An Incomplete History...

Early days...

It was the year 1998....

PESIT, only a couple of years old, had a great cultural group. This was a huge group who'd sing Hindi songs at various fests, and college functions.

There were many people who were passionate about singing, but there was only the Hindi group. There was no platform to play and enjoy western music.

So that was when four guys decided something had to be done about this. Three of them were from the 1st year (Sriram on vocals and guitar, Adithya on lead vocals, Tarun on Rhythm), and one guy from 3rd year(George, on bass).

Since the college didn't have any music facilities or place to practice in, they would go to Sriram's place and practice long nights. They started out with performing in the college fest, which was very well received. I think their first few songs were "Hotel California", "Leaving on a jet plane" and "Winds of Change". That gave them the much needed confidence to go on.

They initially did not have a decent drummer. Many people joined the band, at various times, but none of them could match the core strength of vocals and guitar. There were times when they'd just stop playing everything and just sing.

Formative years...

The one issue they always faced was that the crowds always wanted popular songs. But they never performed for the crowd - they did it for themselves and at times sang songs specially dedicated to their friends. Songs that inspired them to make music in the first place.

After George left college, Deepu joined the band. He was a novice back then, but picked up stuff very fast. Soon the PESIT western band was well known in the Bangalore circuit. They moved their music to "Simon & Garfunkel", "Dire Straits" etc.

At the end of 1999, Noella Dsa (only a month into college) auditioned for the western band. The band had never seen or heard anything like her. So she was on board, and she performed at the year end party in 1999 in college (the song was "Don't cry for me Argentina").

Throughout 2000 they performed at various college fests, and were getting to be recognised for their talent.

At the end of 2000, Mrinal joined the college, and was in the band right away. He could play anything from guitar to keyboards to drums. He was what the band was looking for a long time. Soon, Sashi joined the band as well, bringing with him his talents at guitar and drums.

By this time, the college realised that they had something good happening on campus, and decided to give them a dedicated room to jam all day. As they say - the rest was history.

At 3 am in the night, you could find them jamming in the music room, out of pure passion. And this time, they started winning prizes in fests. Suddenly they were a well-known band in Bangalore. That's when they realized they needed a name for the band. Initially they called themselves "Last string missing". However, their audiences at college somehow tagged them as "Phenom", and that name stuck.

Towards the middle of 2001, most of the original members had to leave the band, as they were out of college. This is when Gaurav joined the band. He and Noella took over the vocals. Soon Jnaneshwar joined the band too, on keyboards, completing the current lineup along with Mrinal and Sashi. Gaurav took over playing the bass guitar after Deepu too graduated in 2002.

Competing...

In 2002, Phenom was performing at every competition they could get into, and started developing quite a fan following. And it slowly dawned on people that this was more than just a little "college rock band" they were seeing evolve....

2002 was a formative year for Phenom. Not only were they winning awards all over the place, it had now reached a point where they were so good that they were expected to win the competitions they participated in. Clearly, the time had come for the band to raise the bar for themselves. All it needed was an opportunity.

Learning to fly...

And that opportunity came right at the end of the year, when Phenom was invited to perform at Linux Bangalore/2002 - not as part of a competition or as a "college band", but as a band on its own, to perform a 120 minute gig at the prestigious J.N.Tata Auditorium in Bangalore!

Never had Phenom faced a challenge like this. There was no competition, no "20 minutes empty stage to empty stage", no naturally biased college audience - this was a pro-level show.

Over the month leading up to the show, Phenom rehearsed their hearts out, adding song after song to their already formidable repertoire. Pressure on them was immense, and the tension was high.

To ensure that this show went off the way it was intended, the organisers of the event dropped an early-Christmas gift into Phenom's lap - instead of having to rely on the crappy sound systems typically hired for gigs, Phenom's sound would be powered by Acoustic Control, generally regarded as one of the best sound people in the business.

Forever free...

December 5th 2002 was D-Day, and at 6:30pm, the band took to the stage for their first ever stand-alone Phenom concert. In front of a crowd of almost a thousand people, powered by a professional sound system, on the most prestigious stage the city had to offer, and with a huge projection screen behind them providing a background to the show, Phenom forever broke free from the "college band image".

The show was a landmark event for Phenom in more ways than one. Even their original numbers ("Coloured for this world" and "Linux Can") got an astonishingly enthusiastic response! In fact, when members of the audience were polled later about their favourites, both the originals ranked right up there with their performances of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" and Rush's "Jacob's Ladder" - an amazing tribute to the original creative skills of the band.

The band didn't rest on its laurels for very long - in fact, over the next week after the event, they participated in two competitions, and walked off with most awards.

Beyond their limits...

As 2002 drew to a close, Phenom went into a huddle, with a decision to produce more original material. Clearly, 2003 is going to see much more of the group, and not just on stage.

Phenom's rapidly growing fan-base across the country is holding its collective breath....