Tough On Tobacco played the cramped confines of Cafe Goa on Wednesday, July 22. We were there, with whoever else could fit in.

You’ve got to give props to venues which, despite their small and often unsuitable layouts, are determined to hop on to the live music bandwagon. We never thought there could be a smaller performance space than the DJ room at the Zenzi in Bandra, but the folks at Café Goa proved us wrong. The former Trafalgar Chowk began hosting gigs in collaboration with the Bombay Elektrik Project last month in the enclosed middle section of the restaurant. Since they decided to put about 20 chairs in the room, not more than 50 people could be accommodated for Tough On Tobacco’s show on July 22. Sure, there were about 20 more people watching from the sidelines but they were socialising more than they were listening, which is pretty much what happens at Zenzi too if you’re not in the first couple of rows and can’t really take in the performance.

We got a scaled-down band for the scaled-down venue. Bassist Johan Pais and drummer Jai Row Kavi were missing in action so the reggae part of the reggae flavoured-pop-rock act was pretty much non-existent. Fortunately, frontman Sidd Coutto has written some pretty malleable tunes for his band, and they worked well enough in a poppier format. Peppering the gig with jokes on everything from “Desi Girl” to Twitter, Coutto made up for the energy we missed from not having the full group on stage. Expectedly, the more straightforward material lacked the immediacy of TOT’s more humourous stuff; ballad ‘Concert Piano’, ‘Hit Single’, ‘Happy’ and of course, ‘Smoke Some Ganja’, drew the loudest cheers. As for new tunes, Coutto and crew did not disappoint with a song about the Bandra-Worli sea link, which we have to admit was responsible for getting us to the gig way ahead of time. Now if only something could be done about that damn bottleneck at Reclamation.

Indiecision: B

(pics: Vikas Munipalle)