March 2005: Five people from different and yet very complementary areas decide to work together. The mission: to introduce great live music to the city in a fantastic, safe and fun environment; to create compelling work opportunities in the industry and generally have a truck load of fun. Two musicians, a film-maker, a film production head and an ex banker. Passion for music, film, excel sheets, vodka, building brands and raising dogs. Perfect. Fasten your seatbelts - ready to start a revolution!
Councils of war late at night at Mahesh and Srila’s house, hatching plans to effect change; some on the beach in Goa; others at Ashu and Dhruv’s old studios in Dadar or in the Highlight Films office; and all this while Simran shuttled between Bombay and his erstwhile home in Singapore –frequent flyer miles. Excellent! A day trip to Pune resulted in the business plan being written down coherently for the first time on a laptop while traversing the Western Ghats. Money raised, shareholder agreements signed, the hard part done? Lets get on with it! Right? WRONG! Construction begins. Nightmare!
Concurrently – another issue crops up – we were called Sound Garden but we didn’t like the name (didn’t seem original to name ourselves after a band). Lots of names tossed around - Tulsi Pipe Sound, Parel Jam, Pond Life, Bombay Music Company (BMC – guess why we didn’t use that one!!) and finally in an act of desperation on the Chinchpokli Bridge –stuck in a traffic jam – the name blueFROG emerges. Just in time to register with the ROC. July 2006.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, work is progressing and at a blindingly slow speed. What was meant to be a summer 2007 opening is now getting pushed back into the monsoons. It’s impossible to coordinate anything even though we have project managers. AC contractors, consultants – actually consultants of all shapes and sizes plague the process at all times, but finally we are done.
December 12, 2007 a year after we first rented the space, Mango Blue (an awesome latin jazz band from New York), plays the first note and the rest, as they say, is musical history. Three years on, everyday and in everyway we can, with humility and passion - we try to be an agent of change and along with many other diligent evangelists help to create a vibrant ecosystem within the rapidly evolving Indian music scene.
