MUMBAI: The beer and music festival held in North India, Gaana Lager n Barrel co-presented by Carling ended last weekend with the city of Chandigarh grooving to it with endless beer, music and loads of memories. The two-day event held on 16-17 September at Aura Vaseela, Mohali a small city adjacent to Chandigarh in Punjab.

Decorated with beer bottles emphasising the event as a memorable beer festival, the venue was well organised and beautifully decorated with attractive lighting, photography spots, attention seeking props and much more. The left side of the stage was occupied with various delicious food stalls while the right side of the stage organised fun games for the audience to be engaged and kill boredom.

Day 1

The performances began from late afternoon with Ronit, the opener of the day, following with Nissi Band who performed a few Punjabi and Bollywood numbers. Next performed Bombay Bairag, a Mumbai based band that performed more of their original music with a glimpse of Bollywood tracks.

The venue turned lively with Gurnazar taking the centre stage. One of the popular Punjabi artistes. He lit the stage with his energetic performances on famous Punjabi tracks along with his originals. The audience with its each sip of beer shook their leg on Gurnazar’s every foot-tapping song. The singer ended his performance with an original song which is yet to release.

Next entered Millind Gaba, another Punjabi artiste. Unfortunately, after 2-3 songs, the audience started losing interest in his performance.

Finally, the most awaited performance the Headliner – Raghu Dixit walked on the stage with his band. Dixit performed in Chandigarh for the first time, but definitely not the last as the audience adored him. The headliner taught the Punjabi’s his language i.e Kannada. Yes, you got it right! Dixit performed Kannada songs which surprisingly were loved by the Punjabi’s and he also ended up teaching them a few Kannada lyrics. Dixit who has done an album song for Saif Ali Khan's upcoming release Chef also performed one of the songs from the film. The Shugal Laga Le song was a first ever live performance that happened at Lager n Barrel.

The performance did not end on a very good note though. The audience kept asking for a once more performance but Dixit denied. He said, “I believe in respecting other artiste and other performer’s too, unlike our previous performer ( Millind Gaba) who took up much of our time.” 

As the venue had to live up to the 10 pm deadline, the last performance by DJ Shanon had to be cancelled due to time constraints. 

Day 2

The line-up for the second day did not turn out to be great. Though the venue witnessed double the audience there were very few in front of the stage.

The day began with a few Punjabi artistes like Runway Project band, Stanley Live and Mellow D. The crowd began showing interest after the beautiful Himanshi Khurana walked on the stage and energised the audience with her amazing Punjabi numbers in her soulful voice. B Praak known as the Gabru of Punjab followed the performance with a few Punjabi songs and Kailash Kher originals like Teri Deewani.

Even though the headliner for the day was Mohammad Irfan, the audience moved towards the stage for Shirley Setia performance. Setia’s performance was delayed due to her ill health, but the enthusiastic Lager n Barrel audience got the singer in form. She connected well with the audience playing on requests from them.

Asees Kaur followed up the performance by opening the act for headliner Mohammad Irfan with a few Bollywood numbers.

Irfan turned the evening beautiful with his best renditions and Bollywood songs. The audience by then was less in number and the ones present were intoxicated thus, the names didn’t matter any longer.  Lastly, DJ Sumit Sethi got the chance to perform.

Overall Lager n Barrel was a balanced experience. The team was well co-ordinated. The venue had good security near the stage and the VIP lounge. Well, there was unlimited food and beer along with great music sums up a delightful experience.