Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Love painting

Long long ago, before the advent of cable tv, we stuck criss-cross metal rods to house terraces to go through a very important ritual every Sunday. TV-less people flocked to TV-ed houses (recognized by the metal rods overhead) to watch the phenomenon called Doordarshan.

Every Sunday, life came to a standstill while watching whatever flavor was dished out. Like Bertie Bott's Every flavor beans, we could end up with something as yucky as vomit or Booger, but occasionally we got a lemon drop or Bubble gum flavor. Well, not candies, I am talking metaphorically about the highly-important-not-to-be-missed sunday evening movies.

I have lumbered through Haridas era movies and enjoyed 80s fast-paced ones. One very painful Sunday, we got to watch this movie about a beggar and a dancer. The movie by itself, was unsahikkable and unporukkable. But beggars cannot be choosers (no pun intended here, or may be yes). One very highly redeeming feature of this movie, and I mean the only one, was the music was scored by the great maestro himself. Now, why he chose to do that, is up for debate. But he did and we are kind of glad he did. Coz those songs are gems.

I recently got hold of them and they still sound great. Timeclass classics indeed! I have always been partial towards classical-based songs and these are some good reasons.
My favorites -

Sangeetha jaathi mullai by SPB. He excelled here. I happened to listen to him live and he said he had rarely attempted to sing this on stage. It was awesome. love that part where he does a kind of rap and then goes from there to vizhi illai enum pothu...


Deepan Chakravarthy doing poojaikkaaga vazhum poovai . A pity that this guy didn't get what he deserved.

Poovil vandu mothum - SPB- Need I say more?

Naatham en jeevane - SJ. Starts with a small piece of poovil vandum mothum. Melodious!

Velli salangaigal - SPB - he does the jathis superbly

kuyile kuyile - SPB/SJ. One of the best combos for duet, imho.

One unfortunate thing for me is, everytime I think about these songs, I get this mental picture of kannan as the pitchaikaaran, with that intense look on his face. If you know what I mean, you know what I go through :-D

Listen here on musicindiaonline.com

Back-note (Pin-kurippu): Incidentally, SPB's daughter and I were born in the same hospital, next to each other. Who knows, may be we were switched at birth ;-P Wishful thinking, I know :-D

11 comments:

ioiio said...

Idhukkellam MusicIndiaOnline illa raaga'la irundhu link kuduthu irukkalaaam :(

Munimma said...

will do.

Me too said...

Ya, I remember those Sunday evenings too! Such suspence till Saturday night's 'Naalaiya neegaichigal' for the movie name only to feel 'Che!'.

In addition to "Kan"nan's expressions(!), I also get reminded of Radha's 'kodumai' dance steps!!

My favourite song from the movie is 'Nadiyil aadum'.

Visithra said...

Really those songs are gems - out of 8 i love 6! What waste the images are a horror! ;)))

Arvind Srinivasan said...

"unsahikkable and unporukkable"

wow, it has been ages since, i have 'kaetufied' someone use these kind of phrases :-)

Kaps said...

Tuesday evening dramas and Sunday evening movies were big events. even the road traffic used to come to a standstill. The movies were preceded by the famous Rin, Surf, Nirma and Rasna ads where the voice over would be given by some North Indian artiste trying to speak in Tamil.

The songs which u hv listed are among my favourites.

Munimma said...

Visithra - yes, this could easily be one in the horror movie genre. really terrifying :-D

kaps, yep, I had almost ( a pity) forgotten about those tuesday evening tortures. The height of it was, we never missed a single one. :-)

Balaji said...

don't remember the movies so much. my fav used to be 'oliyum oLiyum' :-)
truly classic songs. spb was at his peak and is amazing in 'poovil vandu'.

Munimma said...

Balaji, you don't remember? Lucky you :-)
I still see that overanxious look on Kannan's face, and holding a stick with an anklet tied to it.

jack said...

Kadhal oviyum was another IR/barathiraja/vairamuthu combo classic.

Actually deepan sang the song as track.SPB was supposed to sing the song.SPB appreciated deepan's song and asked to keep his track as the original.

(Mis)Chief Editor said...

dd-yum unsahikable-um kooda poranthathu munimma.....

btw, spb at his best in 'ko'...ditto ir and vm......!