Nokia - one of the sponsors of the ongoing
Independence Rock have announced a novel contest as part of the classic event - they are encouraging headbangers to use mobile phones to capture videos/audios of the concerts (band interviews as well) and upload them on a
special site created for this event. Nice! They also encourage creating mixes (???). But anyways, I guess it's another form of creativity. There are prizes for the best bootlegs as well! They also have
listening room where you can listen to many of these. The site has other user-contributed content as well. Check out
Parousia's section on the site for some interesting practice session videos.
I for one whole-heartedly welcome these! A lot of great Indian bands don't tour and so people in one city often don't know the good bands in other cities (unless of course the person is a committed headbanger) and often times bootlegs are the only way to listen to some of these bands.
Music Tantra, a site I've
blogged about earlier, have a page devoted to videos and audio bootlegs. We need more of this!
Another thing that is sorely missing are concert reviews and set-lists. Many people do post these, but they usually do it in forums that aren't easy to find. If we're to bring more exposure to these bands, we need to write and blog more about them - and (if I say this for selfish reasons), post more bootlegs.
Check out
my first bootleg -
Parousia performing a cover of Deep Purple's
Sometimes I feel like screaming. Unfortunately, the audio quality is terrible. I had recorded it on a Sony Ericsson K750i, which has the microphone on the opposite side of the camera lens - probably the only flaw on an otherwise great phone! But there are better phones now, with much better audio and video recording capabilities. A look at some of the
bootlegs of the recent Ed Fest in Bangalore is evidence of that.
Update: Added few other interesting links on the site. Also I forgot to mention this in my earlier posting - I got information regarding the listening room via
Gigpad.
