Ultraelectromagnetic Bopped

October 9, 2008

Because I just can’t help but write about the Eraserheads.    

Whenever I listen to a ‘hit’ FM radio station, I feel like a musical Neanderthal.  I am clueless as to what are those chart-topping songs that are piercing my eardrums. But I am even more clueless when it comes to the bands behind these hit songs.  When I hear band names like Fall-Out Boy and My Chemical Romance and Panic at the Disco, I am unsure as to whether these are band names or movie titles or designer drugs.

Man, how I long for the prehistoric days of the eighties when my world was Rick Astley.  During high school dances, I remember how the kikay cheerdancer gossip girl alpha-female with three-feet high hair and padded shoulders would squeal like gutted pigs and drag their siga little mustachioed boytoys with excessive hairgel and nighttime shades to the dance floor and wiggle to the walang kamatayang tracks of “Bizarre Love Triangle”, “The Promise” (NOT the prayer version, thank God), “Sahara Nights” and Mike Francis’ “Let Me In” (some songs are best left to the eighties).  But when I asked these nubile young things to the dance floor when the DJs played “Never Gonna Give You Up” while doing my best Roderick Paulate-ized version of the Rick Astley spastic, arm blending dance shuffle, all I received was a sneer from those too-cool-for-school chickadees while the testosterone-addled sigas would take turns using my face to wipe the dance floor.  Agh. High school memories repeat on me like bad Chinese food. 

But much has changed since I was a sniveling Catholic schoolboy geek who was humiliated on the dance floor.  I am no longer a Catholic schoolboy. 

And my musical repertoire has broadened since then. Musical heathen that I was, I discovered Sting (Jessica Zafra’s ex-flame) and U2 only after I graduated college. But between Rick Astley and Sting, I was a nomad roaming the eskinitas of musical geek-dom. My carefully guarded mix tape (yes, mix tape, playlists only existed in Steve Jobs’ imagination) of early eighties Gary Valenciano songs, Kalapana, Fra Lippo Lippi, Swing Out Sister, and (deep breath) Jose Mari Chan (Don’t be a hypocrite, I know you can sing ‘Beautiful Girl’ from memory).  I was even one of those willing few who relished listening to the Side A band regurgitate cover songs into highly processed cheese at the now defunct Music Hall on Annapolis Street, Greenhills.  But God forbid I venture into the former Club Dredd on Edsa, a musical hangout where the regulars would be more than happy to devour me for protein and use my intestines for guitar strings.      

Little did I know, if my balls were just an inch wider in circumference back in college, my college mix tape would have been altered irrevocably if I was exposed to the early ultraelectromagnetic music of Ely Buendia, Raimund Marasigan, Buddy Zabala and Marcus Adoro.   

We could be sniveling geeks and enjoy the Erasherheads.  We could be prissy kolehiyalas and enjoy the Eraserheads. We could be vice-addled basaguleros and enjoy the Eraserheads. Hell, we could be DOMS and enjoy the Eraserheads.  And this is because the E-heads carved a laser sword of irreverence into the overly serious beast fighter that was nineties pop music.  Manila sound hadn’t been rocked with this much irreverence since The Hotdog band went all bongga on us back in the seventies.  The local music scene had mutated once again, and the Eraserheads were the atomic bomb. 

Channeling d’late great Yoyoy Villame and d’original bastos Rico J. Puno, the Eraserheads churned out frenetic beats and playful ditties spoke to an entire generation that had grown up amidst the backdrop of ill-conceived coup attempts, natural disasters and a slew of Joey De Leon slash Rene Requiestas movies: From the astig to the baduy.  From the cono to the jologs. From the sosyal to the kanto boy. The themes of their songs were as grounded as an electric shock.  Our iskolars ng bayan were not just tarantado, they were the God-kings of katarantaduhan.  (And how inelegantly perfect that Rico J. crooned ‘Ang Huling El Bimbo’ in their tribute album. Rico was probably the only singer who delivered the song with gravitas, which I hear goes very well with cheese).

The themes of their songs didn’t just reverberate among our generation, they registered on the Richter scale. And when it came to dishing out romance Pinoy-style, they captured our sentiments not in the language of Florante at Laura, but that of John en Marsha. For those of us whose love muscles has been dragged through broken softdrink bottles by scheming vixens, their song ‘O Pare Ko’ was our national anthem.  True confessions now: who among you hasn’t warbled this song while in an almost drunken stupor at your neighborhood KTV after being basted by a girl whom you feverishly dedicated six months of your life to (Damn you kikay cheerdancer gossip girl alpha-female with three-feet high hair and padded shoulders)!?    Songs like these gave lyrics to the pain of our cavity-filled love lives.    

You could daresay that our favorite pencil ends unwittingly sired our current rock scene. After all, these state-bred university boys produced songs that crisscrossed musical genres – from Pinoy rock to alternative rock to pop music to reggae to synth rock.  And all their love children owe a debt of gratitude to the band that had the temerity to turn Bahay Kubo into a pop rock song – from the alternative rock banks to the Pogi rockers to the novelty bands and even to the (God forgive them) acoustic acts.   

Six years after the band went pudpod, our God-kings have found themselves living with Mongols, returning as pupils, gorging themselves on sandwiches, making cambio, escaping to a planet filled with garapatas, playing with squids, ushering in a new dawn and racing down Markus highway.  Yet, despite their attempts to blend incestuously into a scene that they themselves had spawned, our fruitcake-crazy generation were still clamoring for their unique brand of kataranduhan to make a comeback.  The tribute album just didn’t cut it.  (Well, except maybe for Rico J.)

So on that muggy Saturday evening, thousands of brainwashed pencil ends converged in the Fort to hear the reunion of their favorite pop machines.  As the indoctrinated streamed into the venue, many of us were still incredulous that the concert was actually going to take place.  This comeback seemed to be as likely as the president stepping down in 2010. After all, the series of events leading up to this one-off affair was melodramatic enough to merit its own teleserye – from an ambiguous break up to conflicting schedules to Ely’s  health problems to disappearing concert sponsors to the passing of Ely’s mom.  How much more melodramatic could this concert get?   

And then they came onstage.  Wow. This was going to be rock and roll hanggang umaga.    

What would be next? A Sharon-Gabby reunion movie?

Yeah, yeah, so some of us can choose to gripe –that the concert was riddled by technical gaffes or that the band failed to exchange witty banter or that they were merely going through the motions.  But, like many of the E-headonists that evening, this reunion concert wasn’t really so much about the band, but more about how the songs of their band told the story of our generation. We’ve all got that primal Eraserheads song that punctuates some point in our mundane young adult lives. Our successes and our failures.  Our break ups and our break downs.  Our loves and our loves we’ve lost.  These were our stories.  And our stories converged one night with our story-tellers. 

Towards the tail end of the band’s first set, Ely bopped his head so vigorously that his shades toppled from his face while he belted (who woulda thunk it?) ‘Shake Your Head’.  His eyes appeared to dilate as he took in the thousands who continued to indulge in his kataranduhan six years after he himself had given it up.  “Ang dami n’yo pala. (There’s so many of you)” Ely quipped.  As the first set burst to a close, Ely dropped to his knees and slumped on his guitar.  After an ominously long twenty minute intermission, Ely’s sister, Lally, swaggered onto the stage and read a hastily prepared message.  Ely was rushed to the hospital.  Ah, the melodrama of our teleserye lives.  How utterly Pinoy.  How utterly Eraserheads. 

So we didn’t get to dance with Paraluman.  We didn’t get to ogle our dirty magasins. We didn’t get to holler ‘letseng pag-ibig ‘to’.  We didn’t even see the boys engage in a group hug.  But so f&%$#@g what.  We had the E-heads on stage, baby.  We got our voices back, even if only for fourteen songs. 

Ely, Raimund, Buddy and Marcus, we’re waiting for the next set.       


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