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 21^st 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.