KARACHI, July 8: In this day and age when electronic and distorted music is gaining popularity there are still some that hold the traditional rock music close to their heart. The Beatles may have defined the generation of the 1960s, but 40 years after the band was first formed, it still ardent has fans in the youth of today.

That was apparent at a tribute concert, titled Beatlemania2, held at T2F on Saturday night by a local underground band called E Sharp. The venue was full of young ardent fans of the music by the legendary British band.

This wasn’t the first time E Sharp had paid tribute to The Beatles. Their first tribute concert was held in April last year.

“After last year’s performance, a lot of people got in touch with us asking us to do another tribute concert,” said E Sharp’s lead vocalist Ahmed Zavar. “We wanted to do the concert this year before Ramazan. This time around we’ve completely changed the playlist. We’ve only repeated maybe two or three songs from the ones we performed last year.”

Before E Sharp took to the stage, another band performed some of their favourite songs by The Beatles. The band doesn’t have a name yet but was composed of Imam Hamdani on lead guitars, Alicia Dias on vocals, Carol Ann on keyboards, Ahsan Ghulam Haider on bass guitars and Sherman Louis Peter on drums. Some of the songs they performed included All the lonely people, Cant buy me love and Get back.

The main band of the evening, E Sharp, is composed of Imran Saleem on bass guitar, Ahmed Zavar on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Anwaar Ahmed on lead guitars and they featured Amin ‘Meaner’ Arif on lead guitars and Faraz Naveen and Fahad Saleem on bass guitars as guest musicians. They performed in two sets, one, which was, plugged performance. In that they performed Something, I want to hold your hand and Revolution.

Their second set which started off as an unplugged, acoustic performance included Help, Ticket to ride, Come together and All you need is love among others.

“We started the band almost seven years ago when we were in our O’ levels. Our influences in music are mainly rock ‘n’ roll and blues from the 1960s and the 1970s,” said Imran Saleem. “If you look at the history of music, The Beatles changed everything and it was because of them that music has evolved to where it is now.”

“T2F has been an amazing support for us. The people behind T2F are true connoisseurs of art and have supported a wide range of art-related activities here. They haven’t charged us anything for holding our performance here.”

During the performance of While my guitar gently weeps there was a very passionate and unusually long solo by Amin ‘Meaner’ Arif. It showed off his virtuosity on the guitar and added a whole new element of pure rock to the song.

They closed their performance on a high note with Hey Jude in which the audience joined the band and sang along in unison. An apt ending to a brilliant performance.