Palash Sen is on a roll, literally, across five cities — Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai — interviewing more than 70 contestants per day. Out of these, 14 will make it to the Fame X academy, which he heads as the dean from November.

Fame X is the new avatar of Sony’s Fame Gurukul, which makes a debut on SAB as its first reality show with a younger, sleeker feel, as highlighted in the choice of its new dean, Palash Sen.

Sen takes over the role, lived to matriarchal perfection by singer-composer Ila Arun in Fame Gurukul.

Sen, who will be spending three days a week for the 13 weeks in the Fame X house that the 14 finalists will occupy, is currently hands-on into the selection process. In a noholds-barred interview, in between the final round of the show’s last lap of auditions in Mumbai, Sen speaks on his ‘tough judge’ image, Fame X’s differential and why reality shows have captured the imagination of the nation’s youth.

You seem to come pretty tough on the contestants. Is it by choice? T
That’s the way I am — straightforward. I speak the way I feel. I give the contestants a full chance to loosen up and showcase their talents, beyond a 30 second antra recital like other shows.

What is the X-factor you are looking for?
We are not looking at playback singers.

A Fame X, a student has to be a rock star: sing, act, smile and make the audience laugh. Everyone keeps harping on about the X factor, but I think it’s about what makes a good singer attractive to the audience.

Singing is absolutely important, but so is performance, though people confuse performance for dancing.

It’s OK if you are Jim Morrison — you can just stand at one place and croon in to the mike, but times have changed.

Which city was most satisfying in terms of auditions?
The participants in Kolkata just rocked. They were the best amongst all the city auditions so far. The Ahmedabad auditions had lot of nervous participants, by the time we reached Kolkata, perhaps the word got around that we were looking at attitude. Mumbai has had the maximum professional entrants.

What’s on offer for the Fame X winner?
The winner, apart from signing an album contract with Sony-BMG, will also sing the cricket anthem for the forthcoming World Cup. And going by our cricket team’s performances, he better sing well and be inspiring enough.

What appealed to you as Fame X’s dean since you are not a fan of reality shows?
I am not a huge fan of reality shows, though I was part of Channel V Pop Stars, where I had auditioned over 1,000 singers per day. I had also been approached to be a part of the Fame Gurukul judging panel last year, but I wasn’t very keen on being the judge.

The role of the dean suits me as I don’t have to judge anyone. I will help the 14 finalists nurture their talents, which is a much more challenging profile.

Reality shows have come in for flak because of the audience voting format. Do you agree?
A reality show is made for the people and the voting process may not be fair, but what isr? Can the opinion of three judges be fair, as even they tend to differ?

If the people can chose their MPs then why question their ability to select singers.

Fame Jodi’s winner Qazi Touqeer got a lot of criticism for his singing abilities. What are your safeguards?

I have never heard Qazi sing, but I know many call him a bad singer.  However, many in the media also called Himesh Reshammiya a bad singer, and now you have the same media writing glowing tributes on his Wembley concert.

If Himesh can sing, why not Qazi? However, there is no question of balancing the good with the bad this time. All the 14 have to be good singers so that whoever wins none complains that he made it through despite his singing faculties. 

E-mail autor: piyush.roy@hindustantimes.com

Which do you prefer.. playback or live performances? Live gigs. Live shows are instant gratification.. heady, magical. Didn't you debate over other more Indian sounding names before zeroing in on Euphoria?

I didn't debate or plan the names out.. my options were Diarrhoea and Gon orrhea.

Will you ever go back to just being a doctor?

Hey I AM a doctor.. will always be. , I still have a clinic in my base ment and still practise out of it. Showbiz is temporary and stardom is just skin deep.

My medicine and my songs are forever. You've judged two reality shows, Channel [V] Popstars 2 and Fame X. Popstars really hurt me because the edited version showed me as being rude and arrogant.. which I'm not.

As for Fame X, I had to fight with Daler paaji for TRPs. I've refused all other offers for reality shows. It's pathetic to see established singers competing for a bit of limelight. Neither Aasma nor Viva.. the finds of Popstars made it big.. why? I don't think any reality show winner has lasted. The reason is simple.. you are never looked upon as a singer. You are basically on a TV show and people see all your emotions, your deepest secrets. So you're discarded, for the next TV show to take over.

When I took up the two reality shows, I thought I'd give some of my expertise to the kids but I realised that the agenda is not about nurturing talent.

The kids are just a way for the TV companies to make money. No emotions.. just paisa. Have you been trained to act or sing? Nope. And it shows. I believe either you have it or you don't. Yes, they can be refined. I never got refined. That's because I never thought I'd be anything but a doctor. Why do you still sing numbers by other bands during concerts? It's fun to interpret someone else's song in our way.. to go from our song to a cover.. and back to our song. It's a tribute to other musicians by their peers.

janaki.viswanathan@hindustantimes.com

Actress Sushmita Sen and musician Palash Sen talk about ego surfing and spam

Claim to fame:
Sushmita Sen was Miss Universe 1994 and is currently an actress.
Palash Sen is a lead singer with Euphoria and acted with Sush in Filhaal

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On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate yourself?
Sushmita Sen: Eight. I'm pretty Net savvy. My surfing time is precious. Earlier I used to be on the Net pretty often. But lately my busy shooting schedule doesn't permit me to. I normally make it a point to at least check my mail every two days and I do chat with close friends when I'm free. And yes, downloading music is also a favourite.

Palash Sen: I am quite Net savvy. In fact, as a band we were among the first people to set up a site as early as 1998. I get online to check email on my Yahoo! and Hotmail accounts. I reply to each of my fan mails personally. Our forum board is quite active so we chat about anything and everything: from music to the war in Iraq to extramarital S** and rock and roll! I think feedback for a musician is very important. Via the Net we get a lot of feedback about what we are doing right and wrong. What I find strange though is that when people criticize, they never give you the correct email ID. So you can't really explain your point of view as to why you did a particular song in a particular fashion.

What is the best thing about the Net?
Sushmita Sen: Everything about the Net is wonderful.
Palash Sen: Everybody is connected and so accessible. We've sold a lot of our CDs online. We have snatches of our songs available on the site so people can listen to and appreciate our music.

What do you hate about the Internet?
Sushmita Sen: Spam mail. I hate unnecessary forwards. Thankfully my friends don't send me any.
Palash Sen: Spam mail. Out of 130 emails everyday on hotmail, 90 are junk! Selling me riches and pornography… just deleting them tires me out.

Have you ever gone ego surfing?
Sushmita Sen: You mean check out pages related to me? Not really. Who has the time to do all that? Whenever I log on I do make it a point mostly to check out issues related to current affairs. Sometimes, I check out film sites if a friend sends me the URL. But no, ego surfing is not my idea of fun.

Palash Sen: Yes, and I quite enjoy it. I think it's a lot of fun. And it's nice to read anything about yourself, good or bad. Though I don't really take it too seriously.

On an average, how much time do you spend on the Net?
Sushmita Sen: Earlier I was hooked to the Net. I used to touch up my pictures on the computer and send them to friends. I would change colours, the design and stuff like that. I have done it for a couple of friends too. And then I used to chat with my friends abroad. Today, it all depends on my shooting schedules. I have not yet traded stocks and stuff but I have downloaded MP3s. Must try out this stock trading some time.

Palash Sen: I usually spend about two hours online. Since we also get a lot of our email for concerts and enquiries for doing shows via the Net, it's very important to stay connected. But I haven't had the time to check out new music or new artists on the Net on sites like MP3.com etc. I wish I did have the time.

If the Internet didn't exist, you would be…
Sushmita Sen: Utterly lost.
Palash Sen: Disconnected

Songs then and now

When Euphoria burst into the Indipop scene in 1998 with “Dhoom”, it was the best place to be in at the right time. That was the era of musicians outside the Hindi film fraternity trying to make a mark, the decade of Alisha Chinoy, Sunita Rao, Baba Sehgal, Lucky Ali, Sonu Nigam, Daler Mehndi and the Colonial Cousins. Record companies were making money from supporting non-film artistes, and the latter found a ready platform.

Aided by a beautifully shot video — directed by Pradeep Sarkar and about a young woman finding love, life and colour in the streets of Banaras — ‘Dhoom pichuck’, the title track, went on to become one of the memorable ones among the hundreds that one saw. With a sound that fused elements of rock and Indian folk, the Euphoria sound came with a freshness that didn’t die out even several albums later. “Phir Dhoom” came in 2000 and brought with it ‘Maeri', while “Gully” (2003) included tracks like ‘Ab na jaa', ‘Raja rani' and ‘Aana tu meri gully'. With “Mehfuz”, which came out in 2006, their music underwent an audible shift, proving Euphoria could do mature and melancholy as well as peppy.

Five years down the line, Euphoria is now out with their new album, “Item”, released on Universal Music. Dr. Palash Sen, Euphoria's founding member and lead vocalist, admits it hasn't been easy bringing out a non-film music album in 2011. The video for the title track has had its premier on Yahoo! Movies and YouTube. There's an active Facebook following too. But television isn't pop music's medium anymore — leading music channels like MTV and 9XM have apparently refused to play a non-film music video. Sen calls it an assault of the “film mafia.”

Music, per se

When we meet him at his Greater Kailash – II residence in New Delhi, Sen explains, “The real problem is film music, because what's happened is that one day the film guys woke up and said, ‘Let's promote our film via music'. Earlier, if you remember, film trailers used to be action, emotion and dialogues. Now it's only music; they only come out with a music video. If you see, it's something they took from Indian pop only — bringing out a music video and putting it up. What happened is that record labels realised that if a producer was willing to put in that much money to promote his film via the music, there was no need for record companies to get in non-film music and spend their own money. Music is still there, but it's just a vehicle for a film. It's not being made for music per se.”

The fans, he says, have kept them going.

“If even in 2011 people know our songs it means the music is being followed, it's just that it's not getting the right backing. We can just hope that things will improve. It should improve for people like Lucky Ali, or Indian Ocean, or Rabbi Shergill. All these guys are non-film guys. Even the guys who're actually into films now, people like Mohit (Chauhan) or Neeraj (Shridhar) are non-film guys. If all of them get the support to take out their own albums, I'm sure they'd be much happier. I know it. Nobody wants to be a slave to someone else's whim and fancy,” says Sen.

He now wants to make a presentation before the Union Information & Broadcasting Ministry on this count. “We want to ask what an artiste who's not part of the film fraternity should do, if there's a guideline we could follow. For example, MTV has asked us to come and shoot MTV Unplugged. So, if we're good enough to be on their programme, why isn't our video good enough to be on their channel?”

Taking shape

It was while studying at University College of Medical Sciences in the Capital that Euphoria was formed, around a decade before “Dhoom” happened.

“It was a fun band,” Sen recalls. “There was no ambition as such. We used to rehearse on Sundays. Very early on in life I realised that the easiest way to impress the girls was to make a band, so we just formed the band. The problem was, the girls only got impressed when you're on stage, they don't get impressed when you get off the stage,” he smiles.

They would have been true blue head bangers, playing Rock and Heavy Metal, if timely pragmatism hadn't intervened. “We were a completely English Rock band. I understood one day that none of the Indian bands ever made a significant mark in India, even people like Parikrama or Indus Creed. They could never make that kind of an impact because they were singing in a language that was not the people's language. I understood it one day that we are doing an alien music form in an alien language. I realised it was not going to work,” says Palash.

This realisation dawned in 1994-95 and Euphoria's music changed track completely. “Having 15, 20 or 150 people listening to your music is not a following. A following is when at least half the country listens to you, knows what you are, who you are. What was really missing in the music was the roots. It was Rock but it had to be Indi Rock, and that's when we changed,” he recalls.

Not all were impressed. “We've faced slack all our lives — all the Rock bands feel we're sell-outs, the film industry says ‘What kind of music is this!'. It was a huge risk, but I like taking risks. We'll never regret that decision.”

Standouts

Ask him to jog his memory and pick out concerts that refuse to fade out, and Palash recalls Euphoria's first concert after “Dhoom” came out, in New Delhi's Lady Shri Ram College for Women, when a crowd of 5,000 started chanting “Dhoom pichuck dhoom” when the band was walking in. Then there was performing at the UN General Assembly in 2001. “That night changed my life because I realised what we've achieved — we were the first band to get into the United Nations General Assembly!”

Despite the euphoric journey, Sen refers to himself as “a doctor who sings.”

“I'm very clear about that. I don't have any illusions of grandeur about myself. I've been blessed with a talent but I'm a very average guy,” he says. Some things have changed though. “Earlier my patients used to come to show themselves to me, now they come to see me,” he smiles.

"iTEM" NUMBERS

"The Euphoria sound cannot be changed, because we've made it our own. It's our signature sound. But within that we're trying to make some changes, significant ones. When it comes to ‘Item' what's really different is the fact that we're talking about issues.

All the previous albums were about girls and love, this is about issues. It's the first time I'm writing about religion, corruption, the Prime Minister, terrorism… Nine issues that modern-day India faces. Navarasa, if you may call it that. As soon as you start writing about issues, the sound automatically changes; it cannot be balladish, it cannot be love. It has to be something a little more edgy," says Palash about how "Item" stands in relation to Euphoria's previous albums.

Songs on the album range from “Ram Ali”, based on religion and belief, to “Gumsum”, which they say was written for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to “Jeene Do”, about the common man's agony over terrorism, politics and death.

The title track is their spoof on Bollywood and its “item number” fixation.