Star Chat

To the Point!

Musician Farhan Samad
Talks to
Salman Rob

Photo : Iresh Zaker

I finished high school and college (Grades 11 and 12) in Scholastica, and then joined Independant University, Bangladesh (IUB) for my Bachelors.

The best days of school would, obviously, be all the last days of each term! Knowing that it was time to go back home and just relax until the start of a new term was consolation enough after all those exams and homework. All the worst days would, for obvious reasons, be the report card days. Yes, even though we would go back home at the end of the school term, giddy with happiness, we would still always have the whole "What if I did not do too well?" questions on our minds, up until the report card day, that is. On that very day, it became a matter of life and death, literally!

For all the many down times at school, there were the ups as well! First would be winning the player of the tournament in an inter-school basketball tournament. I will never forget that day. It was one of my proudest moments. The second would be when a bunch of us 10th graders performed at a concert in school. We did a couple of numbers including Smells Like Teen Spirit, Come As You Are and Ark's Guru. It was the first concert for all of us and we rocked. We even did an encore of Guru. It was the most amazing experience since it was the first time for all of us.

University, on the hand, was very different. After joining IUB, there was a lot of freedom, especially from my mom -- she started treating me like an adult, finally!

Throughout my student life, I have always felt that I was blessed with exceptional coaches that were there for me through thick and thin. From high school straight through to the end of university, all of them inspired me in every way -- Schezade Khan, my brother, Fazle, Camel Siddiqui and Mujib Rahman -- they will all always have a place in my heart for always looking out for me.

I first picked up a guitar when I was in class 9. I was always an avid listener, my first memory being all the way back to when I was 5 years old, listening to Black Sabbath. I discovered Iron Maiden when I was around 7 years old. My biggest inspiration was probably my older brother who exposed me to a lot of music. In fact, I started fiddling around with the guitar simply because my brother had one.

During school, I always made sure I had fun with whatever I was doing. However, when it comes to classes, it is all a hazy blur. Apart from the 'blurry times', back then hanging out and doing nothing seemed thoroughly productive, although, I sometimes do regret not putting that time into better use.

For the future, I want to keep making albums with my band Cryptic Fate starting with releasing our new album in November. Apart from music, I want to keep working on interesting side projects. I'm currently working on an album with Jon from Black. We have been friends forever and we were planning for a long time to collaborate on a project where we would just make whatever we feel like. We are currently doing just that. Planning on doing more of these collaborations in the near future with more musician friends is what I want to do for now. And to add more to my plans, I want to keep playing with my new side project called Cover Up with myself on the bass, Sarfaraz of Crytpic Fate on acoustic guitars, Zohad, Maher & Dio of Nemesis on vocals, guitar & cajon respectively and Jon on vocals. We do covers of all the songs we love but never get to cover with our bands. And of course, I want to get back into shape so that I can start playing basketball again!

To all the young hopefuls out there, I want to give an advice that someone has given me-- if you do a job you enjoy and do your best work, it never feels like a job anymore!