Members of the US band Hoobastank perform in Shillong on Saturday. Picture by UB Photos

Shillong, June 29: It’s not like the Beatles drove up this road two days ago for a concert, I’m thinking on my way up to Shillong. It’s Hoobastank. So probably no screaming ’60s girls lining up by the side of the road and diving at a cigarette butt that John Lennon’s car drove over. It’s Hoobastank. And Shillong girls aren’t that mushy.

So are their lyrics syrupy? Well is the Beatles’ Eight days a week syrupy? By that measure (I ain’t got nothin’ but love babe, eight days a week), what would Hoobastank’s The Reason be? “A reason to start over new and the reason is you,” it goes. And it got all of them gushing with that one, even Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler, Ross and all their fans, in Friends. It’s their anthem, isn’t it, song and television serial? What would that be? Slurpy syrupy? Mushy slurpy syrupy?

Later in the evening, at Polo Ground, I’m thinking definitions. Post-grunge (mid ’90s), alternative rock (’70s), hard rock (’60s), alternative metal (’80s), nu metal (’90s), funk metal (’80s), ska punk (early) (’80s). That’s how the music figurers figure Hoobastank. They began 1994.

Where do these musicians come from? Beatles started ’60s, ended ’70s, they genre as rock (’50s and ’60s) and pop (’50s). Rolling Stones (1962), figure rock, blues (late 19th), rock and roll (’40s).

Then the band appears and the crowd sings along, Shillong style, word for word, note for note. These guys are “now” music, I tell myself, guys who rock and rock with a bit of rap when they feel like it. Isn’t that now music? Douglas Robb on vocals and guitar, Chris Hesse on drums, Dan Estrin on guitar and back-up vocals, and Jesse Charland on bass.

The crowd loves it. Bill Bernard, 20 years old, sings Hoobastank’s The Reason to his girlfriend, he says. He does listen to the Beatles, but no Led Zeppelin, he says, straining against the front row railing. Damei Dominic, 21, also a front row strainer likes Hoobastank “since his childhood”. Cherry Lyngdoh, 22, again, loves The Reason and also listens to The Backstreet Boys. But no Led Zeppelin, hard heavy rock, ’60s, she tells me, totally soaked in the rain by now.

But that’s where Hoobastank comes from, I guess, given the head bangers near her: from somewhere after the hard rock guys, having acquired their best, then becoming cosy with new groups like The Backstreet Boys (1993 to now), added to that a little rock roll, and some gush from the Beatles.

Cherry goes crazy as the band pumps it up this evening. The crowd sings Same Direction (does it have a Stones feel to it?), then First of Me. Damei by now is dancing in the rain that is pouring down on Polo Ground. As do the rest of several thousands people gathered for the show. And then it pours, in good measure, the Hoobastank repertoire: What do I have to do to get inside you (Is that a metaphor or simply Mick Jagger?), then a genre change to a ballad, If I were you and then, finally, The Reason. The band sings. Shillong sings. They wrap it up with Crawlin’ in the dark. End of evening, it’s Hoobastank defined for me, haba haba, little by little. And why has an English paper used a Swahili headline? Well, they did come up with a name like Hoobastank, didn’t they? And they’re still so very good.