Panda Bag. The story of a graduate student band.

Hi everyone, 

As I mentioned in my introduction post, I play the bass guitar. But it's a very recent thing. I first picked up a bass in November of 2015, after a fellow graduate student in my department suggested we start a band, and that there was no bass player yet. Here we are almost 2 years later, and we've formed a band. Its name? Panda Bag. 

Yes, you heard it right. And you're in luck. I'm going to tell you how we arrived at such a name. 

In her almost 86 years of life, my grandmother has espoused a charitable spirit, which has resulted in her giving donations to various nonprofit organizations such as the March of Dimes, St. Jude's Children's Hospital, Disabled American Veterans, Team USA, and most famously (for the purpose of this post), the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF). 

If you know anything about the WWF, you know that their logo features a panda bear. 

Since my grandmother has made many contributions, she often receives gifts and promotional items from the WWF with their branding on it, and, you can see where this is going, she received a canvas bag with a picture of a panda on it: 

When we started the band, the panda bag was around when we began to accumulate many small cables and adapters for instruments, mixers, speakers, etc. and they all found their way into the panda bag, so whenever we would need something out of it, someone would say, for example, "Where's the microphone cable?" to which the reply was always, "It's in the panda bag." One of our guitarists eventually realized that "Panda Bag" would make a great band name, so it stuck. Now, we meet almost every week to jam, come up with song ideas, cover songs, and enjoy making music together. We've been able to play at a few events, most notably an International Street Fair (2/3 of our band are international students). 

We play a variety of blues, jazz, soft rock, and easy listening music, but we're always open to trying new things. We began by just covering songs, but now we've written some originals, and we're planning to continue to write songs and hopefully record them professionally sometime this year or next year. 

With all that said, and now that you have a complete history of the band, I'd like to present some of our music. First, our cover of Ben E. King's "Stand by Me," a song which everyone can enjoy: 

and our cover of the Herbie Hancock jazz standard, "Chameleon:"

Next, our two original songs. 

"Sand Between Your Toes," a relaxing instrumental song written by our guitarist Saikat Mukherjee:

and "Let Go," a bluesy breakup song written by our guitarist Ayaan Kazerouni and myself

Or if you prefer, here's a playlist with all of the songs: 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF9ahQmIu82nXDPl_1lO2fpcpiHGESa1N

If you're interested in the band and want to hear more songs that we play, you can check out our Facebook page or the dedicated page on my website. I hope you enjoy the music, and don't worry, there's plenty more to come from Panda Bag!