KOCHI: The Baby Boomers are back in Thiruvananthapuram after their work years. Some were catching up with old friends who shared a common love — music of the 60s and 70s.
Three of them — Tomy K Cherian, who was a planter; Dr Anil Peethambaran, a neurosurgeon; and Anil Kurup, a Tiruppur-based industrialist — felt the urge more to relive the happy yesteryear days they spent together jamming to the music they loved or to the beats of friendship that remained strong yet subdued all these years.
The Hard Day’s Night (HDN) was born from this urge to take their love for music and friendship forward, launching itself in 2014 to practice and presentation of the music of the legends who made music history such as the Beatles, the Carpenter duo, the rock n roll queen Tina Turner, the country music genius John Denver, ABBA, and rock giants such as Rolling Stones and Scorpions.
Since its formation, the HDN community has done to its members much like what the Beatles’ number stated...When they got home to music, they found all the things it did making them alright.
The music community used to meet up at Trivandrum Club’s mini hall regularly to host the shows where professionals too would be invited to sing. “We have amidst us wonderful singers like Johny Bernard, Raju Harilal, who is also the CEO of a Technopark-based company, Mary and Jillu, who perform regularly at the Taj, etc. There are singers and musicians amidst it who also join the performing team often,” says Tomy.
The team later grew, with other professionals joining in such as Shankar Krishnan, who worked with Mckinsey and now is a management professional; Roy Mathew, also a management consultant; Randhir Venugopal, who is back home after working overseas. “During Covid, our meetings got stalled due to the lockdowns and the restrictions. And now, we are slowly bouncing back to regular Saturday meetings in one of our group mates Baiju Nainan’s apartment. There we spend our day jamming and bonding over the music that was so part of our college days,” says Tomy.
The team also invites professionals other than the regulars to perform for them when they organise events. There have been bands invited from Bangalore and such cities who have performed at the HDN meets. Their groovy evenings would also be full of fun and frolic with families joining in, youngsters sharing the stage, and music flowing through the air to enliven the spirits. One such iconic meets of theirs was the way they organised the 50th anniversary of the famous Woodstock festival. That Woodstock got such an ode in Thiruvananthapuram of all places in the country was something that amused even Shashi Tharoor, the Thiruvananthapuram MP, who participated in that meeting, says the HDN team.
The latest venture is to organise a charity event ‘Hope and Harmony’ to extend their mite to the Rotary Institute For Children In Need of Special Care on June 8 at Trivandrum Club, where Rear Admiral (Rtd) Nirmala Kannan will lead the music. She too would fit into the HDN team growing up hearing Radio Ceylon and the BBC and bearing a passion for the Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong numbers. The love she has taken further, singing in music circles of her choice, especially since the post-lockdown times. “No heavy metal for her though, hers is more of a soulful style,” says Tomy, adding Shankar, Roy and Randhir have led the management of the programme.
The school, which caters to autistic students from different backgrounds in Thiruvananthapuram, apparently runs in difficult situations, and the HDN team visited the place and decided to help it. The Central funds that are supposed to support the school are not much in the flow to the school, and hence the charity was planned to ease the functioning of the school to whatever extent the funds can, says the HDN organising team.
The June 8 concert would begin at 6.30pm, and would start with songs by the students of the school and then the recital by Nirmala Kannan. The HDN musicians would also be in the performing team.
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