Nadeem F. Paracha
**20: Jadu: Milestones (1993) **
Criminally ignored on release, this is actually a jazzy lil’ pop-rock gem awaiting some well-deserved rediscovery. Candy Pereira had an excellent set of lungs. Wonder where she went?
**19: Billo De Ghar: Abrar-ul-Haq (1996) **
Placed on this list solely due to its jumpy, funky title track, which became one of the scene’s biggest hits and a favorite target of Punjab’s myopic moral brigade! Everything else on the album is nothing more than flat, generic bhangra-pop. Billo saved the day and eventually turned her sickened lover into a
Cola spouting super star. And they thought SHE was a, you know who?
**18: Greatest Hits: Dr. Aur Billa (1998) **
Pulls some hilarious punches at pop star pretensions, corporate sponsorships and Lollywood clichés. This album introduced Pakistan to the irreverent joys of parody-pop … long before Jawad Basir decided to “grow up” and start taking himself a little too seriously. How boringly “mature” of him.
**17: Shola: Awaz (1995) **
Certainly the poster-pop boy-band’s most impressive outing … and also its last. Just when Awaz were striving to start looking for influences outside the disposable bubble gum pop of NKOTB and Wham, Pepsi slammed the door on them! The result: A pretty edgy pop album (with a slight twist of emotional bitterness) and, of course, sudden disbandment! Mainstays Haroon and Fakhir can now be seen selling soap, tea and shampoos… and, oh yes, they sometimes make “music” too.
**16: Roopnagar: Najam Shiraz (1997) **
Najam’s lat hurrah as a “middlegounder” airing pleas against urban paranoia and greedy women, until deciding to go all moralistic and Tapal-crazy! Still has a decent set of lungs, but these days used more to air choreographed naats and interpreting the holy book for us dud sub-humans. Applause, everybody.
**15: Roashni: Hadiqa Kiani **
This is the album with which Hadiqa finally overcame her reputation of being a folksy Nazia Hassan imitator. Glided across various different genres in a single album, from millennium techno, to crisp FM-pop and the usual folk-pop thing. The brilliant production remains to be the highlight here. Too bad the lady’s next album saw her putting more effort in upgrading her wardrobe other than matching or outdoing the dynamism of Roshni.
**14: Ali In Action: Mohammad Ali Shaki (1980) **
Ali took his main contemporary, Alamgir’s idea of mixing in generic disco and glam bits into local fimi music and added to it ‘70s Indian film vocalism. This was a mighty entertaining outing and made a star out of Shaki, until he was rudely booted out by the likes of the Vital Signs, Jupiters and Ali Haider in the late ‘80s. Tried to level the scores but age (and weight) failed to compliment his sudden (tactical) liking for black leather pants. Still wears them. But most probably to amuse his grandchildren. I hope.
13: Music Channel Charts Vol: 1: Various Artistes (1993)
Obviously, this was long before Pakistan finally got its very own (cheesy) 24-hr-music-channel. MCC was the testing ground for assembly-line producer, Ghazzanfer Ali, and what a show it turned out to be! This compilation album is a vivid example, packed with some crackling new talent (of the time), who actually started to give matter like VS and others quite a spin… even though most of this talent never managed to fulfill its true potential. Led by Yattagan/Fakher-e-Alam’s juicy bhganra-rap dittie, “Bhangra Pao” matched by the great entertainment value of Jazba’s militant rap outburst, “Jago”, the proto-sufi-rock of Collage’s “Sonhi Mahiwaal”, the Milestones’ marvelous FM-pop offering, “Aag”,and the proto-Awazian heroics of underrated boy-bands, Fringe Benefits and the Seaquencers, MCC also showcased Junoon, Strings and Nadeem Jaffery. Of course there were the usual duds as well. Symphony, Arid Zone …even though Yasser Akhter proved himself to be a better video-director than a vocalist. Ghazzanfer’s 24-hr-a-day IM has simply failed to achieve what MCC achieved in a span of around 20 episodes: i.e. originality without making the viewers watch phone cards coming out of the musicians ears and tea packs continuously hovering over and under the VJs’ heads and feet!
12: Irtiqa: Entity-Paradigm (2003)
Not since Junoon’s “Talaash” (1993), Jazba’s “Jago” and Najam’s “Sona Chatha Hoon” (1995), has the local scene been assaulted with such rage and fire. In fact the whole of Irtiqa is packed with raving angst rock, smartly arranged with dynamic twists and turns and some excellent lyrics. That is, if you minus the misdirected (slanglish) rap parts and that irritating lil’ Pepsi logo on what is otherwise quite an album cover. I plan to barter mine for a Mecca Cola poster (wink, wink).
**11: Signature: Aamir Zaki (1995) **
Live, Zaki can come across as being quite a six-string genius, but in the studios, he seems to repress his instinctive feel, replacing it with an obsession for technical correctness and “perfectionism.” That’s why even though Signature may stand out as a compact and competent exercise in crisp neo-jazz-fusion and Fleetwood Mac like FM-rock; in the end it does start sounding like thinking man’s elevator music! The school boyish lyrics don’t help either. His strength lies squarely in the instrumentals.
**10: Suno Kay Hum Hain Jawan: Noori (2003) **
The Pakistani pop scene’s best kept secret suddenly burst onto the scene with this pie of wholesomely digestible Alternative/college-rock and a natural feel for all the right media-savvy moves. A highly enjoyable outing but with a sound and attitude threatening to deviate and willingly land in the laps of cynical corporate sugar daddies and blinding media overexposure. However, listen closely to drummer Gumby’s Stuart Copeland like roundabout style for all the right reasons.
**9: Sandesa: Ali Haider (1994) **
This is definitely one of most entertaining filmi-pop outing by a Pakistani pop musician. This also left Haider reaching a peak in his chubby poster-boy phase, setting him up for an interesting period in dabbling with techno until recently returning to recreate the Sandesa sound but only to find men like Ahmed Jehanzeb and Jawad Ahmed replacing him on teen posters.
8: Disco Dewane: Nazia & Zoheb Hassan (1980)
It was Disco Deewane which was a more direct influence on the acts which (after 1988) started the new Pakistani pop scene, as we know it today. Bouncing and rebounding with cheesy late-`70s Disco beats and filmi lyricism, Disco Deewane captured and successfully reflected the whole invasion of early Disco music in Bollywood and Pakistan. The album is quite like “classic” Disco: Cheesy, mindless, dhish, dhish fun, but just short of also being sleazy. Great entertainment, though, as in artless but in no-way heartless. Awwww…
**7: Inquilaab: Junoon (1996) **
After belting it out for six years as the scenes leading guitar-driven Pop-Rock cult attraction and an enthusiastic bunch of left-field angry-young-men (with a solid anti- "Dil Dil Pakistan" socio-political anthem, "Talaash" to boot), Junoon finally broke-through the mainstream scene with the highly versatile and passionate Sufi-Rock bombshell, Inquilaab. An album on which the band took leader/guitarist Salman Ahmeds catchy, off-the-wall riffs and clashed them head-on with raving Sindhi/Sufi-folk-music (“Saieen”; “Mera Mahi”); Floydian introversion (“Rooh Ki Pyaas”); the ambitious intoxicated quasi-Progressive-Rock swinger, (“Neeli Ankhain”); and their pumped-up, U2ish & Zeppelinsque “Spiritual Revolution” chestnut (“Main Kon Hoon”). Inquilaab stands and walks tall … in spite the fact that it also contains a cash-in patriotic-pop-anthem, “Jazba-e-Junoon” and misguided missiles like the directionless rock remake of an old Jupiters song. However, soon after 1999’s wonderful Pervaaz, the band was about to get itself into a messy, contradictory situation by loudly making "revolutionary" and "spiritual" appeals while sitting pretty and smugly on a lucrative Coke contract! With this years lame, tame Deewar, Junoon have now only managed to let all their passionate hard-work burnout with a whimper. Thus Ali’s sudden loss of hair and Salman’s liking for being the one holding the Coke bottle on those humongous billboards? PETHATIC!
**6: VS: 1: Vital Signs (1989) **
Perhaps the album that kicked-in the very First-Wave of the post-88 new pop explosion in Pakistan. A wave led by Vital Signs and a number of acts that followed (such as: The Jupiters, Live Wires, Aamir Saleem, Ali Haider, The Barbarians, Final Cut, etc.), all of whom creatively expressed the feeling of euphoria, hope and celebration of a brand new era in the cultural & social melodrama of the country. VS: 1, though wholesomely apolitical, however, the songs and the music on it, are vividly reflecting the euphoria of the times, in spite the fact that the albums last two songs (“Musafir” and “Yeh Shaam”), are excellent examples of the deep-blue melodicism and the dreamy melancholia of the type of beautiful `70s Filmi-Noir compositions by the great Robin Ghosh.
