A Staff Reporter
Dimapur, December 15
Tuesday evening in Dimapur was an evening made for the lost, the lonely, and the lovingly, as they converged by the thousands to watch live in performance of Asia’s most beloved pop rock groups tug heartstrings and pull feet alike. For, on December 15, Danish pop stars Michael Learns to Rock aka MLTR grooved their way into the hearts of the thousands who had gathered at the NEZCC grounds at 4th mile in Dimapur.
The night was just the right flavor soft maudlin feelings and family-friendly entertainment. The show, a presentation of events groups LiveNow, began a bit off schedule than the original timestamp 6:00 PM. The main show began around 8:30 following a warming performance by local opening bands that got lost in the winter breeze.
Following the set, MLTR was on. The band straightaway lunched into some of their most beloved hits such as the evergreen ‘Complicated Heart.’ The initial performance sounded somewhat tepid considering what appeared to be a touch of flu and sore throat of Jascha Richter, the lead vocalist and keyboardist.
The dusty and craterous roads of Nagaland have never been kind to international music stars–music fans will remember the ordeal of the members of Christian metal heroes Stryper who, by the time they reached Dimapur from Kohima by road, were left hideously skull faced from retching all the way from the capital. The MLTR people may have received some throaty treatment from Dimapur’s veritable haze of dust and craters.
However, notwithstanding a nubby voice, the crowed soon fell into rhythm by the time the playlist went into ‘You took my heart away,’ the “most downloaded single of the year 2006” award winner. What Richter struggled in his vocal prowess was more than compensated adequately by the beautifully-mastered sounds of the drums and exquisite tone of bass.
Throughout a song list that had almost every single hit from the band’s 1991 breakthrough album ‘The Actor.’ From there, there was no looking back for the crowd–mostly blond-dyed Dimapur girls hanging on to their ruddy faced boyfriends’ arms–as it sang along with the band from the verse all the way to the roar.
For the Dimapur show, the band chose most of their songs from their two biggest albums namely the 1993 smash album ‘Colors’ (‘Wild Women’, ‘Sleeping Child, ‘25 Minutes’ and ‘Out of the Blue’) and the band’s 1995 magnum opus ‘Played on Pepper’ (‘That’s Why (You Go Away)’ and ‘Someday’).
The only damper about the MLTR concert was the traffic snarls along the way–the jam stretched all the way down to Purana Bazar. Even worse for the taking, the usual infamous gang of idiots, the so-called VIPs and their poorly-mannered bodyguards, made life difficult for the mortals. The VIPs’ obsession to hog every sliver of road (and demanding passage where there was no passage) left many an MLTR romantic renounce love and take up violence just to feel better against the VIPs.
This is the second time the Danish stars are performing in northeast India. Their first was in Shillong in 2005.
