MTV Rock On!

In a recently concluded series on MTV India, finally we got to see MTV giving us a show which was actually based on music. Well congratulation are in order! I hope the success of this series will prompt MTV to remove non sense like Roadies and other such programs and focus on producing more shows based on music.

A lot has been said about the contestants but this post is about the judges.

Well, to me, the guy who impressed the most was Ram Sampat. Before the show, I only knew Ram Sampat as some guy who sued the Roshan's for plagiarizing Sony Ericsson 'thump' soundtrack. I guess just like me there are many others who knew nothing more about him as well. During the course of this show I learned that Ram is famous in the ad. jingle circle and had released a rock album many years back, although it didn't gain much popularity. But this show has brought him out of ranks and established his career for sure. He now has several projects in pipeline that include directing music for bollywood movies and releasing another rock album. Well done Ram.

Kailash Kher, unfortunately for me, came out as a moron who doesn't really understand music. I found him picking up cues from Ram and Nikhil in order to make up his mind about a performance. I found his comments lacking in originality and I found him lacking in confidence and character. Later I checked out his old music videos (not just the hit ones and found a similar trait, I guess we all have overlooked this because of the fantastic voice he has). He is a great singer, no doubt, but I don't think he is a great judge. Also, he was there to judge the desipann quotient (I don't why he kept saying 'deshipann') of the contestants but I don't think he did that at all. Most of the time he was commenting only on the singers, that's just a proof of his limitations. I guess, if anybody has hurt himself in this show then it's Kailash Kher.

Nikhil Chinnapa was a delight to watch. He wasn't messing around with words. I don't think I have much to say about him except I think he lost his interest in the show towards the end, I mean the guy was absent in the last few episodes. But apart from that he was as pagal and as cool as he can be. Nothing more, nothing less.

One last thing, I must mention, is the website. For people like me who don't live in India the only way to watch this show was the internet. MTV India website is really bad. MTV Rock on's website was full of dead links, the videos were being uploaded way too late after the broadcast on TV (ITV's Britains Got Talent show was being uploaded the very next day) and the video quality was pathetic. It seems that MTV has outsourced the website maintenance to an incompetent company. For a media company like MTV, such poor maintenance of the website is unimaginable and unacceptable.