THERMAL AND A QUARTER'S ‘PLAN B’ TURNS 20

Bengaluru rock band look back at their third album which spawned songs like 'Paper Puli' and was released online as a free download in 2005

- By ANURAG TAGAT

Bengaluru rock band Thermal And A Quarter's (TAAQ) third album Plan B released on Jan. 15, 2005 via their website and in a true testament to the band's forward-thinking, the 10-track full-length was released as a free download and under a modified Creative Commons license.

The band's vocalist-guitarist Bruce Lee Mani says, "When Rajeev [Rajagopal, drummer] said we should release it for free, I was like are you mad? We were making decent money from gigs and CD sales for back then." Rajagopal adds, “I think downloading MP3s was already huge by then, with [file sharing network] BitTorrent and all those others, so I thought we should give it away for free." Mani was eventually convinced and they worked with longtime friends to figure out the ins and outs of uploading an album for download as well as the Creative Commons license. Interestingly, TAAQ's website also completes 25 years in action this year.

Plan B - which followed their debut 2000 album (called Dotcom) and 2002 concept album Jupiter Cafe - was inspired by the band's tours around South India, inner turmoil and the Internet age. It was recorded live at the now-defunct Mahati Studios in Chennai ["It's a parking lot the last time I saw," Mani comments] with producer Didier Weiss and was mixed at Film City Studios, Hyderabad and mastered by at SoundWizard, Auroville, both by Weiss.