Introduce yourself , tell us who Bijit Bora  is ?
Bijit Bora is  a person who celebrates life and  lives life on his own terms. I am a  mechanical engineer (B.E. from MIT, Manipal) by qualification, but a complete rocker by nature. I have been involved completely with music throughout my life. .  I picked up my passion for western music a long time ago on my dad’s record  player from his collection in 1977 – 78.  That information must have gone into the subliminal part of the brain. Mind you, Music, not guitar (yet!) ! My pre grad education was  in a public boarding school , where I  learnt the art of harmony singing and music (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass) during that time, but I only picked up a guitar in 1987 at the age of 17.
 

Let’s go back to when you first picked up the guitar.
It was in a boarding school in Shillong (ARPS) in 1987. A complete accident! My friend, Zohmingliana Siama Hualngo  and I were racing across the school yard to be the first to reserve the only table tennis table in school (Hey buddy if you’re reading this, give me a buzz). There was a sudden flash of rain with hail stones and we dived for cover into some dormitory. A guitar was lying on the bunk bed. Since it was raining very hard by then, we had to stay longer. Zoh picked up the guitar and began playing the chords to “Temple of the King” by Rainbow. I said “hey man I never knew you could play!” Will you teach me some chords so that I can play guitar along with any song? I asked our school music teacher, Mr. Pramod Reynolds (who I just got back in touch with recently after all these years, thanks to Orkut) to buy me a nice acoustic guitar the next time he went to town. He got me a spanking new acoustic guitar for Rs. 180/-  and  I got down to playing it immediately. I am a very “stick to it” guy and would practice long hours on it. I had no patience for results, but I’m a perfectionist as well, at least in the efforts, which remain a trait to this day. I needed to be “my” best in anything I attempted. Well I can’t really blow my own trumpet, but it does help me a lot as a musician today when I listen to a piece of music exactly the way it was laid on Vinyl. It really helps me study the style of the original composer and to appreciate his or sometimes her work at the highest levels.
My first few performances in 1987-88 was as a vocalist only. Girls liked the singer more than the guitarist then. I don’t know if they still do, but I hope not. Ha ha!

Your earlier band OVERDOZE rocked the scene around Manipal/Mangalore in the early 90′s, tell us about the ‘glory days’ 

Overdoze (OD) was formed in 1990, the “doze” part of it being because the band members used to sleep uncannily long hours. The original lineup was a quartet, consisting of a hard core self-taught, everything done incorrectly lead guitarist, Sameer Sabharwal who loved Rolling Stones and Santana. Once given the guitar, he would pick up everything by ear and swore by “bends” on the guitar and dead against “slides”. Then there was me, lead vocals, rhythm guitar and heavily tripping on Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Van Halen, 80’s stuff and virtuoso musicians. Singing was of primary importance to me. Somehow along the way, the passion for guitar took over my singing passion. On the bass was a guy called Paul George whose father was a pastor or something, but I still managed to convince him to play in the band, though it was near impossible to explain to him that the stuff we were doing was not satanic. On drums was a guy called Ranjan Kurien. Most of these guys are abroad now and have nothing to do with music. It’s known that a college band lasts only as long as the senior most guy passes out. That was Sameer. Sad to do after building the band to such levels. No issues, I took over as lead guitar/ lead vocals in a temporary 3 piece lineup. Then I added another virtuoso guitarist called Teiso into the band. He was studying in KREC, Surathkal, about 60 miles away from Manipal, but one of the most talented guitarists I have seen. So again OD was back in action real quick. We became so confident, that we were able to play an entire set anywhere without a single rehearsal due to the fact that we would pick up our individual parts to the tee. Rock shows and competitions became a routine affair and anyway, we won anywhere we joined, so it only became a fight for 2nd place for other bands. Then there was another lineup change when the drummer, Ranjan passed out. The replacement was a guy called Siby Cherian (NRI) from New York on drums who joined in the final lineup along with another bassist and Keyboard player (All studying medicine and all NRI’s. It was a musically killer lineup but the band was not better than the sum of its parts like I expected it to be. But I am really grateful to Siby because he introduced me to Rush and even more so, Dream Theater. I was continuously tripping on DT, Images and Words for two years 1992 – 1994. As far as I know, it took another 10 years for the first few Indian rock music listeners to even listen to a DT song. Overdoze broke up in 1994 for good and I went back to Assam, but the fire within me did not die. There was a bit of a dark phase courtesy the burnout resulting from the too big too soon syndrome at the end and of course the “sex, drugs and rock and roll” phase, one of these three not really happening. (Take a guess which!)

 Your present band Psyx recently won the IRONIZE 09 , Could you introduce the band 
We won Ironize at Xavier’s Mahim recently. Think it was last month. At the moment, the band members are

·    Bijit Bora– Lead Guitar / Vocals

·    Trish – Lead Vocals

·     Kartik – Guitar

·    Ajay – Keyboards

·     Leon Quadros  – Bass Guitar

·     Tublu – Drums
Three of us are from Jorhat (Assam), Trish, myself and Tublu. Everyone in PSYX has a different experience level and I’m trying to balance that out. 
 

Which songs do you perform most frequently? Do you ever play any covers? Do you have a set play list?
Basically let me elaborate on this one because I don’t think a few lines of a reply to the above question would justify what is really an ongoing battle for rock listeners since the last few years.

This PSYX lineup is basically new as I had taken a 6 year long break from Live playing and had to get a good bunch of guys ready. We are at the moment a maximum covers band. There is a reason to this. When we do the covers of our favorite bands, what I feel is that we are giving them that respect that they so rightly deserve. We do the songs we can render perfectly only. We put in the Psyx twist in certain songs where it is OK to do so. I can’t take “Comfortably Numb” and twist it out of shape. Come on man. It’s Dave Gilmour on the guitar. It will be sacrilegious. When we cover these great acts, it is subconsciously increasing our level of musicianship and we really get a high out of doing that and matures us as musicians. If we can really enjoy playing this stuff, it is automatically giving out vibes to the audience and that’s what any rocker ultimately wants. This diverse range of songs that we play, subliminally programme a lot of great art and musicianship into us (at least me). I don’t personally use guitar tabs from the net too much since I think I’m more accurate than most. At least 80% of the time.

What I really hate about the scene here is that many of the local bands use the “Originals only” line as an excuse because they can’t play good covers and find that hard to admit. I mean how long does it take to compose a song if you really want to? As soon as you can play some Major, minor and 7th chords suddenly you become God’s gift to mankind. Throw in a nice couple of riffs and hooks and sprinkle some lyrics on them. Hey .. time to look for a record contract. Who the fuck is going to listen to this crap except your friends and well wishers. I can confidently say that if a band can cover songs like Hangar 18 (Megadeth) or Holy Wars or even “Sultans of swing (Dire Straits) accurately, the band would have enough technical prowess to come up with great originals, but if a person first picked up a guitar 6 months ago and can now play Nirvana songs and has some more friends who can play along with these three chord pieces, it’s time to cut your own album. Sometimes it makes me cringe to see that the internet and computers have become so easy to use and anyone and his brother can easily churn out high sound quality songs through an on board audio card into the “Mic” port at the back of your computer and the right software. Voila!!!  Bob’s your uncle! Amazing songs to the composer’s ears only. Crap to the rest of the world!!! Connect your guitar and microphone to your computer and feel like Mozart reborn. Sometimes I really feel that it should not have become so easy to  record at home and pass it off as a “Home Recording” because people who deserve to confine their vocal abilities to the bathroom are suddenly a self rediscovered composer.. You are not going to be able to push that dream album conjured under your shower. That’s why there is so much trash around. However, it would be unfair for me to generalize my views as there are some really good bands too and they would pretty much agree to what I’m trying to say. But that’s about 4% in total. Even though I said what I said above, the onus is on me as well for PSYX to come up with great originals or otherwise I have spoken too much too soon! Only time will tell, but I prefer to keep the attitude and a lot of hope which should actually convert into action.

The entire world’s music is freely downloadable today. Why should anyone want to listen to some rotation of chords and vocals supporting the Indian Rock scene just because it’s Indian. That is not a cause. A cause would be to become a great band, earn a shitload of money and then donate to whatever you want to donate to .. AIDS, drug rehabilitation whatever. That makes sense. Take “Parikrama” as a prime example. Can’t people see that it’s mostly covers they play??  They have few originals, “But It Rained” and “Vaporize” and these are nothing to really write home about as well. Yet they are one of the most successful bands in the country today with a 15 year or so history. Why doesn’t anyone talk of their real lack of originals . Those guys got to open for Iron Maiden through an entire tour in Europe on the basis of what?

My personal philosophy is to compose and record songs and then put myself in the shoes of the listener. As part of an audience, would I like to listen to that track, I recorded over and over again? Does it come as a constant humming in my head throughout the day. If the answer is “Yes”, it will go onto the CD. If not, I screwed up. That’s why I really have a game plan. I’m giving PSYX time until Dec 2009 to release a great record. Till then, it doesn’t matter to me if we are considered a too many covers band. Well we do have a sampling of our stuff on www.myspace.com/bijitbora or
 www.myspace.com/psyxontherun.
Those are some demos I composed years ago and recorded at home. Many people do like them a lot because it’s different and it’s nice to listen to and sticks in your head. Many of the fans have told me that. In fact the song ‘F” or ‘F Reloaded’ as it is called now is an instrumental guitar piece of a very unique nature and high standard. I believe it is downloadable from your Website as well [Download  ((((F)))))  reloaded ] . Let me tell you one thing.. You have done an awesome job on that website researching so much stuff and getting everything together so well in a centralized location.
About our setlist, like I’ve said before we are a versatile band and can mould easily to the audience’s taste and play whatever is required to make that particular crowd enjoy. Let me give you an example. PSYX had a North East tour in Dec/Jan 08/09. One was a New Year’s Gig at the Jorhat Gymkhana club followed two days later by a Rock Show (Sifung) headlining act. In the first gig we played rock and roll and that kind of stuff which the crowd could dance to and enjoy and in the very next show managed to play all our harder stuff including our harder OC’s and Megadeth Maiden kind of stuff. If you exchanged the two audiences, we would have had the worst shows in the world, but both of these gigs were ‘Dynamite’. I’ve chronicled that tour on Youtube. It’s on my channel.

Where have you performed ? Which is your most memorable show ?
If you mean with the current lineup which is just a few months old, it was at the 2 places I mentioned earlier and a couple of gigs here in Bombay where I had some ‘shocking’ adventures, but basically always got  great audiences who appreciated our performances. Well we are picking up a fan base which makes me really happy. There are some sour pusses, but by now I’m hardened to them and it also acts as a great indicator of success because there seems to be something we are doing well enough for our peers (few other bands) to be jealous about. My dad told me once “Remember, beggars don’t have enemies”. I like that saying. Personally, I don’t vocally lash out at anyone.

In case of “Overdoze”, it was difficult to single out one particular show, but I guess it would be this concert in Palakkad, Kerala in 1992 where there was a crowd of 7000 plus. We were headlining along with a few really good bands of the time like Millennium, Bronze Axe, 7th Heaven or something where the concert was on an old fortress area. The crowd was standing on the entire hillside opposite the stage which was really huge and it was a sight I will never forget.

With every new band inclined to death/thrash metal what you think of current ‘rock scene’ in India, has it evolved compared to the early/late 90′s?
I believe everyone listens to music to make themselves feel good or happy. The kind of pleasure my dad gets from listening to ghazals maybe the same pleasure I experience when I play my Best of Van Halen CD, so what the heck if someone gets the same kick from listening to whatever. I can’t ask him to listen to “Panama” neither would he invite me to sample his new Pankaj Udhas song. Everyone’s happy.
Have you heard of Gooey Metal? There actually was such a genre that came up in 1993 or so. I think the proponents of that genre were a band called “Gwar”. It maybe there on Wikipedia. There is also a genre called Math Metal. It’s based on equations and calculations and what not. It’s my choice not to get into that, but if someone else does, what the heck. This is like Gay Liberation and rights. I may not be one, but doesn’t mean I’m gonna poke fun at someone else’s sex life just because that’s what comes to them naturally.
Personally I’m a melody person. A song needs to have a good melody to move me. Some folks have got it all wrong when they say that Megadeth, or Maiden or Dream Theater is all noise. For them all these three bands would sound the same, but you and me can find so much melody in the songs by these guys and we know how different they are stylistically. No point educating the world. Just go ahead and have fun. Personally, I don’t listen to this style of music because I don’t like growling vocals. A person may be the shrillest growler in the world, but I can’t listen to this visceral guttural stuff, Firstly because I have always been the lead vocalist/guitarist through all the years till this new lineup. I love the soaring vocals and subtly controlled vocal melody and harmony. I love the operatic kinds. As an example I can name you some of my all time favorite vocalists. Freddie Mercury (Queen), Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden), Axl Rose (Guns N Roses) David Coverdale (Whitesnake), Geoff Tate (Queensryche), Sammy Hagar (Van Halen), Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits),  Steve Perry (Journey),  Sebastian Bach (Skid Row). I also love heavily harmonized vocals by bands like Simon and Garfunkel, Eagles, Damn Yankees, Bread, Firehouse etc. Long list actually.

See, basically in the early 90’s most of the Indian kids in various bands today were between 2 to 6 years in age or not born yet! It was completely different then. You really needed to be careful to sneak in a couple of originals into your setlist until you had worked up the crowd into a frenzy with covers. We had no choice but to compose some kickass originals. We had a couple then. With Overdoze in fact we had this song called “Power Love” which I composed on a 7/8 odd time measure which was a really good track. I completely forgot it now, but I remember it was really well appreciated. I was once surprised to see many guys in the audience singing along when I thought that only I knew the lyrics. It turned out that some fan had earlier found a  napkin in a bar where I had scribbled the lyrics. He Xeroxed and distributed it to others. Well, if you can find some of our loyal fans from then, they would be able to tell you about it, but I doubt there are many who now know how to use computers properly for social networking or whatever. I think in 2 or 3 years I will be able to contact most of them. Maybe when it comes to the stage when we can actually talk to the computer and operate it without using a keyboard and mouse and becomes shit easy to use, they may have a little chance of logging into Facebook Version 49. That’s when I’ll probably find them. It’s still way too complex for them. Haha.

You teach guitar as well, and have your own youtube channel on guitar techniques, tell us a more about ’Sir’ Bijit Bora as your students would love to call you .
‘Sir’ Bijit is what my Bombay students call me. In the North East I’m known as “Bijit Da”. I like that more actually because it means ‘elder brother’ in my native language. Funnily, guys here have also started doing the same when they see it so much on the blogs and comments sections of youtube and other video sites. I love that. It’s really cool for a Maharashtrian or Gujarati say “Bijit Da”. It thrills me in some unique way. I don’t know why!

 I started teaching guitar in 1992 when I was still in college to supplement my pocket money. After that I have been actively teaching albeit some on again off again phases within this 17 year long period. My God, how the years just fly by! I used to teach medium to advanced level students only earlier. I came across instructional videos quite by accident in Palika Bazaar on a trip to Delhi just when the instructional video concept had started. At the time, we used to be very secretive with other guitarist friends to spill the beans about coming across a Paul Gilbert or a Vinnie Moore instructional video cassette just so we could learn up some of the tips and techniques and show off in front of the others and also to improve as much as possible before they discovered it. That was a cool thing as it ended up with us practicing a lot, hours and hours every day. There was never a moment to waste. I practiced really hard in the early years. Some other adverse situations that helped me was the fact that there were so many power cuts in my home town, but I would be so much into practicing that I wouldn’t notice when it occurred. That resulted in being able to know my guitar fretboard really well and that makes me really confident on the instrument now so I can concentrate on my visual aspect which is so important in today’s audiovisual age.
I’m very glad that I learned computers at just the right time to be able to keep abreast with what’s happening with the younger generation now. I started home recording a very long time ago (1999) and stuff that the younger generation is discovering only in the recent years,. So, you can say I have the related experience. This is the reason I use so many modern techniques into my teaching. Everything from Youtube to recording software to backing tracks to instructional software is included in my teaching methods. That’s how I can make students really good in the shortest period of time and I’m proud of that fact. I don’t teach unnecessary boring stuff just so I can retain them a little longer due to business interests. I am passionate about teaching!

 What advice do you have for people who want to form their own bands?

Stay off it if you are not yet ready. You should know when you are ready. Practise well, have a good musical vocabulary and then form a band. Choose musicians on the basis of behavior as well as musical prowess. It’s no use jamming with the best bassist in the country, if he actually behaves like he is the most important part of the band and without him there is nothing. I have seen enough good bands sink almost as soon as they start. Be genuinely down to earth. Understand that there is always someone better than you. Learn to accept that. In music, the better you become, the longer your  journey is going to be. Attitude makes or breaks the musician. Understand and behave the way a close family should, because aside your own family, your band is your other family. Never ever start to think any of you is bigger than the band. Encourage each other, but keep your mind open to all types of music. People don’t become famous for nothing. No matter how bad you think of certain types of music or a band, remember there are people buying those CD’s. They are their fans and that’s why you are being able to even talk about it, otherwise you would not have heard about them even for the purpose of your criticism.

 Any last words..
Follow your heart, no matter what people say. If you have the conviction that you will make it, you most certainly will. If you are that unlucky that it doesn’t happen at any time in your life, you will at least have the satisfaction of knowing you tried. But it will happen !!! Cheers and Rock On!

Bijit Bora on Myspace .
Bijit Bora on Facebook .
Bijit Bora on Orkut .
Bijit Bora on Youtube . 
Psyx on Myspace .
Psyx on Facebook .