The Golden Era of Dr.IR and Dr.SPB

[KV]

Awesome posts, AWE & Jai! While one chooses to drench us in nostalgia, the other brings showers of poetry on us! I’m thoroughly enjoying this rain!

As Jai rightly said, the bass guitar in Kaviriye is special stuff. I’m a mad fan of this song’s prelude… the conversation between the bass and santoor is spellbinding!

Moonrampirai is my Numero Uno favorite of all IR albums. Emotional opulence, technical sophistication and popular appeal, packaged into a blend of perfection!
The source for this madness/devotion/obsession over the album is a ‘soundtrack’ tape that my father had as part of his collection. (a solid collection of various genres, composers and artists).
I chanced upon this tape around the time I was passing out of school and moving to pre-university. PU classes used to be from 0730-1130 and I would be back home by 1200 or 1300. With both, mum and dad working, it used to be only grandmom and I at home, till evening. I would, almost daily, very religiously, carry the old, compact, Sanyo single-speaker taperecorder and some of my favorite tapes and lock myself in a room. After that, for hours it would just be music and me, undisturbed; relaxation and tranquility of the highest order. I can, even now, vividly recall several dialogs from the film and the music pieces accompanying them. Momentary silence and then a gradual passage of violins to musically paint the scenic landscape of Ooty, the loopy, naughty, enticing pieces of bass guitar portraying Silikku’s longing and melancholy… every scene is a slice of poetry, visually and musically.
Even after I got my computer and mp3 collection, I had very safely kept the tape with me for many years and would often go off on a ‘trip’ listening to it. Alas, the tape recorder threw up some trouble some months back and my tapes now lie in a corner, dust gathering over them and my memories.