?? We can always import but ....put a stamp of 20-33% of excise duty on it. I seriously think its a huge asking margin. Why in a country like ours, we have the right to enjoy freedom?? A guess its just a relative word.
Anyways back to the topic. Because of these reasons, Me, as a poor but eager musician have no option but to play to the tunes of the unworthy shop keepers in Bangalore. If you have friends or relatives abroad then you can afford all the luxuries you want, but what about the rest like me ??
We need good equipments. And for that we need cash. Cant bug mm n dad all the time can we? And We need good quality stuffs and not the China made craps.
I just hope oneday we can just afford to have the same equipments as our brothers in other DEVELOPED nations are having.

Thank You For The Music Time

One day, after I woke up, doing all the morning rituals head straight towards my main entrance door and fetch the morning news paper. As in the newspaper all these days, the usual news were inflation reaching a sky level and the various Babus in namma Bengaluru cashing on the money meant for other various purposes. Hmmmm, never mind, what caught my eye was one news or I may say a article, titled as "Live Music Under the Fire".


It took me some couple of moments to understand the gravity of the situation. What happened was that the Law Enforcers had decided to put a ban on live music on any public place where alcohol was served. The first thought that came to my mind were those about the Bar Dancer girls and co.
But alas I was wrong. There is this association known as the Live Band Association of Bangalore who opposed to certain pubs and bars which were operating without a valid license (It seems).

Then one fine day of Saturday of August, just before our INDEPENDENCE DAY, the cops raid OPUS. Now for the uninformed, OPUS is a goan restaurant and bar near Windsor Manor bridge. It showcases the talents of the city's budding rock stars and rock bands. Anyways back to the topic. The cops raided that place well before the official closing time of 11:00 PM. The band that was playing was humiliated and of course who wouldn't. Just is the apathy of the Government folks that they fail to understand what's LIVE MUSIC actually is.

For the Cops’ perspective what they consider to be illegal (LIVE MUSIC)
More than 4 guys head banging to some music they like. Mind you that music itself is played by some DJ or player and not "LIVE". Bottom Line: IT’S ILLEGAL

Same scenario but this time music is played by a kickass rock band LIVE.
Bottom Line: ILLEGAL

Any music that’s not being played in the background and high sounding according to the cops is ILLEGAL

Moving a limb or two to the tunes of the latest song. Bottom Line: ILLEGAL
I don't understand what’s rock band and bar dancers have in common? Except for the fact that both create an aura of contempt for the cops. Man, this draconian law has to go at some point or the other. Bangalore being a metro and also a cosmopolitan city, it has many diverse groups of people living under the same sky. Music is a medium of expressing feelings, frustrations and other emotions related to the human beings. It’s the oldest form of art known. Trust me on this.

Anyways, today is the day when the heavily rock influenced Hindi Film ROCK ON is released in theaters all over India. Hope this carries the baton of free live independent music in this rock and entertainment starved country. Death to the bastards.

Green Room Boxes Roxes

In Thursday's edition of Deccan Herald, Green Room Boxes came into the media light when the METRO edition covered my interview in their daily. As I said "Small drops make an ocean", hope this is the beginning of the good things to come. Had to struggle a lot but yeah feels nice to see the dividends pay off even in small ways.

Green Room Boxes

Green Room Boxes is a 5 piece rock band comprising of
Zoe on Vocals and Lead Guitars
Shovit on Lead Guitars
Vineeth on Keyboards
Anant on Bass Guitars
Rahul on Drums

The music GRB plays is more or less like an amalgamation of various elements of rock and its sub genre. Hence you get what we call ourselves as Garbage Rock.


"As said by Rahul Pradhan on Green Room Boxes' Official Blog"

Blame or respect the omnipresent Orkut, but that is how GRB got its foundation stone laid.

Anant started with a thread in an Orkut community way back in 2006 asking for interested people to join up to form a band. A lot of people replied (check out the thread:
http://www.orkut.co.in/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=18429620&tid=2480308164953903973), a lot of plans were made, but little progress was made.

I didn't know Anant personally at the time and got to meet him at one of our booze sessions. One thing led to another and there we were jamming together at my previous residence at BTM layout, Bangalore. The gadgets we owned then were very basic (primitive would be a better word I guess). Anant had a Givson electric guitar that was as old as his engineering days and I had a 5 piece drum kit that even kids wouldn't think of buying. Anyhow, we jammed and were joined by the BTM Boys too (aka Harish, Dammiee, Ashok, Khagen). That was our first jam room - and it remained for a pretty long time too.

We called ourselves "The Resoultes" then and even had a band logo decided, when we found out that there was already a band with that name. Around that time, Zoe too happened to reply to the thread posted by Anant in Orkut and was eager to join the band. Zoe came over to jam in our BTM pad and after the first song that we jammed on, Anant and I knew that Zoe had to be in the band. So now we were a three piece band...without a name. We were name hunting and somehow "Green Room Boxes" popped up. And we agreed.

A couple of more jam sessions at BTM and Sovit was asked to join the band. Sovit happens to be the brother of a friend of ours and also the brother-in-law of another friend! In he came to the band to take the rhythm guitars spot. Sovit impressed us with his clean guitaring techniques and also with immense talent to provide solo riffs in between the songs which lent an entirely new dimension to the songs.

Jamming in BTM, however, was getting a setback because of the constant neighbors complaining. So we aborted jamming there altogether, and didn't jam for a good period in 2008. Again via the omnipresent Orkut, Zoe found Vineeth (aka Vinnie). We were looking for a good keyboard player and Vinnie fit the bill perfectly. Not to mention the other two bonuses he brought along - first, the jam room and secondly his experience with the Kannada music industry. Whoa! We were finally ready to rumble!

Although a relatively new band which is still in its "gelling" phase, that is the story thus far for GRB. Watch this space for more on us!