Richardson & Cruddas gets a makeover to host a rock band show

By Satya Kandala

An industrial warehouse in Byculla that has been around longer than the Gateway of India, 1858 to be precise, made for an ambient rock music venue last Saturday. The long defunct Richardson & Cruddas (R&C) warehouse was converted into a musical venue for the very first time to host the ‘Road to Converse Rubber Tracks’ finale. The venue drew as much attention as the event itself.

The venue got a makeover, courtesy Harshvardhan Kadam, a graffiti artist who created a gigantic mural on the front facade of the 156-year old building. The event conceptualised by Converse and co-executed by NH7 saw five bands from five cities — Spud in the Box (Mumbai), Frisky Pints (New Delhi), Ganesh Talkies (Kolkata), Space Behind The Yellow Room (Bangalore) and the F16s (Chennai) join the three headliner bands — Pangea, Superfuzz and Zero. The F16s won the finale and are now headed to New York to be the first Indian musicians to make music at the Converse Rubber Tracks recording studio in Brooklyn.

“The lavish availability of space in excess of 15,000 sq ft at R&C helped us create a mini festival with a day-long series of activities,” says Kainaz Turel, senior manager, marketing, Converse. Turel adds it is possibly one of the very few venues that makes available such a lavish spread of space, offering immense potential to experiment with the sound and light set-up.

Says Ankit Dayal, vocalist and guitarist, Spud in the Box. “There are quite a few warehouses and mills that have been turned into music venues in the city, but they all seem to be hiding in tiny lanes and obscure gullies. R&C is not only bigger than all those mills, but has grandeur and a history to it that makes it a major landmark, which makes musicians like us feel proud to be standing up on a stage like that. There are only a handful of such venues in the country.”