S&D: Bollywood sndtrks/comps.

I was bummed I couldn't even figure out where to look for vinyl when I was in India

xp I've been meaning to see Shaan for ages. The song's great.

apparently my family in india has some giant trove of vinyl stashed somewhere

hate to be one of those kids who wants to go back to the motherland to pillage collections of relatives I don't know but in this case

I pillaged my wife's grandmother's vinyl collection and unearthed a completely amazing Hungarian psych rock record from '67. I highly recommend it.

Coca Cola song is super! ty jaxon

jaxon: edo from bombay connection? what a great label, glad they exist

right label, wrong guy. actually his name is julien.

he said he wasn't sure when the comp was coming out. some delays as of now. but that vikram song looks like it was released on another comp recently (that link i posted is for Play That Beat Mr. Raja #1). i can't vouch for the rest of it, but the Fire Star comp is all amazing.

xpost to Jaxon- Illaiyaraaja (dude from yr link) just got a fairly extensive comp done recently via finders keepers. It's pretty great

I was bummed I couldn't even figure out where to look for vinyl when I was in India

more luck finding cassettes, CDs, CD-Rs, etc...vinyl is considered antiquated by their standards. i have my best luck finding bollywood vinyl in the 'soundtracks' or 'world' sections of rock/jazz record stores that don't have a clue, and i also find lots of vintage bollywood vinyl in my parents' basement that they don't want anymore (it helps to have indian parents)

the pressings i have from Polydor India, circa 1979/1980 or whatever, sound really good, and the covers are beautiful too--the pressing plant was in Bombay & the covers were printed there too, super-luxe

on ebay, discogs, etc you won't find many discounts--it's priced up, way way up, for DJs/avid collectors--some of the records i've picked up for $5 are worth $100 according to these sites

i wrote a guide to some of the best convenience stores, cell phone stores, etc to buy Indian music on the cheap in manhattan & brooklyn (queens is its own beast, will handle that in a separate piece at some point) - will look for the link

The beginning of that 'Burning Train' title theme music (R.D. Burman, circa 1980) is techno-tastic

here's an edit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iF89qIqJiI

has anyone written an article about trains in the history of electronic music? there's a whole lineage you could write about there. you could talk about musique-concrete and train sounds, go up to kraftwerk and 'trans-europe express', take a detour through bollywood, etc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbxK8BigyFQ

I grew up listening to nothing but indian music I hated it, but I still like this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fhhdfWJ_Fc

Sunidhi Chauhan's kind of wonderful. Aa Tayar Hoja's from Asoka, which wasn't an enormous success but ranks as one of my ten favourite films ever.

my heart is with the older Bollywood movies from the '70s/'80s--esp. the ones with disco/funk/weird electronic soundtracks--and some from the '60s

newer Bollywood flicks tend to leave me cold. also, the women tend to look slightly healthier in the older movies--that 'Aa Tayar Hoja' video above, from Asoka (2001), looks like an advertisement for an ab workout machine...it's about as sexy as a Gaga video (which is to say, not at all)

here's one of my favorite Bollywood songs of all time--the best 'I Feel Love' homage of them all, from Star (1982)--Nazia Hassan on vocals, transcendent Summer/Moroder-style epicness

here's the scene from the movie--too bad you see the actress and not Nazia--Nazia was one of the most beautiful women on planet Earth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ead-K_q5QNs

geeta - yeah I was in Mumbai (twice), Goa (twice), Delhi, Bangalore and I checked out every music store I could find but yeah all CDs/cassettes. the couple of random vinyl records I did find were from a street vendor in Mumbai, but they were nothing special. in general my inquiries about where to find records were met with predictable puzzlement.

i have that Sitar Beat edit 12" u posted above geeta. has one of my fave bollywood tracks on it, Disco 82. i had my good friend translate it into english. funny lyrics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI7WAxhWabk

(they don't exactly make sense-they kind of have a nonsensical
rolling on e quality about em.)

I am disco-You are disco
The entire world in a disco
Disco 82 la la la la (etc)
do re me (the 7 sounds)
rama rama rama (also part of the do re me sounds-but also, rama-is a
god)
My laughter and dreams are alive here.
Don't show me a cage, I am not a domesticated bird.
Let me say it - Let me say it
Disco 82 (etc)
This soma is in the form of liquor-it is not poison-if I drink it,
and get tipsy-will you be mad?
Let me live - Let me live-I swear by you!
disco 82 etc.
You to me, me to you-we keep saying something to one another.
There is still night left-there is still much left to say-but we
flounder.
Let me fly, Let me fly-I swear by you.
Disco 82 etc

ha, 'disco 82'! i know that one

that's exactly it though, the '82' -- india caught on to disco later than the western world did. their 1982/1983 was our 1977/1978. and that's what makes it so interesting to me: these popular culture movements didn't happen simultaneously

when i was in new delhi in 1992, i turned on the TV and the announcer said something like "here's a new song by kate bush called 'running up that hill'"

imagine being told, in '92, that 'running up that hill', from 1985, was a brand new song, hot off the presses: what happens then? all my notions about music melted right then and there

Enjoying the videos and stuff folks. Thanks

my heart is with the older Bollywood movies from the '70s/'80s--esp. the ones with disco/funk/weird electronic soundtracks--and some from the '60s

Yeah, this is pretty much it for me too (though purely from a musical perspective - as I've said before, I don't really know the films themselves). But then I err towards the aesthetic from the same era in UK/US/European music, too, so it's not that surprising.

I love all eras of Bollywood, but if we're talking strictly music yeah the disco/funk/weird electronics of the 70s/80s is the best

my wife and I have been searching FOREVER, to no avail, for this 70s Bollywood film called "Goonghat" that we caught on TV while we were there. maybe if I spoke/read Hindi I could find it but alas

my wife and I have been searching FOREVER, to no avail, for this 70s Bollywood film called "Goonghat" that we caught on TV while we were there.

do you mean 'Ghunghat', circa 1960? someone has posted the entire movie on youtube in 20 parts

O RLY

it was definitely older, I was only guessing about the year

hmm no that isn't it. this was in color. featured the semi-common practice of casting midget/dwarf as a child

much more into romantic 60s Bollywood, so pretty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFr6G5zveS8

That's gorgeous. Appreciate the sports jacket too.

the actors are are almost white in bollywood movies nowadays

like all of them

? can't say I've noticed that trend

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/Shah_Rukh_Khan_%28Berlin_Film_Festival_2008%29_4.1.jpg/220px-Shah_Rukh_Khan_%28Berlin_Film_Festival_2008%29_4.1.jpg

this guy looks white to you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2hSEu4X1WA

really appreciate the effort here

shakey he's like a big actor holdover, but whenever I visit my parents they're watching some bullshit two bit new movie with actors with a lot of anglo facial features

also, you shoulda posted a picture of rajinikanth

Pale = beautiful is clearly a huge issue and one that goes far beyond the film industry. It's an exaggeration to say that the majority of stars are 'almost white' but there's no doubt the actors are not reflective of the country's diversity.

well yeah there's no arguing with that

just saying that when I'm out eating chaat somewhere and watching vids looped on dvd on the big flatscreen in the corner more people in the newer vids have a homogenized look but then again I don't really pay close attention to these movies on a historical basis, and actively dislike most of them

whenever I listen to that sun city girls track, after it's over, I think to myself "good hustle guys"

uh oh i'm having a fantasy otm. one of the things i love about sharukh khan is how indo his features are--sort of amazed he still gets cast.

but not really because he's awesome.

Bit depressing to see him in skin-lightening cream adverts but he's completely amazing otherwise.

did you guys see the whole Aishwarya Rai skin-lightening controversy? it wasn't her; it was a fashion magazine that apparently lightened her in Photoshop for the cover

http://jezebel.com/5719938/lawsuit-rumors-for-elle-india-skin+lightening-controversy

:( i hadn't read that

last time i was in india, my sister and i were joking about using the skin-lightening creams we saw freaking everywhere and my male cousin, very seriously, was like, i can get you guys some if you want it! it turned out his sister had a gigantic stash.

yeah :(

Aishwarya Rai is teh hotness

i'm sure i have no idea what i'm talking about, but my sister's in india for the summer working and she and i were talking about how what indians need is an analogue to the Black Arts/Black Power movement. obviously it's a different situation and would look different and it's pretty ridiculous of me to be opining about what a subcontinent full of people should be doing but.

that's pretty far off-topic i guess

i've never used these creams, and i object to the principle. (i bet they're not safe either.) but i'm a bit sensitive about the issue, because i actually got made fun of in the opposite way when I was a kid--I'm paler than a lot of Indian people (my family hails from the mountainous North) and my hair is more brown than black. when i was a kid, other indian kids would tell me i didn't look 'indian' enough, or that i must be half-Indian, or whatever, but no--my parents are both Indian

it was really odd

the funny thing is, when i was 14 years old, i actually hated Bollywood movies--at the time I wore all black and listened to Coil (why did I have so many Coil records? I don't remember now) but i distrusted Bollywood and its big, colorful, over-the-topness: it signified the mainstream to me, which i hated at the time

now, many years later, in my 30s, i adore Bollywood movies, and i appreciate them: also, things get more interesting when you add some time to them

yeah i didn't mean to suggest there's only one "indo" look. (my family hails from the mountainous north, too!)

Disco circa 1985, from the movie Saaheb, music by Bappi Lahiri:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDzOSqkWfCY

you can see a lot of michael jackson in those dance moves as well

plot synopsis, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Anil Kapoor plays Saaheb, the youngest son of the family. He is focused on football, his passion. Due to this, everyone in the family constantly tells him he is no good. However when circumstances demand, he gives up his kidney to fund his sister's marriage, at the cost of his football career.

it's no "aao na" but it's cool

Don't really know much about Bollywood but some Kollywood soundtracks I've enjoyed

Kadhal Rojave
Kadhalan
Paruthiveeran
Kannathil Muthamittal
Ghilli
Anniyan
Chandramukhi