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
based singer
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
to record a private album with message oriented songs.
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.
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