The Golden Era of Dr.IR and Dr.SPB

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#257 மலையோரம் வீசும் காற்று
(பாடு நிலாவே , 1987 )

What a sweet melodious song, sung nicely by our man! IR keeps the orchestration soft - to suit the mildly pathos mood and the song is quite haunting. During the time of its arrival, I didn't even remember the movie's name after getting it recorded on a Sony EF60 cassette. It soothed many a night - listening on headphones during the bed time was such a nice feel! A regular on buses too and I never knew who were the faces on screen. Recently, when trying to get the youtube of 'malaiyOram mayilE, veLaiyAdum kuyilE' for my wife, I stumbled upon the video of this - an outdated Mohan doing his stock expressions / gestures. It was dismal and I think Nathiya also happens to be on the screen (not very sure). Now I know the movie's name - the Mu.Mehta line from the mAn-thEn movie

By this time, I've changed a couple of rooms and ended in the biggest room of the 'Fort view' lodge - a bachelor accommodation place - that had the view of the Tippu's fort in Palakkad and was next door to the 2nd best hotel in that town during those days - Fort Palace Hotel - that had nice rooms, beautiful lawn service, fantastic restaurant & a separate, loud bar. 2 years into the job, I was still a teeto and there had been a number of bachelor parties during this time period and me & my college mate had to undergo the teasing as 'soup ghOshti' during every one of them. Interestingly, my room mate - a senior by 5 years - was not in town most of the time (travel job) and I had that huge room all for myself, apart from the many SS / IW novels he had (buys them to read in hotels during his travels) and the 200+W PMPO music system with dual cassettes, 5 band graphic equalizer etc

He was a fan of TR's music and had almost all his albums & that's how I kept in touch with his scores even while away from TN - it was extremely enjoyable to play 'rAkkOzhi koovaiyilE' & 'indha malliga manasa' on that system! My cassettes get played too but not so much when he was around (as he wanted thALakkozhuppu stuff and mine were mostly 'EdhEdhO eNNam vaLarththEn', 'malaiyOram veesum kARRu', 'sheNbagamE' kinds). It was nice anyways whenever he was around and he was a fan of the "Nalantha" restaurant (what a nice name) and I became a regular there as well. This restaurant used to play TFM some times, Ayyappan songs during the season (that sounded more cinematic than even TFM) and some MFM hits.

Around this time, there was another shift in my musical leanings - though rAsA songs were still the #1 preference, like the way I developed a taste for MJ during college days, started to listen to a lot of recent MFM. I should say it was a glorious period for both movies & music for MF. I even had a whole 90 min cassette recorded with MF songs - including sAgarangaLE, Ah rAthri mAnjju pOyi, vaishAka sandhyE, manjal prasAdavum, neerAduvAn, Araiyum bhAva gAyakanAkkum. Actually, such songs occupied most of my (already limited) available time of music listening. I had HTNI echo cassette in which only two tracks were liked & listened (the title one and the flute based 'do anything') and at that time the quality of echo cassettes was so poor that one cannot use the walkman without a screw driver around (to adjust the head and get sound on both ears).

Looking back, I remember also feeling a little low / gloomy whenever I think of my rAsA listening choices during this time period - already dull 110 V kind of voltage, very tired after long work hours, heavy rain for months etc...'malaiyOram veesum kARRu' kinds only added to it. Well, it was way different from the bright days of school!

[V_S]

That was an Excellent write-up App Nice to hear about your room-mate and his stereo system. The prelude strings feels somewhat exactly like our heart strings. How in the world he creates those sounds close to nature and humans. Going to listen those malayalam songs also that you enjoyed. Please pm me more or in Malayalam songs thread, please.

RR, Excellent write-up on Hey Raja. Spot on the portions at the end of charanam (Naanum neeyum ethu pirivinai bedham illai manakkavalai) where they both sing together, the tune there was ultimate.

It's the charanam that brings us really into the music and mood. The charanam tune is really a take off on the chariot-running rhythm motif. Watch how the pattern is built up slowly and taken to a wonderful culmination.. and smoothly blends into with the pallavi. I never get tired of this part. Trademark IR! Probably he composed it just-like-that. But this is really the most beautiful part of the whole song

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nanRi, V_S-ji!

Please pm me

(Please ask Plum why I'm laughing )

sArE, idhu palakAram vakai thAnE, (maRRa) palAna kAram illaiyE

So,
dhayavAyi ivide nOkku

[PARAMASHIVAN]

wasn't there a song called MalaiyOram veesum kaatrU by SPB ??? was it from the same movie ?

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wasn't there a song called MalaiyOram veesum kaatrU by SPB ??? was it from the same movie ?

yOv, did you read my post?

We are talking about that song only

[Nerd]

wasn't there a song called MalaiyOram veesum kaatrU by SPB ??? was it from the same movie ?

Thanks to some *serious* WFH yesterday was able to finish reading almost a month of posts. With playing the songs in the background of course. Great job app saar. Really sad that the series is going to get over soon

MalaiyOram veesum kaaththu - One of my favoritest songs. Raja makes us cry with the acoustic guitar. Love the charanams. The melody moves at jet speed for such a sad song

[PARAMASHIVAN]

yOv, did you read my post?

We are talking about that song only

Oh I got the song name and film name mixed up!

[RR]

at that time the quality of echo cassettes was so poor that one cannot use the walkman without a screw driver around (to adjust the head and get sound on both ears).

True.. I got fed up and went full into recoding onto sony cassettes. This is another great exprience. I'll be choosy and pick songs carefully and submit. The guy will ask me to come in a week's time. When you wait, wait and finally go back after a week, I don't know how he'll recognize, he'll be halfway recording it.. This is definitely more often than not.. You can listen your selections as you get near the shop. The first 2 times you wondr, then you are always expecting it. As I enter the shop, he'll be so busy and won't even notice you or say anything.. until asked 'eppo mudiyunga'.. The reply will be instant without even throwing a glance at you.. '30 nimisham' as though he has rehearsed it so much.. you don't care, listening to the songs is all on your mind now.. We go so eagerly and slot it into the player and keep your eyes and ears on the system. You'll be relishing it so much but there's always a show stopper - the guy would've recorded the wrong song, e.g. we wanted the spb version and clearly mentioned it, but he will make sure the wrong version is there. If you mention 'ninaithaal inikkum' song, you can be sure he'll randomly pick a song from the movie. Those were some days..!! There was one famous shop in ranganathan street, he'll often put in nice fillers at the side end, e.g. punnagai mannan theme. I wonder if he is still there..

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nanRi, Nerd for the encouragement!

Yes, starting from 1987, I'm seeing a drastic reduction in numbers of SPB/IR TF hit songs and this series may end sooner than I originally thought. Still, not too soon - hopefully, we'll have enough to complete one year of this "dhinathanthi kanniththeevu sindhubAd" like series

Nice recall of the 'typical behavioural pattern' of the recording centers, RR sir!

Me too had that 'wrong version of song' experience many times and got annoyed...

Unlike you people in big cities, it wasn't easy for us to get Sony / TDKs always (no burmA or chinA bajAr in Palakkad)...so, at times I had to settle for MELTRACK (Murugappa Electronics brand cassettes) and those had their own quality issues

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#258 பாடுங்கள், பாட்டுப்பாடுங்கள்
(பாடு நிலாவே, 1987 , சித்ராவுடன்)

I remember listening to this sweet number on a number of occasions in the bus and assume this was reasonably known inside TN / had air time etc, even though the movie wasn't a big hit or the songs weren't extremely popular. I didn't have it on cassette either but can instantly recognize the number when I saw it first on thiraippAdal. So, decided to include in this series. I'm not going to do that with another number from the same movie , vA veLiyE by SPB/KSC (kEttadhE illai). This has KSC in decent form and the entry of SPB into the song enlivens up much better as well. The mild semi-classical flavour helps the song big time and no one can do better than KSC in such songs IMO. She has really excelled right from the sindhu bhairavi days!

Another person who can sing with equal precision in such songs is obviously VJ. However, with KSC, IMO, most emotions are painted accurately (unlike VJ teacharammA) that makes it very pleasurable to listen to the songs (and not appreciate just the "parameters"). As I mentioned in my post on malaiyOram veesum kARRu, this was the time period when my listening got diversified to MFM and > 50% of my listening was KSC songs (TFM or MFM or Malayalam laLitha gAnangaL). I'm not very sure about the timing of the 'ente vAnampAdi' album (must be between 1986-89, even though many websites wrongly talk about this album as a 1993-er - may be that was the year when this was available on CD but I've never seen the CD and only know by cassette. I remember posting about the 'poonguruvi nee' song from this album in one of the hub threads and how I used to have the habit of gifting this cassette to many TN friends during those bachelor days. I simply love all the songs!

It was also possibly around the same time I had this Malaysia Vasudevan's non-film disco album (with the title Disco Disco ) which only recently I came to know that had ARR's hand in it I loved that 'poovE poovE vandhAl pOdhum, nee thAnE dhEvadhai' song so much.

Per the wikipedia link, this was the first album production of ARR and I was one of the few privileged ones to have it :

He has also lended voice for a few albums, the most notable among them is Disco Disco (1987), a collaboration with composer Dilip (A. R. Rahman) and playback singer K. S. Chithra. The album is noted for being the first album production of A. R. Rahman.^[2] Though it didn't become much popular, Disco Disco Vol 2 was also released later.

So, this was a time period when my music listening was getting varied. I'll talk about the most significant of them when we discuss the next album