Angad Bhatia
It was the middle of 2018 on a rainy afternoon when I got the call from my friend. He seemed eager, almost out of breath, telling me that it was finally happening. Ever since I've known him, he had this dream of owning and operating his own studio, right here in our city - Thane. Located just on the border of Mumbai, the city of Thane finds itself separated from the chaos of Mumbai through a bottlenecked tollway. Like many of my friends who grew up here, I have an unconditional love for this city. Despite having most of our colleges in Mumbai, Thane is the home we'd come to after those tedious train rides. The city runs like a self-sufficient universe with malls, bars, live venues, capitalist chains, residencies and even a national park. It wasn't long before Thane saw a rise in its wave of independent musicians, brewing just parallel to the scene in Mumbai.
Mumbai's history with independent 'indie' music has been documented and studied (as it should be) at great length. Finding its roots in the 80s amid the sweaty crowds of 'Independence Rock' (the Woodstock of India) at Dhobi Talao's Rang Bhavan, the festival would occur annually on August 15 and 16. Thousands of metalheads in black and grey would line up in front of a large stage that became a launchpad to some of the veteran bands and personalities of the scene today. From bands like Pentagram - which introduced Bollywood to Vishal Dadlani, to acts that are still going strong like Parikrama and Indus Creed (Rock Machine, then), the festival of 'I-Rock' became the hub for campus bands to find their crowd. Of course, running a juggernaut of a festival like this through the 90s was not an easy task. The organizers would often face troubles with the police, the priests and even the neighbouring colleges that would term this sound as 'Devil's music'. When Rang Bhavan was declared a silence zone, I-Rock saw itself being moved to the suburbs within the city in 2004, where sponsorship became a huge issue.
This shift marked an end of an era but strengthened the spirits of the fans who loved this heavy, alternative sound, giving rise to the DIY organizer. Through the 2000s, this independent scene shifted into pubs and cafes, where shows were often organized by artists themselves - pooling in the money for rentals and hoping to break even from the gate share. A dedicated audience, often tired of the Bollywood-dominated entertainment sphere, would show up in numbers.
The city of Thane saw its sudden boom in bands as the number of studios grew around the city. The relatively cheaper rent, when compared to Mumbai, mixed with a rising wave of musicians, made it an ideal locality. Having two bands of my own, we'd often run into our peers in music at rehearsal spots and gigs. A lot of our bands even shared a common member, say a drummer or a guitarist. So, when my friend ended that phone call sharing that he was calling it Studio 604, I knew we would turn it into something much bigger than just a recording studio. Studio 604, named after the pin-code of that area, was located right behind a bakery parallel to a service road on the highway. The smell of fresh bread would hit you as you'd enter the compound, but it would soon get masked by the silence of an isolated recording room as you'd open the doors. In there, you'd see my friend sitting and often napping behind the shut doors of the console room as beginner bands would create chaos through their instruments. I remember rushing back from the station after college in the evening just to stop by and have a peek at whichever band was rehearsing that day. We'd share a few laughs, have some chai and vada pav, and watch the hours go by.
I spent countless hours practicing with my bands or even just showing up alone to play some drums in that room. The only thing to be done next was to host a live show at Studio 604. Being fanatics of live music and also driven by our laziness to avoid the aforementioned tedious late-night train rides to and fro Mumbai, we gathered a couple of friends and decided to host a limited capacity event. The studio wasn't huge, but it was good enough to fit 50 people and a full live band in it. Sure it would be crammed, loud, and reeking of tobacco - but anyone who loves a good live show is already convinced at this point. We had no shortage of bands, but we did need to get the word around. We designed a poster, made it a 'bring-your-own-beer' scene, and spammed facebook groups with ticket links. Our only priority was that the show must sound good. Everything else was secondary. Our first edition saw an overwhelming response as people lined up at the studio doors. Faces we'd never seen before of men and women through all ages. Some looked like older, excited veterans of the live scene who had already booked a ticket online. Others were just curious about the queue of people beneath the cloud of smoke at our compound. We had to turn some people away because the place was too full and we couldn't risk complaints from the grumpy landlord. Through our conversations with these joyous faces, we received some great compliments about the show. One even went as far as to compare the queue for the show at Studio 604 to how the people would line up outside Rang Bhavan during I-Rock.
We did three successful editions of ‘604 Sessions', each slightly more ambitious than the last before the virus was introduced to the world, bringing Thane to a standstill. The pandemic hit the live scene here, like anywhere else. Not only were musicians not gigging anymore, but light and sound engineers, studio owners, bartenders and bouncers - all were out of a day job. Considering the unpredictable nature of the virus, it only made sense for my friend to shut down Studio 604. The bookings were off and the landlord was still grumpy. It felt like the end of an era, but we knew it would just be a slight hiccup, placing itself as a chapter in a much larger book.
We identified that Studio 604 transcends beyond a compound behind a bakery in Thane. The love and the support that this city, its music and its people extended towards just a bunch of kids who wanted to host a show and have a good time, is an enduring sentiment to take away. My friend hasn't given up on the dream yet and plans to bring the studio back someday. Maybe in a different place. Maybe even in a different city. All of us know one thing for sure that, in all sense of the word, Studio 604 was home to all of us.
