The closure at this month of Blue Frog’s institutional Lower Parel outpost will no doubt turn a page on what has been a truly historic chapter for live music in Mumbai. Like many before us, we can easily attest to the fact that over the course of its near decade-long existence, Blue Frog has played host to a number of life-affirming moments in music. Fans, however, can take some solace in the news that the Blue Frog is only leaping across the pond to set up two new outposts within the city.
Before its time
Managing director Sumer Vaswani has said to the press that the time has come for the Blue Frog brand to venture into other locales, and understandably so. The extremely music-centric venue is less suitable in its surroundings than it was before. It had, after all, opened a decade before the big “resto-bar” explosion hit Mumbai and until then, the Frog alone occupied that landmark space just off N.M. Joshi Marg. Pretty soon, unused mill spaces like the Mathuradas Mills Compound would become hubs for ever-expanding food and beverage chains attracting clientele from Lower Parel’s business district. And while the Frog was smack bang in the middle of the city, it was still a trek for people traveling from the Western suburbs for a dose of live music, and definitely not an economical taxi ride home at 1:30am.
Working the music
It was here during my first legitimate assignment as a music journalist, stood behind the sound console with a drink in one hand and a notepad in the other, that I realised that overzealous, zany tributes to bands that most people didn’t know about had no place in our society. That first show was agonising and fuelled inside me the courage to pen my first scathing review of a tribute band that, incidentally, included a number of friends as members. I have been offending people I know personally ever since.
Over the space of a few years, I covered more shows at the Frog as a writer than I can remember. But over and above, the Blue Frog made for some lifelong memories as a music fan. I remember fondly just last year as Suman Sridhar strutted out with her new band The Oracle and captivated what was essentially a half-empty club with impossibly practiced ease. And also progressive-jazz, nine-piece behemoth Jaga Jazzist who simply electrified the club that December night three years ago. Or back in 2009, when as an encore to one of their first performances, Shaa’ir + Func’s Monica Dogra and Randolph Correia stripped their act down to a bare-bones Basement Jaxx cover that had this writer, for one, tearing up a little. And there was that weekend when French powerhouse Manu Chao and his band La Ventura played an impossibly energetic six-hour-long double-header to a packed house like we had never seen before. And of course, there was Susheela Raman, whose exploits on that February night of 2010 are tattooed on the minds of those who dared to show up and let themselves go.
On quieter nights, the club had another charm. The one-off gigs that only the diehard fans attended while the casual club-goer slept off the weekend before’s hangover offered up just as much and sometimes more. Years ago, Bangalore’s Thermal And A Quarter followed up some kind of informal guitar workshop with a revelatory, awe-inspiring performance to about 35 people in total. Recently, Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzales, one half of dance music demi-gods, Masters At Work, managed to get the dinner crowd to put their pasta aside and break into the salsa during a sparse, midweek club night. And so many more that a column like this won’t allow space for.
Milestone duds
And of course, there were the duds. Mukul Deora’s album launch was a night I spent wishing I had the blues rather than just going there to listen to some. And Luke Kenny’s socialite-studded Michael Jackson tribute was something I really shouldn’t have spent train fare on, but I did, only to watch MJ’s hits and dance moves murdered methodically. But, I have to hand it to socialites circa 2008. There was barely a camera phone or an exasperating selfie-taker in sight. It seems our best and worst memories of the Blue Frog are simply etched into our minds and nowhere else because they were formed much before the smartphone era came along and ruined everything.
Festive farewell
While all good things must come to an end, and in Blue Frog’s case, a temporary one, we’ll be kissing its Lower Parel location goodbye with one last weekend of celebrations that began from August 26 and will wind up on August 28. The weekend-long fest will see a number of headlining performances. On Friday, August 26, Ankur and The Ghalat Family made an appearance, as did Indus Creed alongside bluesman Kush Upadhyay and young Alisha Pais. Nerm, KAOS and Spyrk will represent the electronic end of things to close the night out. Today, there will be performances by Zero, Dark Circle Factory, Tejas Menon and Bone Broke with bass music star DJ Nuphlo closing shop alongside the Midival Punditz. And finally, on Sunday, musicians Suman Sridhar, Nikhil D’Souza, drummer Ranjit Barot, axeman Dhruv Ghanekar, Ashu Phatak and Mauritian fusion band Tritonik will call curtains on this iconic insitution.
Till next time
While there are no precise details on where the two new outposts of the Blue Frog will stand in tMumbai, there’s no denying many of us will line up to get in on the first day. And we’ll be snagging free, giant Polo mints on the way out, casually reliving some of our haziest memories through that wall of photographs.
For more details on the FrogFest playlist see bookmyshow.com
Abhimanyu Meer is a freelance journalist
