A musical salute

Even as fans are still reeling from the untimely death of Chester Bennington, the frontman of Linkin Park, a young band in the city is all set to pay their respects to their idol. A tribute gig, organised for the band that influenced them, seems like a great way to get closure, believes Anthracite. 

“The Mumbai tribute gig was in the process of being planned for a month now, before we heard the tragic news,” explains Dev Ramkumar from the band. “This tribute is more like we’re paying our respects to Chester. We want to do this for the fans, more than anything else.” Dev adds that Anthracite regularly did tribute gigs for the band — this one being the fourth in Mumbai, and ninth overall. 

And Anthracite isn’t the only band involved in tribute concerts. Pritesh Prabhune, who will be joining the band as a drummer for the one-off show, has also been a part of other tribute shows for international bands with In Memory Of. “It was a way to get musicians together to play a gig they would never have had played together otherwise,” explains Pritesh about the origins of In Memory Of. “And we mostly stick to ’90s rock bands.”

 

Most recently, the band played

Anthracitea tribute gig for both Nirvana and Alice in Chains. The frontmen of both bands, Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley’s death anniversaries are in April, and the band thought paying respects to the grunge icons together would be a good idea. “We had a great turnout for that,” reminisces Pritesh. “I think one very basic reason why people love coming for tribute gigs is because this is their way of listening to the songs of their favourite bands live. Not everyone can afford to go to Glastonbury or other international festivals and gigs. So, for them, this is a nice substitute. And bands also want to pay tribute to the bands that they worship. I remember that once, we had a bassist come down all the way from Delhi, just to play for a Rage Against the Machine tribute gig, on his own money.”

Sidharth Kadadi of Zygnema is currently gearing up for a tribute night in honour of heavy metal band Pantera in August, and the gig will see members of other bands like Providence, Bhayanak Maut, and Demonic Ressurrection join them on stage. But Sidharth asserts that despite the popularity of the tribute format, his band will stick only to Pantera. “There are people who do tribute gigs because they truly want to salute a band that they respect,” he says. “But then, tributes have become a sort of format because it was a sure way to get people to come in and listen to bands. So, sometimes, bands just do tributes to Metallica and Guns N’ Roses, because that way they’ll be known as entertaining bands and get more gigs afterwards. We didn’t want to fall into that category, so the only tribute we do is for Pantera because their music is something we believe in.”

Meanwhile, Dev says that while Anthracite has paid respects to Linkin Park several times, this one is bound to be special. “Every time we do a tribute gig, we’ve had a lot of people showing up for it. The situation right now has made us want to do a tribute in honour of Chester. And while the pain will never die away, this is an attempt.”

Anthracite will play on July 29, 8.30 pm at Hard Rock Café, Worli. Zygnema’s Pantera tribute will be held on August 20, 8 pm at Antisocial, Khar.