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| Sunday, 8 December 2002 |
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ULTIMATE no limits to achievement
Ultimate has Sudath Munaweera on guitar and vocals, Lal Witiwela on drums, Joe Lappin on bass and vocals, Steve de Silva on vocals, Monique Wille on vocals and Manjula Goonasekara on keyboards and vocals. Formed in the year 2000, the group's first performance was for a dance at Hayleys in February. Where do they play? "We play at Rhythm and Blues on Fridays, and were at the Taj.. on a regular basis till last month. Says Manjula adding that they will also be playing at a lot of private functions during the season. Do they have a target audience? "Well, ours is a mature crowd. We don't get a lot of teenagers coming to listen to us," says Manjula, who thinks that bands always over-estimate themselves. "They play somebody else' music. What's there to be proud of? They just reproduce. We all do. Nobody has an identity. They will only have an identity if they play their own music." Does Ultimate have a regular crowd? "We do, when we play at Rhythm and Blues. Unfortunately for us, we aren't tied down to a regular place. We started playing at private gigs where we made a lot of money. We had a crowd following us when we started. But we couldn't build a clientele as we were rotating the whole time," he says adding that they even had a contract with Carlsberg. But moved out as they found themselves playing at places they didn't want to. " We were restricted but didn't have a choice because of the contract," he explains. What does Ultimate think about the rest of the local bands? "Very good. Good in their own way. They all have so much to learn but the saddest part is lots of musicians have ego problems. If they can put aside their ego, I suppose they'll all be doing better music," ponders Manjula. What about competition in the field? "As far as I'm concerned, we are not competing. Music is nothing about competition. It's something we do to the best of our ability. What happens is all the young bands start with rock and they stick to that. That way they will not be versatile musicians at the end of the day," he says. Where does Ultimate stand in the Sri Lankan music arena? "I can't say where we stand. Only people will know the answer." Are they satisfied playing for the local crowd? "Not all the time. Thing is people don't come to listen to a particular band cause they like that band. They listen to so many bands. And they expect you to play the sort of music, they heard some other band playing. We don't do that." Future Plans? "To do music to the fullest, for as long as we can," reveals Manjula. Do they play originals? "Piyal Perera wrote one song for us called 'You are the best', which is the only original we've got at the moment." What do they think about the Golden Clef Awards? "Well, the ulterior motive may be to boost the musicians. But we can't really be happy getting an award for playing other people's music. If an award is given, it should be given for originality. Those who do originals deserve an award," says Manjula. "To be honest, it won't help the industry at all. Cause like I said we can't be proud of winning an award for reproductions. I've been doing music for 16 years, if people can't recognise it, that's fine. The new generation doesn't know what good music is. They are clueless about the senior musicians who have contributed so much." He says that the present youngsters don't come from proper musical backgrounds and that contemporary standards were pretty low. "Those days, the standards were higher and it was hard. Now it's just three to four gigs and you are a professional band," He also points out that people who listen to musicians and bands base their judgement on how popular the band is. But popularity doesn't make you a musician. "This criterion is totally wrong. People should know what the musicians are doing during a gig. Music is something that, as musicians, we communicate with the audience. A musician must know what he or she is doing. If you want to go a long way, first you should rectify the small things in life cause lots of people want to run before they could crawl." by Umangi de Mel |
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| Produced by Lake House |
Achievement
is the name of the game...and musically speaking, they think there is no
limit to what can be achieved. So, they named themselves Ultimate, with
the aim of achieving something at the end. While the aim is obvious,
ultimate have been having a grand time, dishing out pop music with special
emphasis on '70s and '80s flavours with a little a little bit of
everything else as garnish.
