how it all began

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Pittu the psycho fruitcake farmer cum metal guitarist

Pritham Denzil D’souza Padval, or Pittu as he is fondly called, is a die-hard true metal addict.

It all started way back in the year 1985, when Pittu was just 5 years old (Yes 5 years old!) and his high-school going elder brother, brought home tapes of rock and metal bands in the mid 80's. Those were the heady days when music from popular rock and metal bands were being played on every radio station throughout the world, including the famous Top of the Pops show, where IRON MAIDEN created history by being the only band since THE WHO to actually perform live in front of a small audience.

One of those video tapes had a live video of IRON MAIDEN playing their popular teen-angst song, RUNNING FREE that got Pittu hooked to them for life. The twin solos, catchy choruses and the galloping bass lines caught his attention and made him a die-hard metal fan ever since.

The years between 1985 and 1990 were his formative years where he got introduced to some of the most popular rock and heavy metal bands of that era like AEROSMITH, SCORPIONS, PINK FLOYD, WHITESNAKE, RAINBOW, JUDAS PRIEST, METALLICA, QUIET RIOT, DIO, BLACK SABBATH, BON JOVI and WHITE LION among the others. These bands were the ones that he religiously listened to everyday, apart from his favorite band IRON MAIDEN. That’s when he first decided to learn to play the guitar so he could play along with his Gods. People who saw him playing the air guitar at that age thought he had lost his marbles, but he didn’t give a damn.

By the time his first guitar was bought, he was 10 years old. The guitar was a box guitar that was locally made and his first problem after getting it was that there was no one to teach him how to play. He then decided to take up the hard route by using self-help guitar books and taking tips from much older players.

Till the next year (1991), Pritham played the guitar by using his thumbs. As the left hand finger position meant zilch to him, he used his thumb to scale the fret board. His right hand also used the thumb to stroke the guitar strings as he as his tiny fingers couldn’t cover the fret board.

Finally in 1992, he started taking guitar playing a bit more seriously and learned the proper way to hold a guitar. In a short time he was learning how to strum with a guitar pick, practicing left hand finger exercises, learning chords and finally playing his first song RUNNING FREE.

In 1994, Pittu got his first electric guitar- a 2 hum bucker Indian Givson that looked like it survived a train wreck. By this time he had learnt several other songs by bands like IRON MAIDEN (obvious isn’t it?), METALLICA, JUDAS PRIEST, DEEP PURPLE, BLACK SABBATH, etc. His first concert took place at a school day function in 1995 where he played SCORPIONS’ ‘Winds of change’ in front of a few thousand people. This was his single most embarrassing moment. As the guitar volume was extremely low, no one could hear a single note of the song when the time came to play the guitar solo. People were again reminded of his lunatic air-guitar antics.

1996 was Pritham’s happiest year. His mother gifted him an expensive Mexican make FENDER STRAT along his first effects pedal ZOOM FIRE 7010.By then he was quite popular among his friends as the cool guitarist dude who played better air guitars than a real guitar. But things were soon going to change…

Along with the sultry summer came the college day fest at St. Aloysius, Mangalore in 1998. The college committee decided to allow only one song to be played by Pritham’s band ‘The Outlaws’ (Pritham D’souza on Guitars, Chronin Almeida on bass,… ) as the catholic-run institution didn’t want to promote the devil’s music. That song ironically was JUDAS PRIEST'S BREAKING THE LAW. Halfway through the song, there was a power failure and the band had to wait till the back-up generators were up and running. Midway through the song there was an interruption again. The college dean wanted the band off the stage. But much to his disappointment, the crowd response was tremendous and the band was allowed to play the complete song. Everyone stood up cheering and clapping and doing pretty much whatever is expected from a rock concert. This moment was probably one of the finest moments in Pritham’s musical life.

1999 saw Pritham move to Bangalore. By now he was a much better guitarist than his school days. In few months of his stay, he formed his own band with spirited musicians Roshan ‘Oxy’ Rammohan on vocals/bass, Tushar Agarwal on drums and Nathaniel Phillip on guitars and thus PHALLUSY was born. The band recorded 3 tracks on a pro-cdr release with fellow musicians and friends KRYPTOS, THREINODY AND MYNDSNARE. During this time he also made friends with bands like EPITAPH, ADRENALINE (RV college band) and ARCANE RITUAL among the others.

Studies and problems at home allowed Pritham to play at only 2 venues with PHALLUSY and with Roshan leaving to foreign lands to pursue his studies and white women, the band eventually broke up with Tushar moving to play in several other bands, while Nathaniel went back to his gospel christian musical roots. In due course, Tushar moved to the US to pursue his career and Nathaniel moved to the UK where he is now happily married to a Welsh woman who belongs to the same town as CATHERINE ZETA JONES.

Pritham then tried his luck by playing with ARCANE RITUAL, but it was not to meant to be. Dejected, he then swore to play just for himself and not to be part of any band or scene as it was very difficult communicating ideas with the other musicians on a musical level.

Pritham’s solo effort resulted in his first e.p. ‘The Farmer’ which had 11 tracks of blistering NWOBHM-influenced heavy metal. The e.p. was sent to many metal fans, bands and labels around the world in the underground metal scene by his friends and the e.p. was widely appreciated. Pritham was then offered a record deal and a chance to record the same e.p. with vocals and live drums by Gamalzagoth, vocalist of the cult German black metal band Moonblood who was a huge TRASH and HEAVY METAL maniac. Matters beyond Pittu’s control and the lack of suitable musicians made him politely refuse the offer.

During his stay in Bangalore, Pittu made some great friends like Sandesh Shenoy, Toto(r.i.p.), Vikram Bhat, Corpse Kiran, Ranjeev Kuruvilla, Tisco, to name a few who played a very important role in shaping his musical taste from regular rock/metal to more extreme music.

For this, he will always be grateful to his friends who introduced him to more remarkable music as he would have otherwise been just another boring guy who would have thought that METALLICA were still the heaviest band on the planet.

Genres like DEATH, THRASH, BLACK, DOOM, GOTHIC, STONER, PROGRESSIVE, POWER, GRINDCORE, SLUDGE were now taking centre stage, with bands like SLAYER, MEGADETH, TESTAMENT, DEATH, DIMMU BORGIR, CRADLE OF FILTH, IN FLAMES, NIGHT IN GALES, CHILDREN OF BODOM, ARCH ENEMY, OBITUARY, MORBID ANGEL and TYPE O NEGATIVE regularly being played on his portable vcd player.

These genres of metal took Pittu’s guitar playing a notch higher and he spent countless hours trying to perfect his guitaring style in order to blend his music with the new found noise.

Circa 2008 Pittu lives on a farm on the borders of Mangalore and Kerala, where he has taken up farming full time. At nights he picks up his guitar and composes cheap ass tunes and sends them to all his friends who don’t give a damn about his stuff.

So if you are crazy enough, go listen to my music here

P.S: PITTU STILL PLAYS GUITAR WITHOUT USING A GUITAR PLECTRUM. AS A RESULT WHATEVER HE COMPOSES TENDS TO KINDA SOUND A BIT MUFFLED... WHICH IS A GOOD THING.

Additional info-

Pritham D’souza currently uses the following equipment-

Guitars: JACKSON dxmg series with emg hz picks
Amps: Marshall 10
Effects: Zoom 505 ii, Zoom 707 ii, Zoom mrs 8 recording studio, Line 6 guitarport rifftracker

Past guitars abused: Givson, Fender Strat, Hobner 12 string, manual box guitar,
Earlier effects pedals abused: zoom fire 7010, zoom palm studio 2(ps 02), zoom palm studio 4(ps 04)