The Music Page

By Sameen Amer

-   Lindsay Lohan is working with Timbaland, Pharrell Williams, and Snoop Dogg on songs that will appear on her upcoming album, her third set, which follows her previous releases, 'Speak' (2004) and 'A Little More Personal' (2005).

- Alicia Keys is using MySpace to search for a backing singer. Auditions, in the form of video submissions of a capella versions of Alicia Keys songs, were held in early May, with the contest being open to "females between the ages of 21 and 30". The singer is currently supporting the release of her latest album 'As I Am', and the winner of the contest gets the chance to tour with her as part of the worldwide 'As I Am' tour.

THE BEAT

"It's good to be rewarded for something that you have put your effort in. Award shows by a television network are getting mature every year as they are the pioneers of music awards in Pakistan, especially with the MTV awards they are following the international pattern, so it's much more professional. But otherwise, most of the awards are biased and don't make any sense. By that I mean that categories and the nominations are absurd. Commercial artist are mixed up with alternative artists, and then they make the category 'viewers choice' so who is supposed to get the award? The person who has a huge fan following despite average music or the person that has a niche but the music is great? Everybody should get a chance but then the categories should be specialised and not, for example, have Roxen and Meekal Hassan Band in the same category just because they both use guitars. :P

In the last Lux Style Awards 2007, Me, Sajid and Zeeshan, Atif Aslam, Ali Zafar and Areeb Azhar were in the same category for the best album. Does this make any sense? Kaavish is a great band, I love their music, but at the last The Musik awards they got the award for rising star when I was in the category too, with one album and four videos whereas Kaavish just had one or two singles out. Why did they get the award? I don't want to get into that as the reasons were very obvious. But having said that, I think it's like whoever gets the award is happy, and who doesn't is badmouthing, LOL. But on a serious note, I'll let the readers decide, if I'm right or wrong." – Abbas Ali Khan, giving his views about award shows. His song 'Malal' recently won 6 honours at the MTV Music Video Awards.

THE VIBE

The greatest Pakistani bands

Salman: The greatest Pakistani band ever? That brings more than one name to mind. Vital Signs were the grandfather of them all, then there was Junoon, and at the same time you had numerous other bands that made an impact on our industry…bands like Awaz, for instant. Turn the clock forward, and we have Jal, Aaroh etc. All these bands, regardless of the time they were/are from, did make a strong impression on Pakistani music. So the debate that we're heading towards is pretty obvious: which is the greatest Pakistani band ever? In terms of music obviously; being cute does not necessarily make you great! Vital Signs is probably the best of the lot. For starters, they were the first band that made it big, and they gave us arguably the most famous song in our history. Then, of course, it was an ex-Vital Signs member who went on to form Junoon, which goes on to show you how the band gave birth to some of the greatest musicians our country has ever known. Presently, we're living in a time where kids as young as 14 who have just been gifted a guitar by their super rich parents think that everything remotely related to pop music is too uncool for their taste. They consider head banging and rock as a cool thing. They'd pretend that the keyboard doesn't even exist as an instrument because it's too pop-ish, but little do they know that the greatest band in our history had a keyboard oriented sound, and it was infinitely cooler than every single pathetic excuse of a band that they listen to these days.

(Your opinions can also be a part of 'The Vibe'. If there's anything you'd like to say about some music related topic, then email Us your views (in no more than 250 words) at sameenamer@hotmail.com and your comments just might appear on this page!)