Dire Straits are a band that I’ve heard for as long as I can remember, all thanks to my father playing their songs all the time. My earliest memories of the band are singing one or two lines that I could understand from ‘Sultans of Swing’ or ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and improvising the rest on my own. Imagine my happiness when I found out that The Dire Straits Experience was coming to Bangalore! The first thing I did was to call up my dad and tell him that I was soon going to watch them play live.
The band was playing for the ‘#100Pipers #PlayForACause’ concert. 100 Pipers have partnered with more than 400 leading artists across India and the world to support aid for natural calamities like floods, earthquakes, tsunamis and to also provide sustenance reinforcement in Nepal and Jammu & Kashmir. This time the event was to help the villages in Rajasthan. Seeing my favourite band play to provide water to 10,000 villagers in Rajasthan—what more could I ask for?
The venue being in the suburbs of the city, I didn’t expect much crowd on a Sunday. I was happily surprised to see a humongous crowd on the ground. I met people who had come all the way from Hyderabad to see their favourite band play live. The stage and the settings were beautiful. The crowd went hysterical when the host introduced the band. The audience went berserk enthusiastically chanting ‘DSE’ (Dire Straits Experience) and just wouldn’t stop.
The band started playing and the crowd kept going crazy while singing along, dancing and enjoying the experience. The Dire Straits Experience played all the original Dire Straits award-winning songs like ‘Money for Nothing’ along with their all-time hit songs like ‘Sultans of Swing’, ‘So Far Away’, ‘Walk of Life’, ‘Tunnel of Love’ among others. My heart just melted when they started playing ‘Romeo and Juliet’. It was such a happy moment for me, and one big item off my bucket list in life. We could not get enough of the wonderful music being played live. It felt surreal. I didn’t even know how the time passed and when the concert was over. This was one of the best concerts I have attended till date. It was worth every penny I’d spent and more.
P.S. I live streamed the whole concert to my dad. He couldn’t be happier.
