Review: JRO 2006

~JRO 2006 Flyer~

JRO stands for June Rock Out which is an annual musical event held in the month of June. According to Unwind Center - the center behind this musical fest, claims "Evolving as 'India's Mega Music Festival', - JRO is a performance stage; where bands get to perform before large appreciative audiences." For on their mission statement click here.

~Unwind Center, Bangalore~

JRO which started off @ Chennai, is in its 8th succesive year and Chennai has witnessed 7 years of this festival. This was the first edition of JRO @ Bangalore. Even though this edition started off on June 10th, I got to know about it after missing the first 2 weeks of it. Thanks! Neets for letting us know of JRO.

Now that u have some idea about this Fest, let me digg into the fest. So, the final week of this Rock fest saw 3 bands - Parousia [Bangalore], Panatella [Chennai], IIIrd Sovereign [Mizoram based in Delhi] - performing @ Unwind Center, Bangalore.

Panatella kicked off the night with some decent music belting out their own compositions & doing some covers after the requests from the audience. This was the second time I was witnessing Panatella perform in Bangalore, previously they had performed @ Strawberry Fest; you can read more regarding 'Strawberry Fields festival' & the band.

~Pantella~

IIIrd Sovereign, the Death Metal Band from Mizoram was the next to take the center-stage. I had not known them before, so my expectations weren't that high from them. When they started playing their music, they weren't disappointing at all. The audience by then had swelled in number & the numerous Death Metal fans were Head Banging to the metal mania. [Neets said during the previous weekends she didn't find much audidence @ Unwind Center]. It was pleasure for me to witness a live performance of a Death Metal Band, all the members are good @ their craft, the lead guitarist & the drummer impressed me a lot. I loved the bass guitar of Jonah. Prior to this I had witnessed to another Death Metal band, Mumbai's Demonic Resurrection performance @ 'Strawberry Fields'.

~IIIrd Sovereign~

~The Head Bangers~

Parousia, the Rock band from Bangalore was the last band to perform. May be these guys played well, to be frank I was in no mood to listen to Soft-Rock after the high-octane performance of IIIrd Sovereign. Half the crowd had left by the time these guys played, I feel the organisers should have gone by the order they had originally planned to start off with Parousia, Panatell and winding up with IIIrd Sovereign.

Now Bangalore has another annual musical event to its calendar. Unwind Center needs a round of applause for keeping the fest free from smoke, alcohol & sexual connotations in its true sense, which is very common among Rock fests. Few words for the organisers, I feel they could improve on their PR campaign - so that the festivals gets wider audience and kick start the show without any delays.

~The Group: Nita (Gal in Red with a smile), Ranjit (Geek with Helmet) and Sridhar (Cool Dude with leather jacket), Self (as always behind the lens)~

JRO Rocks!!!