Jethro Tull as expected rocked the IIM grounds last Fri­day (Jan 3). It was my first visit to the much hal­lowed cam­pus and what­ever lit­tle I saw looked good. There was hardly any space for park­ing with all the nar­row roads choc-a-bloc with vehi­cles. I made a rea­son­ably early entry arriv­ing with my pre­cious pass in hand (thanks a lot to Usha!). As soon as I entered the grounds, I made my way to the very front of the stage.

My last encounter with Tull was from the last row of a Mum­bai audi­to­rium so this time I made sure I was up front! TAAQ opened for Tull and played some of their num­bers. It’s 10 years for this tal­ented band and it was good to see them going strong with their new vocal­ist David Pascal.

Ian Ander­son at 58 (thanks Suman for point­ing out his cor­rect age!) is won­der­fully agile, I must say. The way he pranced around the stage, chang­ing instru­ments, would put even a 25 year old to shame! He was amaz­ing, to say the very least. I am not sure how he’s sus­tained his energy, but I’m filled with admi­ra­tion and I had to pick up my jaws from IIMB’s dusty grounds on many an occa­sion that evening!

They played many not so old, old, and very old num­bers. Some of my favourites : Life’s a Long Song, Thick as a Brick, Loco­mo­tive Breath and Hot Night in Budapest (what awe­some acoustics!). The lesser heard Mozs Art (Tull’s trib­ute to Mozart) and Bach were sim­ply brilliant.

After the show, we trooped to one of the can­teens serv­ing up hot bread omlettes, maggi and paratha chicken and whiled our time away till about mid­night when most of the crowd had dissipated.

On Sat­ur­day evening, we went for a jazz and vio­lin per­for­mance at Opus. The atmos­phere at this place is really nice and they usu­ally have inter­est­ing live music ses­sions or karaoke nights hap­pen­ing there as I’ve writ­ten before. But unfor­tu­nately, the ser­vice leaves us cold every time. I am not sure they are really up to han­dling the crowds they get for these events, but even the bill takes any­where up to half and hour or more. I wish they’d pay a lit­tle more atten­tion to the ser­vice. Even their drinks and food menu, IMHO, can do with a revival and some fresh blood (or fresh taste at least). It has all the mak­ings of a per­fect place for an evening out otherwise.

Uriah Heep per­forms tomor­row at the Ban­ga­lore Palace Ground. There’s a per­for­mance of Zakir Hus­sain and Birju Maharaj com­ing up and also a dance per­for­mance at Chow­diah tomor­row that promises to be inter­est­ing. Much to do and see as usual!