My apologies, my apologies! I haven’t updated in the longest time but you have to forgive me if I have to attend to the little people who amuse me outside this blogosphere. I was in Kadayawan last week having fun and was very, very busy getting - shall we say - intoxicated by the festival high. Of course, I watched Up Dharma Down up at Jack’s ridge, as if seeing them once wasn’t enough to make me happy. But I do say kudos to the opening acts, especially The Chicha Rones. They’re a bunch of kids from Ateneo de Davao. And hey, I’m plugging for the sake of plugging because they are pretty good. At this point though, I can only say that I’d love to see more originals from them.
And while I’m on that note, what is up with Go Larry Go lately? I haven’t seen them around, at least not as frequent as before. (PLUS, they ditched the UDD gig!) Way back, they did an opening act for Urbandub at Orange Grove which I felt was one of the best underground gigs that had ever taken place in Davao. I miss False Alarm, too. (Nax and his career, sheesh.) And where are you Nadine si Ate? To the vocalist: Bryan, is law school really sucking you in to that vortex of the serious?
I can’t put my finger on it but the rock scene in Davao is pretty immense if we give them enough credit. I’m reluctant to admit that Manila music is a valid subgenre given as to how it does have a distinct sound that just screams Manilacentricism. Because it makes me think: what about Davao music? Do we have a distinct voice to begin with? I just think Cynthia Alexander or Joey Ayala when I hear the word Davao and attach it to the whole music + geography idea. Inasmuch as there was an appreciable attempt from Eric Gancio to establish a community of Davao musical artists, I haven’t felt its waves yet. Show us some love people! Support the natives.
Kids, any gigs lately?
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I’m re-appreciating the Cardigans.
If you want me, I’m your country. (From their 2003 album, Long Gone Before Daylight - You’re the storm)
Inter-racial much?
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I’ll be leaving for Butuan this weekend, and I believe that’ll close the entire deal about my being busy. Afterwhich, perhaps I can shift my priorities to…say that band I was yapping about. I’m not sure if I still have his contact number.
But damn, my fingers are itchy.
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My DJ friend Meeko introduced Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill acoustic album which commemorated the 10th anniversary of her 13-tracked album that once sold 30 million, and once won her a Grammy. (Who wouldn’t want to commemorate that?) It doesn’t have the same edgy and angsty tone to Alanis, but she’s 30-something now so what’s there to be angsty about eh? I’m sure the now more mature Alanis fans will love this mellower rendition of the same old songs we all knew her for. She sings Ironic, more painfully, (I promise, it sounds more ironic than the original and even the famous unplugged version) and with some slight alterations on the “Ironic” punch lines. Where was I when this was released in 2005? Y’all ought to buy this because we’re all way overdue. We miss female artists like Alanis.
And speaking of which, I miss Jewel too. What happened to her? After that suicide move (releasing her single Intuition, which I assure you tells us a lot about her intuition - a bad one), she’s gone. We miss Jewel’s contemplative and poetique songs like Hands, Foolish games, I was meant for you, etc.
Follow your heart, your intuition, she once sang. In your case honey, you oughta use your brain sometimes.
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New stuff. Some Daring Vids I noticed: One by Sarah McLachlan. This $150,000 budget video, which incidentally cost $15 only. (Whereas the rest of the money went to charity.) Another by Alanis Morissette, a music video of her single “Crazy”, illustrating the neurotic nature of female same-sex relationships. (Ahem. Wow, I can only say kudos to what Brokeback Mountain did for the world.) Daring vids for today’s kids.
For the OPM scene, on the other hand, you have Barbie Almalbis and Kitchie Nadal on the same screen singing together. This could mean either a boost or a desication of their careers, my darlings. I used to be a big fan of the two and now that they’ve gone mainstream (not that there’s anything wrong with it, as long as you don’t purposefully alter what’s already good about your music), I think I’m slowly but surely losing my musical respect for them. Yes, I know they still have water tight arrangements but it all seems so contrived. You’ll see what I’m talking about if you’ll compare their songs back then and now. When Barbie was still with Hungry Young Poets and the earlier years of Barbie’s Cradle, she composed superb songs like Firewoman, Deep, Goodnight, Money for food, Dark and I’m lonely, Sleep…ack! So much more. Now what do you have? You have that smile, smile thing and that other song for Nescafe. See! I don’t even remember their friggin titles. As for Kitchie, she was so much better with Mojofly. Memorable tracks like Another day will never come out on another day seeing as how she runs the shows. Kitchie, can you make more songs like Run, pretty please? Please?
If you ask me what I think, I don’t like how the 2000 mainstream music scene is going. But we have got to mark this decade with something distinct aside from the dawn of such daring videos. One may have noticed that each decade had its own innovation. 70’s for funk and retro, 80’s for New wave, and then 90’s for pop as we know it, to name a few. Now we ought to ask: What is so different about the musical age of 2000? Is it a hodgepodge of musical genres evolved? Or is it a deconstruction of all of it? Worse: Could it be a desication of these genres? The way I see it, I’m more inclined to indie and older tunes since they’re more loyal to making music out of integrity not for popularity. As Gabriel Marcel would put it, we have to fear the day when opinions (especially those concerning the “palace of art”, and music in this sense) are easily swayed by popular vote.
I don’t know with you, reader. Do you ever see this happening?
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It felt like 80’s today, and paradoxically, I didn’t feel too young. This morning, I discovered my first white hair followed by not hitting it off too well with an old schoolmate who “confronted” me because I “interfered” with her affairs, i.e. correct her grammatical lapses in a friendster message. A lot of people will be on my side on the matter, I’m sure.
I was brain dead for a while.
In other news, I heard Styx on the radio while I was hanging outside school. I think they have these afternoon recall sessions and stuff, which made me think about the music of the past few decades. Okay, I’m not exactly an 80’s person, and I happen to be very selective when it comes to this particular decade especially since my inclinations are anything but pop. You’d catch me listening to The Cure, The Smiths (were they even 80’s?), some U2 and some glam rock, i.e. Aerosmith. This is almost ridiculous when you think about it, how my musical background goes. Whereas other 80’s kids were partial to pop music by the dawn of the 90’s (ala Janet Jackson, perhaps?), I was listening to my older brother playing Metallica’s Master of Puppets album and some Megadeath.
What were the sounds of your childhood?
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