A musical interlude

I seem to have hit a blogger’s block of late, a pretty steep one at that too. So even as I shake myself trying to churn up new ideas I find myself returning to my mental recycle bin to recover some post ideas that I had deemed as probable ones but trashed later probably not considering them fit for public consumption. This post happens to be one those ideas and marks my return to my favorite domain of Bollywood. You might relate to it only and only if you have been a music buff from the 80’s onwards.

Recall all those times when Cd’s weren’t quite the in thing and your music pile consisted of cassettes which came dirt cheap after the advent of the Gulshan Kumar era. Do you remember times when while playing a favorite cassette of yours you suddenly came to song that stuck out as a sore note on an otherwise musically brilliant album? As I sat down recalling such instances I started thinking of times when we have shamelessly defended the songs in our movies by calling them musicals even though we’ve never come to making a true blue musical in the true sense of the world. I mean forget musicals we have very few movies in which all songs are good and turn out to be popular choices amongst the common movie going audiences. Anyways that not my point, the point is even though we make movies replete with songs why do music directors always end up composing one real bad / unpopular song on an otherwise beautiful album. If you sift through pages of Bollywood music history you will probably notice that this trend started only around the late 70’s and early 80’s movies when greats like Shankar Jaikishan and S.D.Burman were no longer around. After their era when subsequent music directors came around that you will suddenly begin to find albums with one or 2 mediocre to plain bad that somehow didn’t gel with an otherwise hit soundtrack and ended up going unnoticed in a relatively hit flick. For a true movie buff this phenomenon seemed very irritating because it always seemed like that the music composers just didn’t bother and got into the irritating and very Indian ‘chalta hai’ mode of functioning this ruining a great album leaving me scurrying for the fast forward button. For those of you who I have entirely lost at this point of time its time you make a quick exit before making you are forced to leave uncharitable comments on the blog, for those who even have an inkling as to what I am talking about I speak for every ‘Chori pe chori’ song in Saathiya, ‘Jaaneman Jaaneman’ number in Kaho Na Pyar Hai, ‘Pehli Baar mMile’ from Saajan, ‘ Dil Ka Aalam’ from Aashiqi, ‘Ghar Aaja Pardesi’ from DDLJ, ‘Deewane Hum Pyar Ke’ from JJWS, ‘Bada Dukh Dina’ from Ram Lakhan etc. My memory fails me as I try to come up with more examples but I hope I have gotten my point across. Also pardon me for my choice of movies being from the 80’s onwards as that’s where most of my musical recollections start from. This realization gave me increased appreciation for all those soundtracks on which all numbers turned out to be mass hits. I tried putting together a collection of 5 such soundtracks. I must admit it was a very hard job but after a lot of thinking I came up with a list of 5 music CD’s I wouldn’t really mind being marooned with on an island (keep in mind this is a post 1975 collection and I leave open the discussion for my favorite collection of English music for a later day).

Hum Kisi Se Kam Nahin: Probably the soundtrack that actually drove me into writing this particular post, it was a personal favorite of mine as I made my dad play this movie’s songs over and over again as a small kid.
Ijaazat: A brilliant movie with powerhouse performances and the coming together of RD Burman’s and Gulzar’s geniuses. Every song is a gem in itself and should be on every musical connoisseur’s playlist.
Aandhi: Another RD, Gulzar combo on the list has great replay value.
QSQT: The movie that got back good music back to Bollywood in a hurry.
Roja: Comprehensively proved music actually broke across all border while establishing making A.R.Rehman a name to be watched out for and an instant celebrity.
1942 A Love story: This soundtrack proved without a doubt that musician’s die music doesn’t as RD immortalized himself to all music lovers.
Dil Chahta Hai: This soundtrack firmly established Shankar, Ehsan and Loy amongst the big league, with music as fresh as the movie.

Ok mebbe I cheated and made that list drag onto seven very conveniently but lets see you all trim your list down to five.