Core 304 was one of the five bands that performed on Friday night at Jebel Ali's Al Muntazah club. They struck a chord with around a hundred people who turned up for the charity gig, the proceeds of which will go to the victims of Chennai's devastating floods. "Music is only a binder - an event for people to come and meet. The donation will go to our friends who are doing relief work in the wake of Chennai floods," said 44-year-old Anurag Tripathi, one of the four band members who do such charity gigs once every quarter. Their recent claim to fame was the Macarts festival in Canada where they were shortlisted along with two other international bands. The theme of the fest was to bring together diverse cultures. "We played in English rock 'n' roll, Arabic and Bollywood. We wanted to bring flavours from all around. We have a guest singer who does Arabic. We got through the selection process - perhaps because we could deliver in three languages." Originally formed in 2011, Guitarist Tolentino 'Tolo' Fernandes, keyboardist Lynette Braganza, bassist and vocalist Santan Fernandes and drummer Anurag Tripathi, started jamming at Anurag's apartment in Al Khor Plaza. His unit number? 304. And they haven't looked back since then. "We decided to name our band after the place we jam at - Khor 304. 'Core' is an English word and signifies a lot of things we do in terms of passion, music, and bonding. So Core 304 was unanimously agreed upon," he added. All four band members work their day jobs, and get together in the evenings at Anurag's apartment - where they actually come alive. "All of us have been in bands before - they don't continue for long due to differences in musical tastes, they term it creative differences. But with us, there's chemistry, a core bonding. 99% of the songs we choose are almost unanimously agreed upon." Excerpts from an interview with Anurag on what their live shows are all about. What kind of genre do you play? We play classic rock - such as Led Zeppelin, Eagles and Pink Floyd - the 70s-80s rock genre. It's not modern. Not to say that we can't play modern numbers but classic rock is our speciality. In addition, we have about nine original tracks. How do you choose your songs? The song selection is mostly event-specific. New Year song selection is very different from a charity gig or a rock concert. We do try to be adventurous and add flavours to old songs, give breaks to the rhythm and so on. Among the popular ones are Hotel California, a medley of Michael Jackson's Beat it - all done on a Reggae beat so that people can sing along to it. We also do some hard rock songs like AC/DC's Back in Black and sometimes a mashup - the lyrics of Queen with We Will Rock You on top of it. It takes people by surprise - because they experience two or three songs almost at the same time. Mostly musicians want to be safe and play new songs as we can't go wrong with it. But we choose to be adventurous. What's the worst that can happen? If they don't like it we will switch to modern songs. But we have realised over a period of time that people want to hear old songs. It takes them back to their college, first date, first bike ride and so on. And they love it. What kind of challenges do you face being a rock band in Dubai? There are two types of challenges - personal, our day jobs and families. Lynette has got two kids - obviously they have school, tuitions. And then there are administrative challenges such as event promotion. We don't have enough funds to hire an event manager hence we have to manage it all on our own. The biggest challenge though is the fact that it's such a transient population that it is very hard to stick around. People lose their jobs, face issues with family and financial setbacks. The four of us are blessed to have been together for four years and growing stronger! Check out Core 304 on December 31, New Year's eve, at Radisson Blu hotel in Fujairah, 9pm onwards. nilanjana@khaleejtimes.com
Core 304 performed recently to raise funds for the victims of the recent Chennai floods
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