American rock band Extreme arrived in Imphal on Friday for their debut performance in India on the last day of the ongoing ShiRock 2019 on Saturday.
ShiRock is a four-day annual rock music competition cum festival held at Ukhrul district in Manipur.
One of the biggest rock music competitions in Northeast, ShiRock was held as part of state government-sponsored Shirui Lily Festival 2019, which is currently being held at three venues in Ukhrul.
The Shirui Lily Festival which was upgraded to a state-level festival since 2017 aimed to promote endangered state flower Shirui lily and also young talents.
Soon after arrival at the airport in Imphal, the Boston-based band drove straight to a hotel in Imphal where a press conference was held afterwards.
Addressing the press conference, the band’s frontman Gary Cherone and lead guitarist and founding member Nuno Bettencourt said that they are expecting a responsive crowd.
Reacting to a question on music and digitalisation scene, vocalist Gary opined that the consumption of music has changed because of digitalisation and streaming.
“We have seen the scene of recording from disc to cassettes and to digital and now digital and streaming since the nineties,” Gary added.
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The other members- drummer Kelvin Figueiredo, and bassist Pat Badger- also agreed that the internet has changed the music scene across the globe.
The band, however, did not make any announcement about the number of songs they will perform during Saturday’s gig.
Many fans from various parts of the country have arrived to watch the band perform at decorated Bakshi ground in Ukhrul.
Over two dozen rock bands are competing for the coveted title ‘Shirock 2019’, which carries a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh and the voice – the solo hunt for the individual prize competition.
On the opening day of ShiRock on Wednesday night, popular Scottish hard rock veterans Nazareth captivated thousands of rock music lovers for nearly two hours during their debut performance in Manipur.
The fifty-one-year-old rock band took the stage around 8.30 pm with a new number along with their evergreen ‘Shot me down’ etc as their opening track with Carl Sentance as lead vocalist.