TNL Onstage - The premier hunt for unorthodox music of Sri Lanka, launched it's 9th season this year. As they say, "No other concert is ever produced to such an international standard in Sri Lanka and no other music event offers such an eclectic celebration of local talent. Onstage has seen rockers hit Britney one more time with an electric guitar, chant in bohemian honor long live the Freddy, and take the streets of Colombo to the Ghetto."
With prelimineries starting on 4th October, it had its semi finals on 8th and 15 November and the grand finals were held on 29th November at the Sri Lanka Exhibition & Convention Center (SLECC), Colombo. It was a magnificent event which broaught together the finest metalheads and new soloists of the country, and also which drew a vast majority of rock fans of the country. What's more? The unprecedented Chitral Somapala (Chity) with his 'Civilization One' made a guest performance and that totally rocked the house to its limits!
So, why am I blogging about Onstage? :)
Let's get to the real deal. Among the six bands which competed for the Onstage band of the Year title, was Nemesis, which had a rise form the ashes few months back after being stalled for a while. Led by my good friend Mackie (he likes to use Mackie Mathew as his tradename :) ) who is the Manager and Lead Guitarist of the band, Nemesis made a great come back and made it's way to the finals of TNL Onstage with a enormous fan base to cheer it through out the event. Rightfully, although playing as the last in the line up, Nemesis jammed up the strings n drums along with Myya's vocals and they conquered the first session of the competition leaving behind the Cadenced and Zilch at a distance and having a minor competition from the other three bands, namely Love Me Dead, The Rebels and Ethereal. Next it was the Acoustic round, and guess what they chose to play! The hallmark song of Chity himslef - 'nadee ganga tharanaye'! Amidst the cheer of the crowd, Myya's vocals filled the house while Mackie and Losh tortured the string of their guitars to bring the best of it. This was played also as a tribute to Chitty and at the end of this round eveyrone knew Nemesis is going to carry away the half a million worth audio equipment and many goodies.
Around 2.15 a.m. it was the moment of truth! the comperes started announcing the winners for the night. They started saying, "The most outstanding musician of onstage finals 2008... drumrole please...", and it was won by none other than our good old buddy Mackie himself!!! he seemed rather surprised to receive it; but we wern't surprised to see him receiving it ;) Anyway I guess after this, Mackie would surely be a chick-magnet as was 'foreseen' in the write-up I did one year back when Nemesis rose from the ashes ;)
Next was the ultimate moment where they announced the winners of the night after announcing The Rebels as the runners up. Amidst the drumrole as soon as the sound 'N' left the compere's mouth, the house burst to a roar of NE-ME-SIS, and there was Mackie, Losh, Myya and Sithija running up to the stage embracing each other with the joy of victory, to receive their awards!
Apart from Nemesis, I was also thrilled to see one of my Collegemates (Damian) also playing in The Rebels. Proud of you too bro!
It was an awesome night at an awesome event, and it was enhanced by the amazing achievement of my buddies! Proud of you guys and I'm sure you might be setting up the high end audio equipment you won, to jam up some really rockin' music in the days to come by. I also remember Losh saying "Sri lanka, we are gonna jump at your face" when I had a chat with them to do the write-up about Nemeis, and yes! You surely have done that this time!!!
As Mackie would like the crowd to yell, let me wind up with the cheer to Nemesis - NE-ME-SIS... NE-ME-SIS... NE-ME-SIS...!
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