“What was I doing, hmm? I was in Allahabad. I was running the night shift of the family business, which was a printing press.” He certainly doesn’t ‘look’ the part, but this is Amit Saigal’s past. While on night shift, he used to write several articles on a beat up computer. He laid them down in the format of a magazine, printed it in his own printing press. And voila! RSJ was born.

But now he was stuck. After printing roughly 2,500 copies of the magazine, he didn’t know what to do with them. He couldn’t possibly hope to sell them in Allahabad. “We went to college festivals in Delhi 'coz that was the closest”, he explains. “We went to LSR, BITS Pilani, etc. and tried to sell subscriptions. We sold in all about 6 subscriptions, mostly to people who took pity on us.” Yes, times were tough. Returning to Allahabad, he decided to send the magazines to his friends all over the country. These were guys in bands and people generally associated with the Rock scene in India at the time. “Bundles of 50 copies arrived suddenly at their doorstep, with a note from me saying ‘I’ve done this, and I’m giving it away for free. Now you do what you want with it.’”

The networking started. Friends gave the magazine to friends, and so on. And suddenly, Mr. Saigal started getting letters. “I’d wake up every morning, and there were a pile of letters at the door. (They were) basically from...

people who’d read the magazine, liked it, and wanted to connect.” The suggestions, advice, and help started pouring in. A cover was slapped on to the next bi-monthly edition of the magazine. Bi-monthly because there was only one staff at that time, Amit. “The distributor laughed at me. He said ‘yeh kaun kharidega?’”. As a favour, a publisher agreed to distribute the magazine and put it on stands. This was back in 1993. The rest, as they’d like to believe, is history.

It’s safe to say that Amit Saigal has seen quite a bit of Indian rock. In fact, his old band, Impact, did win a few festivals in Delhi back then. “Indian rock has evolved in a very basic, intrinsic way”, he says. “From a time when bands were only doing covers, to today when bands are primarily doing their own material. And that is a paradigm shift... There has been some level of intellectual stimulation that we have been able to create. Otherwise you have a situation where a band is being compared with another on the basis of which does the better Metallica cover.” You better believe him.

But is it just enough that Indian bands make their own music? It may seem an easy enough question on the face of it, but Amit thinks otherwise. “Now comes the interesting bit, which is the part about identity. Sure, you’re doing your own writing, but your form is not original. Your form is being inspired and driven by Western music.”...

The scene has come to a point where bands are looking for that original form. And one band (in)famous with the ‘original Indian form’ of Rock music is, obviously, Orange Street.

“How do you define a sellout?” Suddenly the interviewee becomes the interviewer. Luckily he saves me the ummms and uhhhs. “What is the original form of Rock music? I would rather look at Orange Street as an experiment. And an experiment that worked.” Orange Street were taken on a tour of Europe by RSJ (they were winners of Great Indian Rock - or GIR), and people loved them there. In fact, they’ve been called back for a release of their album in Europe. “Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with a Zero, Pentagram or PDV having the sound that they have. They’re being true to themselves.”

When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, Amit is of the opinion that only an Indian band with a purely Indian sound is going to be ‘marketable’ abroad. “Think about it. Why would a record company guy want to incur the expense of bringing a band all the way from India, putting them up in some hotel, and giving them shows, when no one has heard of them, and they sound just like every other band there?!” Simple logic.

So what does an Indian band have to do to really make it? “There are hundreds of bands that are doing original music here. The form is there, but the identity isn’t. It’s the question of...

finding an identity that syncs with a (financial) viability.” RSJ is on the bandwagon too, and Amit and crew are looking at more platforms to showcase Indian Rock talent. Every year RSJ takes a band on a foreign tour. This year’s GIR winners No Idea are already on their way to Norway.