The Art of Food Blogging.

The love of food brims over & conquers the blogosphere .

Searching for a recipe for dinner, or want to know the best restaurant to visit in Namma Bangaluru / Bangkok?    Rather than dusting off a little-used cookbook, or out-of-date travel guide, the community of food bloggers may return exactly what you need with only a few mouse clicks. What's more there's the chance to ask questions with the real possibility of an answer from the author or a fellow reader.

Food blogs are not new on the scene, several have been live for five years or more, but easy-to-use templates and an increasing blog readership have ramped up the number of food blogs.

Even in India food bloggers are a fast growing tribe , with enthusiasts ranging from busy young urban professionals to homebound housewives and tech-savvy retired folk,  from seasoned chefs to bumbling first-timers.

The food blogging phenomenon in India has largely been inspired by nostalgic NRIs who were the first to use the internet to bring together a population craving ghar ka khana. Mahanandi, an NRI food blog started in 2005, enjoys something of a cult status, having inducted many into delighted exchanges about grocery stores in Middle America that stock curry leaf saplings.  Cyberspace now bursts with food blogs written by Indians studying or working in America, like Mane Adige (Home Food in Kannada), and Indian Food Rocks !, which attempt to recreate the aromas of mothers' kitchens back home.

The range of recipes on Indian food blogs is staggering—regional specialities, yoga-bhakti food, even food to combat incontinence or rheumatism. Food blogs are also becoming a platform for food crusaders. Jyotsna Shahane, author of thecookscottage blog, for example, is an indigenous-foods advocate with a mission to popularise less-than-fashionable foods like jaggery and jamun.

So will food blogs ever edge out the dependable cookbook?   Many blog-watchers believe a symbiosis between the publishing industry and blogosphere is imminent, and the future of food writing lies in the ‘blook’ (ie  A printed and bound book, based on a blog).   “Happy Blogging”

Source & for further read pls chk : http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?240210  & http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/real_food/article5753558.ece

Photo Credit:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/mmm-good-enough-to-blog/2053/

Woodstock 1969: Four days that changed the world of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Woodstock Music and Art Fair, the most famous of the 1960s rock festivals, held on a farm property in Bethel, New York, August 15–18, 1969. The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was organized by four inexperienced promoters who nonetheless signed a who’s who of current rock acts, including Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, the Who, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, the Jefferson Airplane, Ravi Shankar, and Country Joe and the Fish.

The festival began to go wrong almost immediately, when the towns of both Woodstock and Wallkill, New York, denied permission to stage it. Ultimately, farmer Max Yasgur made his land available for the festival. Few tickets were sold, but some 400,000 people showed up, mostly demanding free entry, which they got due to virtually nonexistent security. Rain then turned the festival site into a sea of mud, but somehow the audience bonded and the festival went on.

Acts who had started being noticed when they played the Monterey Pop Festival in California in 1967 took the final step to superstardom with their performances at Woodstock. Carlos Santana’s rendition of “Soul Sacrifice” is still considered one of the best he has ever done. Jimi Hendrix’s discordant, screeching rendition of “Star Spangled Banner” electrified the crowd, fueling its overwhelming sentiment against the Viet Nam War. ‘The Who’ achieved legendary status when Pete Townshend smashed his guitar and threw it into the crowd at the conclusion of the band’s performance of the entire rock opera, Tommy.

However the festival left its promoters virtually bankrupt. But they had held onto the film and recording rights and more than made their money back when Michael Wadleigh’s documentary film Woodstock (1970) became a smash hit. The legend of Woodstock’s “Three Days of Peace and Music,” as its advertising promised, became enshrined in American history, at least partly because few of the festivals that followed were as star-studded or enjoyable.

A 1994 festival on the same site was better organized and more successful financially, if less legendary. In 1999 a third festival was marred by a small riot. The Museum at Bethel Woods, a multimedia exhibit space attached to a performing arts centre, opened in 2008, with the stated mission of preserving the original festival site and educating visitors about the music and culture of the Woodstock era.

Take a listen to “Star Spangled Banner” by Hendrix  Live @ Woodstock 1969.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3JbKimTdMg&feature=related

Photo credit : http://www.robertlpeters.com/news/allnews/2060/
Source : http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647675/The-Woodstock-Music-and-Art-Fair

Influential International Rockers of Indian Origin.

On the eve of the Indian Independence Day , wud like to wish every one a Happy Independence Day . 

At this moment , we are happy to present a list which would make most of us Indians really proud bcos it’s a list of 6 most notable Rock Musicians of Indian origin who have been part of international bands that not only have grammies accredited to their name, but some of them have also received the coveted Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Honour.

f. Jason Singh
The lead vocalist of Aussie band ‘Taxiride’ owes his Indian descent and Indian classical music culture to the use of harmonized sitar sounds and pounding tabla beats in the music of Taxi Ride. He loves listening to Lata Mangeshkar and has a fondness for Bollywood flicks. Jason Singh is considered one of the better comtemporary songwriters currently in Australia and although he started off in 1997 with a more of a pop-rock sound, his music has a heavier and more distorted touch to it now.

e. Tony Kanal
At number 5 we have the energy behind No Doubt, Tony Kanal. Although No Doubt aren’t an out and out rock band and have various pop and ska-punk influences, Tony Kanal always portrayed a rock image of No Doubt through his frantic antics on stage or his zany style of bass playing and the energy that he brought to the band.  Kanal has already done it all, whether its slapping his bass guitar for No Doubt, producing albums for Reggae singers or producing songs for the soundtrack of hit movie ’50 first dates’. There is ‘No Doubt’ that the canal in Kanal’s life is gonna lead to even more accolades in the future.

d. Dave Baksh
Famously Known as ‘Brownsound’ for the band Sum 41, David Nizaam Baksh was born to parents of Indo-Guyanese origin in 1980 in Toronto. He revolutionized the modern punk sound around the world with his guitar licks and his trademark punk riffs. While most of the modern day punk bands play easy 3-4 chord songs on palm mute, Baksh changed it around with twin guitar leads in ‘Pain for Pleasure’ with Derek Whyte and with waah-waah guitar solos in his music, a sound that not too many MTV punk bands incorporate these days with their sell out style of music. Dave Baksh reached commercial success with songs such as Fat Lip that was no.1 for weeks on the U.S. Rock Charts as well as other hits such as ‘The Hell Song’, ‘Motivation’.  He quit the band in 2006 to express his true guitaring dexterities through his songwriting and formed a band with his cousin called ‘Brown Brigade’ that plays reggae influenced Heavy Metal music.

c. Prakash John
Prakash has had a wealth of experience with a lot of different bands but is most widely known as the bass player for a brief period for legendary band Alice Cooper. Alice Cooper was one of the biggest bands in the U.S. in the 70s and are said to be the first band to have a theatrical horror set up in their stage shows. Prakash John played bass with Alice on ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’ , ‘From The Inside’ and on ‘Dada’. Born in Mumbai in 1947, Prakash migrated to Toronto in 1960. He has also played with various other bands such as Bush(70s) and Lou Reed. John left mainstream rock in 1979, returning to Toronto to found his second R&B band, The Lincolns, one of the last bands now remaining which represent the now-famous Toronto Sound of the late 1960s.John was  inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 as a member of Parliament Funkadelic.

b. Kim Thayil
The lead guitarist of the pioneers of Grunge Music, ‘Soundgarden’,  Kim Thayil.   Kim  was born in Seattle in 1960 to a couple from Kerala. Kim is regarded as one of the creators of the ‘Grunge’ genre with his heavy riffing coupled with a dirty sound. He is one of the more ingenious writers of the 90s as he would often shy away from the Standard E Tuning.  After Soundgarden broke up , Kim teamed up with Kris Novoselic (bass) of Nirvana fame performing  as the ‘No WTO Combo’ . He also cameod for ‘The Presidents of the USA’ and special appeared on Dave Grohl’s side project ‘ProBot’ . Whilst Kim has been in the shadows since the break up of Soundgarden,  with the reunion of the band in 2010 we certainly hope he comes back to produce some more original and kickass material with his chunky riffs & super unique style which will forever shred thousands of Grunge lovers’ lives.

a. Freddie Mercury
The queen of all vocalists, Freddie Mercury makes it to the list at no.1 / grade ‘A’  for making millions go ga-ga over his vocal abilities and song writing capabilities. Freddie also known as Faroukh Bulsara (5 September 1946- 24 November 1991) grew up in India and attended St.Peter’s school in Panchgani and and completed his education at St. Mary’s High School (Mazgaon). Freddie moved to England at the age of 17. In 2006, Time Asia named Mercury as one of the most influential Asians in the last 60 years. Freddie owes a lot to his musical roots in India, where he listened to a considerable amount of Indian music and was an avid fan of Lata Mangeshkar.  Freddie Mercury is said to be the most versatile singers in the last century and has an all-time record breaking range of four octaves so there is no surprise that vocalists consider him ‘GOD’ on all fronts, whether it is writing a love song, being a sheer entertainer on stage or sounding like a factory siren when it’d come to hitting high notes. And its no surprise that he’s no.1 on the list!

At the end of this countdown, I think we all can maintain that India in its own indirect way has contributed vastly to Rock Music. One thing’s for certain, even though Indians are sporadically placed all over the world, they have a stern message for all the firangs out there  – We will  we will ROCK YOU!

Take a listen to this song by Queen :   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJYN-eG1zk&ob=av3e

Source:  http://chordvine.com/lists/influential-rockers-of-indian-origin & You Tube.

History of the Legendary Hard Rock Café.

 As most of us know, Hard Rock Cafe is a chain of theme restaurants & also one of the places which inspired us to start CafeIdly,  but of course with South Indian food.

The first Hard Rock Cafe (HRC) opened its doors to the public on June 14, 1971, in London, England. It was founded by Peter Morton and Isaac Tigrett. Hard Rock initially had an eclectic decor but it later started to display memorabilia.. The chain began to expand worldwide in 1982 with locations in (among others) Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Paris, Berlin and in our very own Bangalore / ru.

In 2006, Hard Rock was sold to the Seminole tribe of Florida, and is headquartered in Orlando, Florida. The largest Hard Rock is in Orlando. Currently, there are 150 Hard Rock locations in 53 countries.

One of the most important aspects about HRC, is its collection of rock and roll memorabilia. The collection began in 1979 with the gift of an un-signed guitar (a Red Fender Lead II) from Eric Clapton, who was a regular at the first restaurant in London. This prompted Pete Townshend of The Who to give one of his guitars, also un-signed with the note "Mine's as good as his! Love, Pete." Hard Rock's archive includes over 70,000 items and it opened a Hard Rock museum named "The Vault" in Orlando, Florida in January 2003 but subsequently closed it in September 2004. The London Vault remains open, located near the original café , a must visit for all die hard rock fans.     Long Live HRC.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Rock_Cafe
Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hard_Rock_Cafe_Bengalooru.JPG

The Motown Story

The name “Motown” comes from “Motor Town” (Detroit). The Motown record label, actually the Motown Record Company, L.P.,was founded in 1959 by Berry Gordy, Jr. in Detroit, Michigan, and became famous above all through the production and distribution of soul, pop and R&B songs.

It is over 50 years ago that Motown founder Berry Gordy first borrowed $800 with the hopes of starting his own label and founded Tamla Records, which would be incorporated as Motown in 1970 and produce its first hit a year later Motown played an important role in the integration of African-American artists in popular music. It was the first record company to sign primarily black musicians, and so the Motown sound was born: soul music with a touch of pop.

 The best-known artists signed to Motown include famous groups like The Jackson 5 as well as unrivalled solo artists such as StevieWonder, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Lionel Richie and Diana Ross. Together with Motown Records, they all contributed to the creation of an inimitable musical style.

The promotion and development of young artists was of enormous importance for Motown Records. In order to be accepted on the predominantly white music market, the musicians were trained to behave like royalty so as to alter the relatively undignified image which white America had of blacks at the time.

The result was the elegant style of presentation that became associated with the Motown label in the sixties. Today’s Motown continues the tradition of promoting black and African-American musicians.

January 12, 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of America’s greatest record label and global music icon---MOTOWN.With nearly 200 #1 songs worldwide, Motown’s hits continue to appear worldwide in commercials, TV shows and movies and remain an influence on today’s biggest pop and R&B stars.But Motown stands for more than just the music: it is a reflection of the hard work of dedicated individuals overcoming incredible obstacles to achieve great success.