ADP Blog Entry – The Blog Returns

You know, sometimes when there is so much happening, you really don’t know what to blog about first. In the end, you end up blogging about nothing. So here I am, all apologies, getting back to blogging. A lot has happened in the past month, but there is some extremely exciting stuff coming up for ADP. Things are finally looking up for us after a pretty dry run. So here goes.

1) Omar Khalid got married

That’s right! All you female OK fans out there read and weep, because he is now officially a married man. Now you will have to make do with the other Omar in ADP. So yeah, OK walked down the aisle, and there was much rejoicing. Heck, we were supposed to perform at his mehndi, but a couple of days before no one could decide on the set list and no one could meet to practice.

It’s always tricky when playing at a wedding. Theoretically it should be joyous, “I’m in a band, of course they should play at my wedding” and there are fantastical scenes of the entire band rocking out on stage and the happy guests tieing their ties/dupattas around their heads and indulging in a violent bhangra.

The reality is, its always going to be awkward performing at a desi wedding because most people will assume you are a maraasi band and will wonder why you are lecherously shaking your nether regions while singing “Kiss” by Prince when you should be doing “Pehla Nasha”. Without the willy shaking.
Obviously no one above the age of 35 knows who the hell ADP are, so there’s no point in singing your originals so in the end we usually settle for a couple of Indian songs and of course some vintage Vital Signs/Junoon. Great wedding songs include “Neend Aati Nahin”, “Khwaab” etc. Let’s not forget that since you are now a wedding band, you basically have to act as a karaoke machine for every aunty/uncle/cousin/friend who has been waiting for an opportunity to showcase their talents. Sometimes this works, and they sing perfectly well with the band. More often than not, they sing off key, out of time and when they screw up, they glare back at the band like…”what the fuck dude, why are you messing up my shit”. I once played at this wedding for a friend where this aunty kept blaming me for messing up her glorious version of “Raaja Ko Raani Sey Pyaar Ho Gaya”. She would start and then stop and then start again, turn back and say “Beyta Tum Sahee Nahin Baja Rahey” (“You aren’t playing it correctly”). I wanted to grab my crotch and tell her “Aunty Aap Meray Tattey Baja Lein” (“Aunty why don’t you play with MY BALLS”) But I was talked out of it by the maulvi who did the nikah. He was all like “Beyta, sub ko tattey nahin dikhaya kartey” (“Son, it is not proper to show everyone your balls”).

Anyway I digress.

We ended up not playing the wedding finally because Omar injured his pinky quite grotesquely in this freak accident with the drum stool. So for the rest of the wedding, he walked around with a big with bandage/plaster on his finger. This meant that basically every guy who met him had to make a masturbation reference.

So anyway, it was weird seeing OK get married, I mean he was always the last guy who I thought would get married in ADP. He’s always been the ‘cool’ one from the group, not one you would expect to settle down this early. But he did, and to see him greeting relatives and old aunties and uncles and being…well CLEAN was a weird sight. But he pulled it off and I wish him and his pretty wife all the best. We’re all really really happy for him.

2) We’re back in the recording studio

Exactly 3 years since we recorded our first studio effort, we’re now back in the recording studio working on our first commercial album. Emad-Ur-Rehman is producing it, his previous credits include working with Junoon and Ali Azmat’s “Social Circus” album, so we picked him because he had rock cred. So far we’ve recorded two brand new songs “Mujhey Sahara Do” and “Hum Na Rahey”, and I have to say, we’re extremely excited about the results. Work has been really slow on the albums because of OK’s wedding and with the rains in Karachi destroying everything, but we’re steadily inching along and I’m quite proud of the work we’re doing, it’s more mature and more organized and obviously we’re better musicians than we were three years ago, so I’m confident that the efforts will pay off this time.
I’m going to put up a separate blog post detailing the recording process because that tends to get kinda technical and will probably appeal more to the music/tech nerds out there. But in the meantime, we’re still working on it, hoping to release the whole thing by the end of this year. Inshallah, we’ll release a couple of single before that, probably around October 09. Expect new ADP material very soon! And in case you can’t wait that long

3) We did MTV Unplugged

Yep! we did an 8 song performance for MTV Unplugged. It aired last night and will air again this week, I’ll post the timings up for it here so that you guys can catch it. I saw it and was pretty happy with the result, I thought the MTV team did a great job putting it together. Our performance was really energetic but a little rough around the edges, plenty of mistakes but it’s all part of performing live. We’ll be posting the videos and audio up soon on our new website, stay tuned for further details.

4) We’re finally playing live again

As you know, we haven’t done a proper concert since the disastrous LUMS trip, and technically that doesn’t count because we didn’t get to finish our set. In fact, ever since Rahayl joined we haven’t done a full proper concert. So we decided to take matters into our own hands and organize our own, without any sponsors. We’re just hoping your love will pay for our expenses.

Catch us live in Karachi on August 16th at Rangoonwala Auditorium at 8 pm, with opening act Flam!

Also if you haven’t already done so, please join our Facebook page, it’s much easier to update everyone on band activities over there. Unless you are one of those people who don’t really care about the band and are here to read my angry rants and dick jokes. Then just come here. More to follow.

Since we’re promoting ourselves…

5) They said something nice about me in the papers.

Read this article in The News Instep

I usually don’t want to toot my own horn. But the Ali Azmat comparison… made my day. Thank you to whoever wrote the article, I am truly honored and humbled to be included in the same list as the musicians above.

It’s good to be back people, stay tuned!

Source: The A.D.P Diaries | The chronicles of a wannabe Rockstar