Sunday 10 November 2013
Monday 22 July 2013
Friday 10 February 2012
My philosophy
I feel I am too young to be judgmental about life and its
ways.
But have seen and experienced changing phases of life
various upheavals and downfalls to assimilate some inferences to form a certain
opinion about LIFE and beyond.
Immortality
“We become immortal
when our children take our throne and rule it better”…. as Quoted to my
daughter Aishwarya Krishna Priya.
Communication
“Silence is the best
mode of communication at times, as the emitter emits what he wants and the
receiver receives what he wants”.. this prevails harmony amongst the two.
Culture
“The first curriculum
of learning comes from our culture”
“Culture moulds us and
education refines us”
Money
“It is the next
compound after Oxygen and H2O”.
Goals
“Unlike a game there
isn’t only one goal post in life”.
Dreams
“Life forms as defined
by God * - Thy gave us the Brain on top then in descending order the eyes, ears
and nose and probably wanted us to reason before we speak or eat with our mouth”.
“The organs of a human
become more physical as we descend down from the top of the body.Heart in
hanging in between,thus it is the human interface device partly physical and
partly heavenly. The heart generates a typical rhythm which is a unique id code
for every life form”.
* - a supreme energy centre not easy to decode by our 5
senses.
Other music works:
Thuriyam Ballet for Natya Kala Bharathi Sarala Kumari
Electronic media campaigns of TDP
Political party songs for TDP,BJP and Congress
Theatrical show titled”Khairunissa” by Late. Mrs.Bilkiz
Alladin
Nursery skit of Beanstalk for HPS primary school
AP Tourism
200 Years of secunderabad
Music for film on AP screened to Bill Clinton
Women welfare department films,AP.
Music for Film made by Police department for child labour
Song for film made by ACB.
Song for Minister Ms.Geetha Reddy foundation
10 K Run signature song
Song for International sports complex , sathya sai trust.
Song for Satyam
“Mukthi Shilpam” a musical dance ballet by Natya Kala
Bharathi Sarala Kumari
There is a lot more to update in this chapter hope to
do it on a later date.
My amateur
Performances:
At Mathrusri
engineering college
At thyagaraya gana
sabha – 1991.
I organized a musical show as a fund raising activity for
the Leo club I was heading as a president at that time.
For this show I had composed several own compositions for
which I took the help of Mr.Suresh Babu a keyboard player and requested him to
transport all his sequencer and other gear to the show.
He played the International track from his gear and I mixed
my voice to it on the stage while performing.
For those days electronic music and programmed drums and
keys was definitely an advanced technology.The show was attended by many
college students and important guests who helped me further in my career.
Mrs. Madapati Sarala Rani, Mohd. Jani-minister for minor
industries, Mr.Vamsee Rama Raju and
Mr.Muralidhar, Proprietor of Encode India
All my friends and also members of our leo club, Dr.Rajesh,
Aruna, Rajagopal, Ravi Chandra, Shanti, Nagavalli, Mallinath,Ram Mohan and
others helped me organize and sell the donor passes.
My Professional shows:
At Hanmakonda:
In 1996 when the memories of Gulabi were still fresh a group
of three college students approached me with the reference of Madhu Varma that
they wanted to host a musical show of mine.
Well I didn’t have a troupe of my own so I requested a
friend of mine Sajid Khan (now more popularly known as GULLU DADA) to organize
the musicians,
The budget was low in the sense keeping in view
transportation of people and equipments.
I always had Micheal as my Idol and wanted to perform like
he does . In that frenzy I asked my friend Ravi Teja to design the stage and
backdrop and he left a week ahead of us.
With limited resources and time he managed to put up a
decent backdrop using ply,cloth and other materials.
Adarsh supplied the Bins and with a few new singers one of
them my niece sujatha and another aspiring singer rajini, Myself and my elder
brother Pratap and sajid had performed to our best and gave an enthralling
performance.The audience comprised of mostly college students of the warangal
REC,degree and Intermediate colleges.
Packed to an approximate audience of 5000 near the stadium
the crowd was very happy at the end of the show.
The last song I sang was “Ye rojaithe”, and I remember being
shifted into a convoy of cars helped by the police from an overwhelming
appreciating crowd .
The show was attended by the SP of warangal
Because of elaborate arrangements of cars, vehicles,
equipment of sound and lighting and instrument players my costs rose to more
than what was charged.
At the end as the organizers split and avoided my last
instalment this show landed me into a loss making project.
All I took home with me were sweet memories and happiness
which is more than what money can buy for me.
Show at Chiran fort:
At Vijayawada
At Kakinada
At Guntur
At Vizag – 2 performances
one at Daspalla & at VMC
Park
At LB Stadium for
Tsunami
At Jubilee Hills Club
At Hari Hara Kala
Bhavan for Kargil relief funds organized by Parke Davis
There is a lot more to update in this chapter hope to
do it on a later date.
My Private Music Albums:
Christmas carols
Highly influenced by Remo Fernandes I always wanted to do my
own music,sing,play and write.Also do songs that are inspirational,motivational
and carrying a social message.
From the pocket money I saved from my last job at Orient
Longman Publishers as a sales executive I wanted to make an album for the new
year eve of 1990.
On the advice and suggestion of friends at a nearby church
in my neighborhood I took the initiative to record Christmas charols in
English. I spent all my savings on them by hiring a keyboard player,a basist,a
guitarist and choir singers.
But the duration was not sufficient to make a cassette on
both sides. So with no budget left to do more songs I wrote 5 songs and
recorded them in my voice at a small studio Vipanchi.
I still remember that it was during the fag end of the year
when the city was under curfew,I had to travel via the LB nagar Ring road on my
scooter during the relaxation hours and reach Basheer bagh, do the recording
and hurry back home before night.
This was the only recording my MOM had accompanied me in my
lifetime.
After a few days I had duplicated 200 cassettes of this
album priced at Rs.20/- and started to sell them to every person I was bumping
into. Freinds at the church did help me out a bit.
I even had the opportunity to sing and perform these songs
in the Doordarshan and AIR – anwar jahan was the program producer for yuva vani
in those days.They were all quite encouraging.
Telugu Pop songs –
In my intial days after doing charols I composed a couple of songs in telugu and took the help
of Mrsuresh babu keyboard player to program them.
Songs were definitely good in that and after recording them
at Pooja recording studios (pradeep shah ) I took them all in a cassette and
tried my best to release them with the then big time audio companies in telugu
and English.
Having my brother in Mumbai those days I requested him to
try it out with Magna sound.
It was a big world and my equation was too small then to strike with
them.
Later, the first company I got a chance to present my Telugu
album was CBS gramphone co.I met with the south head Mr.G.V.Atri who of course
was not of much help to release my album but offered the chance to come and
join a pub in Bangalore and keep singing there till I would get a recognition
to be picked up by some company.
Sounded very impractical to me and I continued my trials and
lastly landed up with Leo Audio a telugu audio company, who to my surprise took
the English album and promised to release.
Dark Horizon - title
of the album
Green pastures – a song on pollution , Demise – a song on
drug abuse, Suicide No More etc.,
But after two months one fine evening when I visited them my
album gets released into the stalls and to my dismay it had title credits of
“Music by Suresh Babu”.
One year of struggle and all my savings and hardwork got
this deal to me.
However, not getting depressed I continued my trials with my
telugu album and this time it was Lahari audio and it was Mr.Raj kumar the
manager for A.P. I remember going atleast 40 times and several hours of waiting
in vain.
After years of struggling phases I almost did it with Geetha
audio – Mr. Bikshapathi
After all confirmations, I booked the studio 21st
century and was present for the recording and the great man never turns up and
fails to live up to his commitment.
As the old saying goes, ‘Everything happens for our good’, I
was going to record my original version of the song ‘EE VELALO’,and imagine the
song had a better fortune awaiting after a couple of years in the film
‘Gulabi’.
“Here is where I have always learnt one major lesson that
when one door closes many others open”.
Tamasha
During the days after Gulabi,my friend Madhu ( now more known
as Madhu mantenna producer of Bollywood films) was heading
Varma audio and came up with an ingenious marketing concept of remixing all
telugu old hits with new beat.The album cover had the famous NTR with Urmila
matondkar together which was a major curiosity generator.I have to admit that I
messed up on this album both the music arrangement and sound mixing both and
have made a hopeless album out of it.
I deeply apologize to my friend here for my inability to
perform best for his unique marketing idea.However the album did sell good
inspite of the mess up I did.
Newsense
This album I did to fulfil the promise I gave to Kuchipudi
Venkat who was instrumental in getting me ‘Gulabi’,that I would work on a
musical album for him.
This album had a good melody song I composed in kalyani
raagam titled ‘Oka Letha Ooha’ written by Kacherla Venkat an old friend of mine.
However this was not a fantastic journey and nothing great
to remember except that I happened to meet lyric writer ‘Ashok Teja’,who wrote
two songs,’ee prohibition enti ra babu’ & don’t marry be happy’.
It is essential to mention that Venkat did spend months to
explain the song situations to me but unfortunately if he had put the same
effort in picturising them he wouldn’t have ended up making a substandard music
video featuring Ram ( more known as satellite ram in the industry circles).
For someone who has proven his musical abilities in a film
like gulabi, will be hard to take such disappointments.
However I had no hard feelings as I fulfilled my promise of
handing over a decent musical album to Venkat.
Priyanjali
Before I start discussing, I feel, should I be even mentioning this or not.
However,now that I have started I better get over with it.
In the year 1996 sometime after I setup my small studio at
ashok nagar,it was a time when I hardly had any film offers I wanted to churn
out a musical pop album and had composed several tunes for it.
I happened to title it Priyanjali, songs were also sung by
‘somya’, a Bangalore
Who appears in lot of albums of ‘sandeep chowtha’.
Asgar ali wrote the song in hindi ‘eerie eerie’.
It also had a few more nos which appeared to be good at that
point of time to me,maybe not now.
I have used three models to feature the cover page and
designed it quite well. But all that did not help as the songs were
substandard.
The point I am trying to say is that after gulabi, I was not
in the right frame of mind to do good music and it seemed as if I could never
make it happen again.This album was only an outburst of such frustration.
Mr.Khan and Uday Bhaskar came from nowhere and offered to
buy this album.
After they bought they couldn’t do anything out of it.
One very best composition of my teenage bank of songs was
amongst the songs of this album; which I always regret for having given it
off. ‘O swapna sundari’,is a song very
close to my heart. Hope someday I can take it back and feature it in my future
albums.
Dream Girl
This was the first time I picturised a music video in 1998
for this album of mine.
MO2 – with ayush
released by virgin records India
These were the days when I was running my studio at kamalapuri
colony,I came in to see that a Big fat guy was singing some English tunes in
telegu.
After his recording he met me and discussed that he is one
of the directors in ADP,came to India
The idea reminded me of my past and I immediately jumped
into it and came up with a concept, ‘KONCHAM SMILE KARO’.
TELUGU, HINDI AND ENGLISH tracks in one album indicating the
message that a smile costs nothing but can instill pleasantness around in the neighborhood.
Asgar ali(more known as ‘saleem pheku’ of angrez film fame)
wrote the songs and we spent quite a no.of days in making this.
Later Ayush pursued to release this album with Virgin
Records and that was the time when ‘Shamir Tandon’, was heading the division .
Ayush spent a bomb in making two music videos and release it
through Virgin.
It played on the MTV & VTV and a couple of other
channels for a very brief period.
It somehow served his purpose but nothing much to me.
There is a lot more to update in this chapter hope to
do it on a later date.
Advertising & Music
My first tryst with commercial music started in a studio called Vani Darshan opposite Public garden, nampally,Hyderabad
I met Mr.Azaad, who wanted me to tune a jingle for a radio ad for ECTV. This was for a
Reputed ad agency I jumped into it right away and using a small casio CT series which had a very complicated step sequencing function, I tuned three options and it was right away accepted by all. Mr.chandrasekhar and mr.Kashyap were the account managers at that time in RKswamy agency who interacted for quite a few jingles after. Sad that Kashyap is no more with us now and my prayers for his soul to rest in peace.
Azaad was just not a client but became a good friend and well wisher over the years.Through him I met Ms.Sathyavathi, Mr.Venkat and many others for whom I composed several Jingles.
Much later in the year 1994 two marketing executives, Preeta and one more girl ( pardon me for my bad memory) working with Times radio helped me get the order for composing the jingles of “Padmini Fans” of Sujana Industries.
This was a turning point in my career,I had recorded this jingle in Mumbai with the help of my writer friend Mr.Manohar Iyer (my brothers collegue ) in Kumar sanu’s studio at Juhu .The engineer’s name was also Sanu who later recorded the songs of my second film “Warning” in telugu.
After Padmini jingle there was a lull for a long time as not many agencies locally appreciated my way of working and my budgets. My budgets were way above their expectations and it took time for me to reestablish in this segment and find appropriate clientle.
When agencies were not favourable; I floated my own agency “Eldritch communications” and started approaching companies directly for advertising jingles and other allied works.
An old friend Krishna Mohan who was an art director and colleague in an agency, I used to work before came along and joined hands to help me out in designs and printing too.
So we started of as a team and went on to do quite a no of assignments of printing,jingles and offer other creative services.
Though I could not make it a big and happening agency, we worked for local firms like Linkwell tech, A tools company, Ampro, Amrutanjan Ltd,a couple of schools etc and it was good enough for us in those times.
Mr.Prakash who owned a DTP centre and Mr.Bapineedu of Kalajyothi press were amongst those who extended their support for our business.
I then scored music for Tata Rallis Agro and a few more till again Sujana Industries had a new product launch for which they asked me to score music for 7 fashion sequences launching each of their product range.
This was a typical work of fusion,trans,techno etc genres which are my core areas of interest and passion.
I did experimental mixes of sitar and techno music reflections of which appear in my later works of the film Gulabi too.
I always liked to mix the “chaati”, that is the high notes of the tabla in echoing frequencies with trans swells and pads.
Occasional flute with a lot of unending reverb were my choices.The music however brought Rasool Ellore and Venkat Kuchipudi to me Who were instrumental in getting me to meet Film Director,Krishna Vamsi later.
Before Gulabi happened I made another adventurous leap into the world of computer animation which was way ahead of times then.
I ventured to buy a 2lakh worth “Amiga Commodore” and using dpaint and other softwares like scala Myself,Krishna mohan,Kishore and ravi teja have worked 30 days and nights to churn out a decent animation episode of 18mts titled “Adivilo Allari”, for a Producer by name Venkat ram reddy meant to be telecast for DDK.
Every frame was literally drawn using the mouse and a paint software to color it. These were times when we still had the 386 pentium in the markets in India
However, the project couldn’t see the light because of other commercial terms not working out between us and the investors.
So not knowing, what to do next and how to recover the capital invested on the system I tried my best in initiating animation requirements for various institutions including the Birla science Planetarium too.
However, most of those proposals were in vain and I was stuck with the system and my investment on it.
It was kind on the part of Mr.Chandrasekhar ,manager of Andhra bank and a friend Mr.Kishore Singh to have advised me to obtain financial assistance from the institutions for my computer systems.
Later the agency fragmented after my entering into films and I continued to do Jingles as an individual.
This is when I met Mr.Bhanu Prasad an independent Ad film maker and his wife Ms.Kalyani a copy writer with whom I happened to do several Jingles starting with our first client Richimen Silks and then to add up to our list were Durga Ghee, Shakthi gas, Super Gas, Lawrence and Mayo,Yashoda hospital,J.C.Bros,R.S.Bros,Swastik masale,deepika leasing & finance,Relaxwell etc.,
Late.Mr.Arjunan of matchline studios, Ajith, Vijay, Allani Sridhar, Madhumahankali,Mr.shrinivas Iyer & Annapurni , Mr.Mani shankar are some of the other film makers who used to frequently approach me for their Jingle Music requirements mostly.
Below is the list of some of the jingles I remember to have done
Vizag Steel Plant, Hepatitis-B vaccine campaigns, TDP electronic media campaigns
ILO – International Labour Organisation, Lok Satta Party Signature tune, JVS verner Ladders, Priya toffees, Bambino ready mix, Keeline stabilizers, Puthur Thylum, Ashwini hair oil, Gianey Silks, Bommana Bros, Scallops Ice cream, Pan America Ramoji Film City, Indu projects, L&T, Delloitte, Microsoft, Vijay Electricals, Macromedia, Maha Cement
Thums up ads telugu, Fire condoms, Estelle jewellery model Kaitrina kaif, Priya Concrete readymix
Birla ready mix, Maytas, Gati Cargo, Airtel adbhutham Jingle, NCC, Andhra bhoomi, Eanadu, Andhra jyothi, Swastika masala, Anand masala, JC bros, RS bros, Umrao hospitals Mumbai, PEBS Pennar, Sri chakra cements, Young ever Ayurveda, Divya Shakti Group.
There is a lot more to update in this chapter hope to do it on a later date.
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