Cherisse Moe

Tak­ing rock mu­sic to high­er heights in T&T and be­yond–that's the goal of Trinidad's newest rock band, Blam­ing Aaron.

The five-mem­ber group, which com­pris­es Don­ny Gajram­s­ingh, Rhion Karim, Aaron Mo­hammed, Sean Ram­per­sad and Joshua Man­ickc­hand, is all about bring­ing en­er­gy, good vibes and cre­ativ­i­ty to the stage. The men, who hail from Cen­tral, ex­cept for Aaron, 23–the youngest of the lot–who re­sides in Princes Town, choose to "em­brace all styles of mu­sic" and refuse to put their sound in­to one par­tic­u­lar genre. From the get-go, these guys make it clear that they're not the kind of group to sit around and wait for things to hap­pen: they make it hap­pen.

"We have the dri­ve, mo­ti­va­tion, mind­set, at­ti­tude and im­age need­ed to suc­ceed," says Rhion, con­fi­dent­ly. The 27-year-old is the band's lead gui­tarist and the most out­spo­ken. "We take a lot of pride in what we do. We're young and dif­fer­ent and we can pro­vide a ser­vice to the peo­ple of T&T." De­spite emerg­ing on the scene less than a year ago, Blam­ing Aaron al­ready pos­sess­es the co­he­sive­ness and per­son­al­i­ty of bands that have been to­geth­er for years. "That's be­cause we're friends first, mu­si­cians af­ter," as­serts Don­ny, 30, the band's drum­mer.

Break­ing bar­ri­ers

Gar­ner­ing con­sid­er­able suc­cess in its short his­to­ry, Blam­ing Aaron has a num­ber of per­for­mances un­der its belt, in­clud­ing stints at Shak­ers Bar on Ari­api­ta Av­enue and Fi­es­ta Plaza, Movi­eTowne, where the band re­cent­ly per­formed for hun­dreds of mu­sic lovers. How­ev­er, it was their en­er­getic de­but per­for­mance at Cor­ner Bar, Ari­api­ta Av­enue, in May, which helped make the band a house­hold name among al­ter­na­tive and rock mu­sic en­thu­si­asts. What's with the name Blam­ing Aaron? "Uhm...we would pre­fer to keep that a mys­tery," says Aaron, the band's gui­tarist, who, judg­ing from his name, prob­a­bly had some­thing to do with it.

What makes Blam­ing Aaron dif­fer­ent from oth­er lo­cal rock bands? This ques­tion they were will­ing to an­swer. "Out of the hun­dreds of rock groups in Trinidad, about five ac­tu­al­ly take them­selves se­ri­ous­ly," Joshua as­serts, mat­ter-of-fact­ly. "We're here to raise the bar. We have that cool look. That in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal. We have what it takes," de­clares Aaron. Band man­ag­er and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gary Jor­dan agrees. He says de­spite the fact that the rock genre has not yet be­come main­stream in Trinidad, Blam­ing Aaron re­mains re­silient. "They're a mul­ti-tal­ent­ed group of mu­si­cians who per­form to please many dif­fer­ent styles of gen­res, while stay­ing true to their rock roots."

Dream­ing big

In­flu­enced by in­ter­na­tion­al bands like Metal­li­ca, Col­lec­tive Soul, Co­heed and Cam­bria, and lo­cal acts such as Machel Mon­tano, Or­ange Sky and An­dre Tanker, the band hopes to tran­scend cul­ture, age and gen­der, and one day per­form among the best in the in­dus­try. What does the fu­ture hold for Blam­ing Aaron? "In the next five years, we'll be on the Great­est Hits Vol­ume 2," de­clares Joshua, a 28-year-old bassist. "You know what?" asks Rhion. "In the next five years, you'll be in­ter­view­ing an­oth­er band who'd say they want to be just like Blam­ing Aaron." In the more im­me­di­ate fu­ture, the band is work­ing on record­ing its first sin­gle, Cut­ting In, which is sched­uled for re­lease in No­vem­ber. The band hopes the song will pen­e­trate the na­tion's air­ways soon af­ter.

Want to learn more about these boys from Blam­ing Aaron?

Vis­it them on www.face­book.com.