Vengaboys - Live In Concert

One thing that a high degree of international exposure teaches you is that when at Rome you be Roman. And so this 7pm Hyderabad concert started at 9:15pm, thus making the Vengaboys appear very Hyderabadi indeed. Only, the deal is nothing Hyderabadi at all - you get about 40 minutes of the stuff you actually went there for, and that with the band lip syncing to recorded music. After you paid a minimum of 250 bucks. It's almost as if the event were intended primarily to help some sponsors get mileage and let some others make money, and that by itself it was just a formality to get done with. And so much for all the fuss.

Anyway, let's get to the show itself. The Vengaboys believe in two steps to concert success: 1. Keep yelling at the top of your voice "Do you like to party?" 2. Follow it up immediately, again at the top of your voice, with "Are you having fun?" The concert at Treasure Island had them put the strategy to good use. As they came in their Vengabus and unloaded themselves at the venue, the evening was stomped out of its mugginess, with them popping the aforementioned questions again and again.

We really should let this pass, but still… the show was opened by a band called 'Men Machine', who felt it obligatory to shove some pop numbers down our throats. And just when we had enough of this inane band with its even more inane guitarists, our visual senses were bombarded with a couple of laser beams being beamed about.

The real show started when the Vengaboys made their entry. They pranced about nonstop for the next 40 minutes churning out their hits. The lead singer Kim is cool and seems pretty high on vitamin supplements. Yorick with the cowboy hat is heavy duty, too. Roy came in a seaman costume, and that's what the young girls came to the show for. And as for the blonde Denice, she doesn't bother to lip sync with the rest of the group at times, and that is about all that can be said for her.

Like we cribbed, the show per se was short, about 40 minutes or so, and had the band lip syncing to Going To Ibiza, Boom Boom Boom, Sha La La etc. before rounding off the show with 'Brazil'. A fun time, especially if you are like 12 and have just discovered that the coolest thing to do now is to wear lipstick and write with a pen.

Incidentally, this had to be the largest gathering of school kids outside a playground. The rest of the crowd had a puzzled expression like they were wondering why exactly they were here. But the sports that they all were, they just decided to go ahead and have fun while it lasted, before being reminded of the dreary drive back home.

The Vengaboys should be renamed VengaKim because it's just that female who's like a keg of dynamite. But they really seemed to have put in major hours of dance practice… they move like a band of synchronized peacocks on stage and really know how to shimmy and shake and make the earth quake.

En fin, if you were at the show, I'm sure you know what I am talking about, and if you missed the show, you don't want to bother too much. Unless you think that anti zit cream was invented by Einstein, you haven't missed much.

P.S. In case you are interested, the Veg. Manchuria at the venue cost about 60 bucks. Highway robbery, huh?

SK