Got beeped by Sony last night – MTV was showing the Roger Waters show.

Frantically rolled out of bed, hurled myself at the TV, and settled in to watch…

…the great ripoff.

They first showed a half-hour segment about the Bangalore show, (including Amir Khan at the venue) to make it look like they were showing the DNA-(mis)organised show at Bangalore. Tons of ads talking about how the show was organised by DNA and BPL. Everything screamed “Roger Waters Live in Bangalore!!!!”….

And then they showed the Roger Waters “In the flesh” DVD, filmed in 2000 in the USA, carefully edited to remove all such “misleading information”, of course. If you don’t believe this, just look at the pictures in the CD inlay of the Audio CD.

Couple of things to look for to keep you rolling in the aisles

• The audience is seated (no seats even for the 2500 bucks tickets at Bangalore)
• The audience is white
• There is rock-fog on the stage (no such thing in Bangalore)
• The (lefty) lead guitarist is Doyle Bramhall II, who left the tour in 2001 (in Bangalore, it was Chester Kamen)
• The sole keyboardist is Andy Wallace (in Bangalore it was Harry Waters and Andy)

• The backing vocals included Susannah Melvoin (in Bangalore it was Linda Lewis)

Bah!

To make matters worse, they removed most of the songs, especially Roger Waters’ non-Pink Floyd songs. All in all, just like DNA’s publicity for the Bangalore show, they tried to make it look like a live Pink Floyd show.

I am sure there is a good reason for DNA chosing to be part of this deception. Could it possibly be that the organisation of the Bangalore show was pathetic and DNA wouldn’t want the world to see this?

Why does DNA have the monopoly on arranging rock shows in India? Don’t they have some competition? I guess they do not, and it shows – badly.