Music mantra

If you haven't heard Santana's Smooth, you have probably not transited from Linkin Park yet. This latin/rock smash hit featuring the Spanish guitar maestro Santana and Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas has been winning emmys and platinums like a handful.

On to our main feature band now. Matchbox 20!
Matchbox 20 features a very unique type of music. Most certainly its mainstream rock, but the vocals of Rob Thomas is astoundingly different and awesome. He is what I would call a step-voice, holding back his voice to get a sophisticated feel (atleast I think so) while maintaining the normals umm norms of a rock vocal. Confused? Probably. But in short you just might love it.

Matchbox 20's greatest song is perhaps Push, which was in their first and most popular album, Yourself of Someone Like You. This is an awesome album to buy. Not only for the fact that it sold 20 million copies worldwide or something, but also because it has a distinct mature feel to the songs. Another one of my personal favourite which is more fast-paced is Long Day.

However Matchbox 20's fame doesn't end here. Try afterwards the song Unwell and if possible the acoustic version of it. The song is by the way a psycho, I think driven mad by love (?! ?!). Afterwards if you are still in a mood for soft ballads, you would definitely love their song “If You Are Gone”. Lend me end by recommending another song of Matchbox 20, which you will find in their latest album, “ More Than You Think You Are”, “Disease”. This song is a bit…ok a lot like Smooth…but that's a reason to love the song, right?

The article is rather a bit short, so I guess I have to put one last song. It's a bit different from Matchbox 20, but its for those of you who love soft mellow acoustic ballads. Its Damien Rice's Cannonball. This song is slow and long, so people would fast paced taste, would be bored death, but for the poetic people who appreciate lyrics listen to it. You will like what he has got to say. Lemme keep that as a surprise!

By Reggie

Imagine life in Dhaka without pizza hut, A & W or American Burger. This isn't a manifestation of someone's nightmare. This life actually existed. No, I am not talking about the 18th century…folks, this was our gastronomical life in the nineties.

Now lets take a stroll down memory lane. A time when pizza, at first an unknown concept, appeared in our lives as 'pijja': a circular piece of bread laden with some form of ground meat, topped off with a couple of microscopic pieces of cheese (or rather, 'ponir') and enormous chunks of tomato and cucumber. Horrified? Well, at that time this strange item, hardly resembling 'real' pizza, was considered a delicacy!

Picture this: two pieces of bun dripping with butter, stuffed with a piece of cholesterol enriched fried chicken wing. Certainly, the word 'burger' would not come to mind. But, shockingly, this indeed was the burger of the nineties. Or maybe, you could have paid a little more to have the chicken wing replaced by a piece of grilled kebab, the composition of which would be 80% chopped onions. But that's as close a resemblance the burger of the nineties would have of today's alleged palatable burger.

No Movenpick, no gelato, no Baskin Robbins.. Scary isn't it? But the people of the nineties did have their share of quality ice cream at legendary parlours like Dolce Vita and rainbow. Though there was a limit in variety in comparison to today, the ice `cream was no less delicious.

Sweet tooths were restricted in choice about the array of chocolates. But we all remember the ever- popular 'mimi' candy, and Cadbury discharged stuff like' dairy milk chocolate', '5 star' and 'perk' into our local market. Sadly, the popularity of these items have greatly decreased in recent times due to an evident glut in the variety of choclolates. Not to mention, in the nineties there was quite an abundance of lozenges which aunties of all shapes and sizes offered as tempting tokens.

The availability of confectionary was quite finite during those times. Only a few places like sausley's and coopers displayed assortments of pastries and cakes. Few had the privilege of penetrating the wonderful world of cheesecakes, brownies, tarts and muffins: stuff that we, today, can easily take for granted.

Eating out was a rare occasion. At a point, in the early nineties, the only restaurants available were Chinese. Only later did thai restaurants materialize. The mushrooming of Indian and even traditional Bengali restaurants occurred much later.

The local people made their fair share of efforts of bringing international fast food to our lives. We didn't have MacDonalds and Dominoes, but we had 'Mecdonals' and 'Dominous' with their own attempts at duplicating their international counterparts.

Life in the nineties seems drab right? Well, it wasn't all that bad. There was good old Baily Road, with its famed fuchka and chotpoti. Then Old Dhaka, with its own variety of legendary cuilinary delights like biriyani (found at eminent fakhruddins), etc

We also must recall that the soft drinks revolution took place in the nineties. Coke and Pepsi was all the rage, but also, canned drinks attained their popularity. There was a time when we had to return glass soft drink bottles to the retailer, but it was in the nineties that people saw the evolution from glass to plastic bottles. Also, there was the transitory virgin cola fad.

Litre packets of ice cream began to appear for the first time with the advent of national companies like igloo, polar, etc. Also popular Bangali snacks like 'jhalmuri', 'dal bhaja', fried peanuts started to be

packeted in tiny, convenient sachets.
There were polular hang outs like 'candyfloss' and 'kintuki'. In the late nineties, joints like Helvetia and Wimpy created elevated standards for fast food.

Those times, we could devour to our hearts content without having to worry about our food being 'bhejal', a new and saddening perception. The nineties triggered the fast food movement. Though the gastronomical scene was a lot different from today, some culinary aspects of the nineties continue to live on today. No one can doubt the influence the nineties had in the way we eat today.

By Bushra Sameeha Anwar