The big cheel(goa)

Madhavi is a very good friend of mine and its funny that she actually started of as a client and in the process of finishing her work...we became pretty good friends...we hang out a lot whenever she works at Pixion....so it was among these great moments of doing time pass at pixion together that she told me about the big chill goa. I wrote it off at that point thinking its some money making gig with some faltu international artists as usual....Around this time an incident which devastated me happened...somebody deleted all my music from the pc next to my Flame!!i had not backed it up and couldn't believe that i had lost 2 years of music...downloaded...borrowed..begged and it had all gone in the blink of an eye....i was disturbed, depressed and disappointed and kicking myself for not backing up my music....so my line producer also was in the room and since he likes to hang with me while we work together, decided to connect his mac to a plug point in my room and generally stay there cause his work was going on in my room...i was depressed...i didn't have any of my music...and one does need music while working.....it just doesn't feel right....so i tell jhamb to try internet radio...i don't remember how we came to that..but we just went to shoutcast.com and started clicking on the playlists which seemed to be our kinda music....we clicked on “chronic aggression” first ....wah...wah..maja aagaya....pure aggression flowing through the Internet, served right in your room....this seemed to be a good idea to us....so we went on clicking and out of the blue i clicked on an ambient chill playlist...and we used to just keep it playing in the background when we weren't in the aggressive mode....one fine day jhamb downloaded a stream ripper and started ripping of the channels...so now we had some very good music in continuous DJ sets to listen to when ever we wanted.....the quality is strictly preview quality mp3s but what the hell.....

jhamb used to leave the application on so that it would rip in the background and it used to make organized folders of individual channels and sometimes with proper split files with artist names and album names....one such artist who caught my ear was jon hopkins......now u can Google him and find all sorts of info about him but what I'd like to say is that his music is soothing....touching...emotional...inspirational....positive....loving....nostalgic......and if u still don't get it...its very very nice music....

i went over to his website to learn more about him and there i read in the news section that he's coming to india to play at Big Chill!!i freak out at this and cant believe my eyes....i get startled...back off the computer screen....half in fear and bewilderment and half wit excitement...my mind cannot cope with this coincidence...what are these situations which lead me to know about Jon Hopkins and now i learn of him playing in India? What was happening?i go to jhamb and tell him about this..but at this point he hadn't invested enough time into Jon's music to feel my emotion...he said “then come along no....!!”....i wanted so much to go but because of the Coke presentation which was happening on the same day and actually later on, i would find out that as my presentation was getting over in Bombay....while Mr. Hopkins was winding up his set in Goa.....

i left Bombay on Saturday night right after the presentation and got on to a bus and after a lavdu fuckin around in the night....twisting turning...i couldn't sleep too well and reached Goa in the morning...and for some reason even though i hadn't slept too well...i was in great spirits and all credit goes to the positive energy of Goa....its magic and i cant explain it....

i take directions on the phone from jhamb and reach the hotel Alcove in Vagatore, where the gang is staying...Amit Jhamb,Schulen Fernandes, Madhavi Khote, Shaanu Sharma, Sandhya Nair, Joe Joseph, Sapna Bhavnani, and some more people who's names i cant quite remember too well were also there......i reach there in my jeans and a black shirt...it didn't feel right to roam around in Goa like that...it seemed inappropriate....i go to a shop outside the hotel and buy a green pair of pyjamas and a t-shirt which i called “starry eyed surprise”....i can confidently say i looked funny in the t-shirt....but what the hell...?its Goa!

I plug in my handycam which jhamb had carried to capture Mr.Jon in all his glory....we watch the shit i'd missed and head to the venue after a while......

now let me take the opportunity to freak out once again.....I'm writing this blog about the big chill which happened quite a few days back...I've been wanting to write for quite a few days now but never got down to actually writing and today as i was writing my mom and dad called me out and asked me what i was doing in my room all alone....i explained to them that i was archiving my life in words and that's when the door bell rang....and lo and behold...what do i see....a courier guy with a package with my name on it...its the Jon Hopkins album i had ordered from justmusic.com....now please excuse me for a sec....AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.......
WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

now i don't think i can write anymore....I'll continue about the big chill later......I'm freaking out right now........