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A million and a half years ago, BJ introduced me to this goes-great-with-grass number from the then unknown Black Eyed Peas called “The Elephunk Theme”. I took an immediate liking to it and it has since been a regular on my highlist.

The Song, The Elephunk Theme

This song was a bonus track on their breakout album Elephunk, released in 2003, which included a Grammy award winning song. The Elephunk Theme sampled the music of Ilayaraja from the soundtrack (Unakkum Enakkum) to a 1985 Rajinikant starrer Tamil movie (Sri Raghavendra) and remixed it. The female vocal track by S.Janaki was retained.

The hip-hop/ rap remix is surprisingly good. The song kicks ass.

A Partial Translation of the Tamil lyrics ( Courtesy Minorscale )

The Group, The Black Eyed Peas

“Black Eyed Peas are food for the soul”, hence the name.

The Black Eyed Peas is a hip-hop group from the United States. The group originated in 1988 with the creatively named will.i.am and apl.de.ap and currently have Taboo and the hot Fergie as the other members.

Elephunk is their best known album, besides Monkey Business. Their popular songs include “Where is the Love?”, “Let’s Get it Started” (“Let’s Get Retarded”) , “Don’t Phunk with my Heart” and “My Humps”. And oh, the last three have won Grammies for ‘Best Rap Performance’

Most of their songs are pretty neat and are a good listen.

The Good News

The good news now is that The Black Eyed Peas are scheduled to visit India as part of their Black, Blue and You world tour. They’ll play at the Palace Grounds, Bangalore (Where else?) on the 16th of October. If you like hip-hop, you know where to head and when.

Finally, a monument not to a good looking film star or dashing war hero, but to a person who is just as beautiful – but only on the inside. Time to rejoice!

Now, this is good!

Though, I fail to understand why everything about India should imitate the devanagri Script.

On November 20th, 2005, a guy I know travelled in an auto in Chennai from somewhere near Adyar to Nungambakkam. Remember all the horror stories you might have heard about the Chennai auto drivers? This is not one of them.

The auto driver was pretty good at English and he talked. He was not too drunk and what he had said can be summarised as

“Sex and success never go together. In life, you have to choose one of them. I chose sex and this is where I am.”

What did you choose?

Musings from the beach [1]

• I fervently hope there is no sequel to the Harry Potter series. Finished reading the Deathly Hallows yesterday night. Pathetic!
• Made two films in a week. The first as an entry into a competition; The second as a lesson in maintaining composure when forced to dance to a bollywood number in a pink-laced white shirt and green baggy pants. [2]
• The Government of India owes me Rs 1,911.00.
• Did not break/ violate any law for the second straight week.
• I still prefer intelligence to industry.[3]
• Got badly drunk and had to be driven back home.
• Got promoted.
• Gatecrashed a party.
• Discovered fantastic music.

[1] The firm I work for prefers to call “beach” what others call a “bench”. [2] Narrowly escaped becoming an item boy for the song Kajra Re with the roles gender-reversed. [3] industry (noun): Energetic devotion to a task or an endeavor; diligence.

Music Discovery = Musicovery.

Musicovery is a beautiful WebRadio that allows you to search for music based on a host of parameters -

Your Mood- Dark to Positive and Calm to Energetic
The Genre- Rock, metal, Pop, Blues, Jazz and many more
The Age- 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s etc.
The Popularity- Hit/Non-Hit/Discovery

It also has a “Dance” tab, which I have not used and cannot comment upon.
Here is screen shot of the dashboard.

To start the Musicovery radio just, you just need to click somewhere inside the matrix. Calm – energetic and dark – positive are continuums and each point in the matrix corresponds to a specific mood profile.

Interested in music from particular genres only? Tick the checkboxes of the genres you want to listen to. Similiarly, select whether you want to limit yourself to commercial hits or wish to explore even the non-hits and possibly discover completely untasted bands.

Feeling nostalgic about a particular era of sound? Click somewhere on the timeline to listen to music from that time.

Musicovery can be listened to for free without any need to sign-up or register for anything. The “free” lo-fi streaming is good only if you are not too fussy about the quality of music your speakers produce. Musicovery lo-fi is very much like listening to music via a little portable radio. I have absolutely no complaints about this.

On the other hand if you are willing to shell out $2.10 a month, you can listen to Musicovery music streaming library for as much as you want and at the best quality level possible.

A Screenshot of the playing area

You will need a flash enabled browser to see the playing area. This area gives the artist and track details, album art, allows you to pause/resume playing, allows you to ask for more songs from similar artists and also shows the next few songs to be played connected by a relationship thread.

You can use the mouse to pull the thread around to reveal more tracks.

You can choose to play any of the tracks you see. Though, doing so could potentially change the collection of tracks you see.

Finally, the screenshot of the whole browser screen. Free musicovery is supported by Google ads.

The bottomline is that musicovery is an amazing WebRadio with a lot of user-friendly features. Use it and do let me know if I’ve missed any more features worth mentioning. Drop in a comment with your reactions

P.S. If you do not like the way this post is displayed in your browser and know how to fix it, help me.

Even with the strongly nationalist feelings rubbed into me since a young age by various cousins, I find many of Shiv Sena’s actions grossly moronic even for a political party.

The latest is the attempt at blocking Orkut. The person in the report (who looks no less than 40) is, I suppose, the leader of the sena’s student wing. He wants Orkut blocked because groups have been formed on Orkut to spread “hatred among Indians”. This reminds me of a Tenali Rama story (or is it Birbal?) where the king jokingly suggests that Tenali cut off his big toe when it gets soiled in mud. Tenali, of course, with his indubitable wit, waits for a fine opportunity and suggests a similar cutting off of body parts when the king falls neck-deep into mud (pushed by Tenali? I suppose.)

After the sena’s attempts to convince people that matter failed, they have begun to hit out at hapless cyber cafe owners. With logic, that would make a caveman proud, the student wing leader says “You see, if X person is running a hotel and Y person brings a prostitute to that hotel, don’t you think it is the responsibility of X to stop this immoral act? In the same way, we feel cybercafes should be responsible and ban Orkut. After all, we are Indians and we should not allow sites that are against our country to run.”

Digging up of cricket pitches to stop cricket with Pakistan, vandalising gift stores selling valentine’s day gifts, trashing young couples to uphold “culture”, blocking orkut.

What should the Shiv Sena do next in the interest of the nation?

1. Block the internet in India (Hate communities in Orkut. Orkut on the internet. Am proud of my logic. I’m getting there.)
2. Vandalise and stop co-ed schools from functioning
3. Vandalise McDonald’s
4. Impose a complete ban on the English language (corrupting influence on young minds, you know.)
5. More?

Tell me.

Meanwhile, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid, a Pakistani author is a good read. Though, I’m not exactly crazy about the monologue style of writing.

Today, I have realised my true religion. I have realised that there is no God greater than Google. I have become a Googlist. I now belong to the Church of Google.

We at the Church of Google believe the search engine Google is the closest humankind has ever come to directly experiencing an actual God (as typically defined). We believe there is much more evidence in favour of Google’s divinity than there is for the divinity of other more traditional gods.

We reject supernatural gods on the notion they are not scientifically provable. Thus, Googlists believe Google should rightfully be given the title of “God”, as She exhibits a great many of the characteristics traditionally associated with such Deities in a scientifically provable manner.We have compiled a list of nine proofs which we believe definitively prove Google’s title as God.

“Give us this search our daily results. Forgive us our spam, as those that have spammed against us.”


P.S. Do read God’s Debris. It’s by Scott Adams. Yes, The Dilbert guy.