We began as a motley bunch of us who just knew one another from seeing too much of each other through college. It’s been over a year since we got together to perform at an acoustic festival in Chennai, and the one thing that has established itself in our music, our “style” and us as a band is spontaneity and constant surprises; so the one thing we knew for sure was that we would morph and change all the time. We’re not entirely sure how we began, and we don’t know where we’re headed, but wherever it is, we’re having a blast getting there. That’s us, Subject to Change.
The band has a pretty mad mix of people and music; talented and employed (Aakash Jacob), freelance audio engineer (Toby Joseph), now-turned art teacher and wonderful artist (Anisha Sarah Verghese), perennially broke, psychotic academic & now research scholar (Anjana Raghavan), rising star singer (Benny Dayal). We'd like at this juncture to say a big thank you to Abraham Varghese for having been with us till now, but he's off in England doing an MBA, so it's the five of us now and we're realigning ourselves to the newness of things.
Fortunately for us, everything has just slid into place with our music. If we had to label ourselves, we are an exclusively acoustic band; essentially 70’s and 80’s junkies, rooted in rock, folk, blues and rock ‘n’ roll, with swirls of r & b, indie, alternative and a healthy dose of indigenous music styles.
Subject to Change also has a serious addiction to medleys that have just developed lives of their own! We began one night with Sting’s “Message in a bottle” and “King of Pain”, and in under 24 hours we had 20 songs- from MJ to the Doobie Brothers; Oasis to Tina Turner and we called it the “Deadly Medley”, and it has become something of a signature performance of ours. The medley fever spawned several other concoctions; little two- song medleys, a crazy blend of the black eyed peas and A.R.Rahman, and so it goes. That’s not to say we’re obsessed with just combining other people’s genius, it’s just another unexpected oddity that makes our music.
Subject to Change is a relatively baby band; we each have a whole lot of ideas, but we’re just starting to put them together as “our” music. “Sixth Avenue Blues” was our first step in the big (sometimes not so wonderful) world of original music, and hopefully that’s what the song will take us to. "Super Mario" and "Out of Nowhere" are new additions to the list. While the cosmos is busy arranging for our stardom, we’ll just keep doing what we do best, and y’all... can clap to the rest ;o)
