(L-R) Me, Jett Pangan, JB Leonor, Kenneth Ilagan (Truefaith), Ricci Gurango (Hungry Young Poets, Mojofly)

New wave has got to be my unconscious genre.  I was born in the late eighties, so most of the music I remember from my earliest living memory is a combination of new wave radio hits and clumsily spurned grunge.

Growing up, I never knew The Dawn but when I did my homework prior to my interview I immediately recognised their songs.  Most probably, the only reason I would ever get the chance to hear their music is if someone older than myself had been picking the tunes on the radio and I just happened to be in the same room at that time.  The night before the interview, I sent everyone on my phonebook ages 30 up to see if any of them knew the band.  I get an urgent reply from my lawyer, our veterenarian, an engineer, so on.  People of considerable stature.  This is the generation the band sung to.  And so as someone who was barely born at the cusp of their prime, my Filipino music history was enriched and had a brush up last friday with The Dawn.

Unfortunately, my record of the said interview was of such poor quality I wouldn’t dare upload it to grate your ears. Instead, I wrote a transcript of the higlights of the interview that fans might appreciate.  Viola.

I see we have a couple of powerhouse sessionists that’s Kenneth of True Faith and Ricci of Mojofly. How come Buddy and Francis couldn’t make it?

(Jett) It’s really a coincidence because Buddy’s wife is having her graduation from her Masters today and Francis is taking a leave from the band.  Really busy guy.

You’ve been a band for more than 20 years.  Five of those years you spent in hiatus, did you ever think at that point when you first disbanded that hey, this is it?

(Jett) I really did think that that was it for us.  We were just fatigued and picked up on the new trends where we really didn’t fit.

All of you did several side projects during that time and we’re doing well on your own, how did it occur to you to have a reunion?

(JB) I just wanted to play the drums again.  And I thought why should I be playing with anyone else when we had these guys here?  I called Jett, Caloy, Kiko and even Atsushi.  I just wanted to play music again, and you know it was a good thing to have a breather to have dealt with all the clutter we’ve accumulated, because after that it was just about the music.

I want to talk about your newest album The later half  of the day and noticed a number of new wave covers.  Some of your old songs have been “jazzed up”, I would say, to a point they are distinctively mellowed from the originals.  How did you come up with that?

(JB) We wanted to do something rock bands never do, at least in the Philippines.  Because normally, we want our music loud.  But we agreed to push through with the concept anyway, did a series of shows in Makati, in Greenbelt to be exact, and they proved very successful.  I thought people were going to thrash it. (Laughs) But people flocked it, they actually loved it.  We did five or six more shows and then we decided, it made sense to make an album out of it.  Surprisingly it was selling very well.  Basically putting old songs in a new way, that’s what new wave’s all about.

What was the idea behind the movie based on your band called Tulad ng dati?  Did Mike just approach you one day?

(Jett) Oh yes, definitely.  He’s a big fan of the band.  He worked for us shooting another video, but he wasn’t directing.  He was like just watching there.  Really anticipating the chance to talk us because he had this idea for a long time to come up with a film about our band.  One day, we borrowed a video camera and did it.  It was just refreshing working with Mike because he’s very passionate about film and the story.  He had been developing it for years, made us read the script and we talked about it, and we put in our input.  By the way, the film won Best Film in Cinemalaya 2008 and that was just an utter surprise.  Then it was a flurry of opportunities for the band.  We even had a musical based on our songs.

I posted a notice online to see if any of your fans would chime in with their questions for you.  I have one here that is a bit peculiar, it’s from Mickeyboy:  If you were stuck in an island, how did you get there?

(Laughs) (JB) That’s a really profound existential question! An island, huh.  It depends how I got there.  What’s my favorite mode of transportation?

(Jett) I know what’s your favorite mode…

(Laughs) (JB) Well, really I’m trying to come up with a wholesome image here.  Say, I got there on my imaginary yatch packed with hot chicks!  But there you go.

I have another one here from a fan named Cheska, she asks:  Do you guys have any openings?

(JB) Are we talking about a physiological opening? (Laughs)

But more to the point, I understand that you wanted a female vocals initially.  JB, you were there with Ted Diaz when you formed the band.  I know about this story but I want to hear it from you.

(JB) Actually, it was Ted’s idea to get a female vocalist, whereas I, you know, I’m good with anything.  And so this guy (points at Jett) shows up with a girl who he was helping out and she had a hard time singing.  So he was demonstratively helping her out and when he sung on the mic he just blew away the place into high heavens!  You Jett, you really broke those speakers.

(Jett) Which reminds me, I haven’t paid for their damaged goods. (Laughs)

I have here a question from Ria, how did you guys manage to stay together for a long time?

(Jett) Wow. It’s all about the music.  We never imagined getting this far.  Plus, we’re all in a way educated enough not to get in to physically hurting each other when we fight. Basta, music is always number one.

My friend Blogie wants to ask you guys, how did you get the strength to move on after Teddy passed away?

(Jett) That’s a very good question, because at that time, we felt there was no band without Teddy.  And so we were like, let’s not talk about it, let’s bury our friend first and talk about the band later.  We wanted time to mourn because we didn’t just lose a bandmate, we also lost a friend.

(JB) So we asked ourselves, if Teddy could speak to us now what would he say? Were we just going to let up? He’ll probably say, “You wimps!” if we didn’t let the band go on.

You said earlier that you’re currently recording a new album.  Tell us what’s new with The Dawn.

(Jett) We have a new one coming up this June or July, it’s a lot louder than the album we released in 2008.  We also have a new video that will be showing on MYX.  It’s called Love will set us free.

(JB) I want to talk about the video briefly, the director’s cut that is.  It’s set in a museum, and there is this statue in the middle of it of two beautiful women, naked, and are embraced.  As the video progresses, the mold on the statue gradually washes away.  And at the end of it, they walk away from the Museum. Love will set us free.

(Jett) We’re still getting it through MTRCB.  So it’s uncertain yet that it will actually be shown on public television.  They are seriously contemplating on giving it an X-rating!  I mean, can you imagine our band being x-rated?

(JB) Good luck to that.

The movie The Wackness starring Josh Peck and Ben Kingsley was so nostalgic.  It might be a classic Sundance bleeding heart movie, but you could easily forgive the theme when you listen to the music featured on the film.  It was the music of 1994 – such a great year for music, championing in that time are greats like A tribe called Quest and even The Smashing Pumpkins who really shook the scene with the release of Siamese Dream, which was in my opinion the best album they released.

But let’s talk about the state of Hip-hop now. The truth is, I’m a snob when it comes to mainstream Top 40 Rap, Hip-hop and RnB, if you could call it that.  It all began when these Hip-hop artists wanted to sound more like SoSoDef.   Suddenly, Hip-hop wasn’t soul music anymore, or talked about the harsh realities of racism and ghetto violence.  It wasn’t the music that we used to call in the 90’s as Urban.  The tripe you hear from Hip-hop these days are about grinding, girls on the side, car upgrades and partying.   Not that these wouldn’t count for realities, but where’s the depth?

I knew that the death of Tupac changed the face of hip-hop.  Kanye West is trying to revive part of the glory that belonged to that great era of Urban, but he doesn’t have the exquisite rhyme of old school artists nor enough humility to really overcome the insipidness of the mainstream that riddles his exposure. We can’t identify deep issues from the likes of new hip-hop artists like Eminem or Nelly or T-Pain.

The groups who managed to resist the trend of materialism that is evident in most Hip-hop music have disappeared in the background of the multimedia spectacularism, simply because they choose not to.  If you’re attentive enough, you realise that music pundits harp about them, appealing to everyone’s music sensibility.  But strangely, there’s just not enough promotion: most of the MTV generation just doesn’t buy in to that kind of music anymore.   The mainstream music entices its lot with people’s vanity and hype not their intelligence.

The Roots are one of those artists who have stood their ground.  In 2002, they released an album entitled Phrenology. Phrenology is the pseudo science of assessing the figure of someone’s head to determine their intelligence – an idea which used to justify racism.

Peace out.

The Roots – The Seed [Download] [Lyrics]

Photo courtesy of http://morofilm.blogspot.com

My friend Jun Macarambon, who co-wrote “A step for my dream” had their film officially selected in this year’s Cinemalaya, inevitably the most prestigious film festival in the Philippines. I haven’t seen the film myself, but the fact that it made it to the festival should keep everyone’s heads up. It was directed by Monalayn Labado, also a Mindanawon. Hopefully, their producer Teng Mangansakan II, also a documentary filmmaker from Mindanao, would allow to screen the said film for this upcoming Mindanao Film Festival for everyone to see. Lately, the influx of critical Mindanao filmmakers shaking the national and international scene have grown since, perhaps, Lav Diaz. Other films to watchout for that are made by a Mindanao filmmaker include Sherad Anthony Sanchez’s film (director of Huling Balyan ng Buhi) “Imburnal”, which was recently shot in some parts of Bankerohan and Dumalag. It is an entry for this year’s Cinema One Originals. Also, an advocacy film was recently made entitled, “Hunghong sa yuta” which has already run on local cinemas. Noticeably, most of our fresh breed of filmmakers have done stories on Mindanao, treating these stories with a fair sense of what Mindanao truly feels like.

In an interview, Mangansakan mentioned a trend in the past of outsiders making stories about us with an unnerving sort of unfamiliarity, even dettachment. I once watched a 1980 Eddie Romero epic (three and half hours long) film entitled, “Aguila” starring Fernando Poe Jr., Christopher de Leon, Eddie Garcia among other star studs, and the film had vague images of Mindanao as the backdrop of where Fernando Poe eventually disappeared to. It portrays Mindanao as somewhat the ideal place to get lost in, a place ridden with rebels. Although, the rather unbalanced portrayal of Mindanao is for the overall cinematic effect or part of how it was written but that’s precisely how it’s just not enough for non-Mindanawons to describe what Mindanao is like. Even National Media makes me cringe at all the news they run about the region. Whereas that is my advocacy, all strifes of artistic forms or self-determining movements in Mindanao have been hampered by the fact that there isn’t ENOUGH support from the locale, or at least not too many are aware that it needs support. I hope you will show yours.

So you have Leonardo di Caprio on one hand and the gorgeous Jennifer Connelly on the other who adds to your staple Hollywood aesthetically-pleasing tandem. Except, they’re not as romantic, you know. They didn’t kiss, they most certainly didn’t get jiggy and the plus part is that Leonardo owes a lot of his charm to his being an asshole. It would have been great if the romance unfolded with the two retaining that kind of bullheadedness. The director, I assume, said cut somewhere just when they’re intense enough to finally have closure over some “things left unsaid”. But really, what am I complaining about?

Sorry to crack your ideal scenario here, but seriously: Blood Diamonds is as cheesy as mozarella. They run around Africa after some Diamond with the wits of a headless chicken then they decide to throw lines reminiscent of Darth Vader’s “I am your father” and top it all off with that memorable acronym: T.I.A. Come on!!! T.I.A. can mean This Is America…or This Is Australia (which on some parts actually have red soil) but what I have to say T.I.A. ought to mean is Take It, Asshole. Yeah, that’s the spirit. Just take the friggin’ diamond and get on with your lives, okay? (And where was I?) Now, you can’t expect to be within a crossfire and be able to have that profound moment of realization inbetween. And what’s worse is, they forget that people are shooting guns for a moment just so they can stare at each other and say the things to each other you’d hear in a soap opera.

Plus, if you have an eye pastry serving of Mr. Di Caprio and Ms. Connelly in the same movie, you might as well exhaust their millions-of-dollars worth of paycheck and get them together for some serious sentimentalist treat. Hollywood is all about taking your cake and eating it, right? You have got to do better than a last phone call. That was heart breaking but, you know, you let the African dude carry you a considerable distance up a mountain, what gives?

Please, please, please, don’t tell me the African dude turned in to an altruist in the end and started the whole wave of getting people to stop buying “conflict-free” diamonds. Ahem.

“Excuse me, I see a lot of conflict in this diamond. Are you absolutely sure it’s conflict-free?”

“Yes.”

“I’m insisting it ought to be conflict-free!”

“It is conflict free!” (Jeweller doesn’t even know where the stupid diamond came from…)

“Okay…”

(And imagine that somewhere in Africa, someone found the next conflict-trodden diamond. Wahoo! On to Tiffanys.)

He has the knack for it. He wobbles like a drunkard and yet he manages to get from point A to point B (in less time than expected, at that). Plus, he possesses this uncanny flexibility which is native in all those who are pilates-pros. Pirates learn pilates, how’s that?

(Read: Potential spoilers) Aside from Johnny Depp, everyone else seemed so blah. Kiera you’re hot but honey, you don’t look too happy when you were “reunited” with Orlando. What about you, Orlando? What happened? God, if you weren’t so yummy I would have hacked you senseless with a medieval axe. What’s up with all the Alas!-you’re-my-long-lost-father and I-will-save-you-because-daddy-you-were-gone-for-so-long-and-yet-I-love-you theme, which unconsciously alludes to Star Wars? And why can people like Kate Bosworth date him and rub torsos with Brandon Routh at the same time? The world is unfair! Give me back my money!

Yes, we see all the faces were looking for from this year’s input of Pirates of the Carribean (Dead man’s chest) but I had to ask really, why bring in Geoffrey Rush at the end of the movie when we all needed that slob from the start? Would have made things more interesting. I bet he would have blown the heads off those Cannibals, who are incidentally low in attention span, instead of those “pirates” running around the island. Come back and fight, cowards! Do that “Harr!” thing you do. I need sword fight. The only sword fight worth mentioning was when the three “men” in the movie fight over someone’s “heart”. It doesn’t sound right! Sword fight that’s not right? Okay, okay, if I have to give ‘em some credit, I did appreciate some of the antics. Kiera acting like a bimbo, throwing stones at Orlando and Jack and that (forgettable) other guy while they fight. The pirate and his gallivant eye, (as in gallivant), period. The fuzzy feeling you get when you see those giant tentacles flashing at the silver screen. Sitting next to this guy who laughs like a girl so you end up laughing too. Having to see Orlando’s precious, precious back get whipped. (I’m thinking S&M, whohoo!) And a whole lot more.

That’s Hollywood highway-robbing right there, folks. Oh, I can’t wait for the next installment.

Okay, I did get to see them when I was in Manila but like what I keep saying to people, there’s nothing like having it live. It’s like playing sports. You get all sweaty and energized that you come out of the gig jumpy or drained. Either way, it’s a good feeling.

So last week, I wallowed in self-pity by finally buying their album. I’m a bit partial to the tracks written in English, but songs like Pag-agos are too “involved” in my life to ignore. Heh. Next topic…

Disclaimer – Superman Spoilers: If Bryan Singer is as gay as they say he is, he probably worked too well with Brandon Routh. For me, Brandon plays Superman as an eye candy because that aside, we tend to raise some crucial questions about his heroic characterization, especially on this whole concept of being “man of steel” – which I incidentally, don’t get. Does it mean that if you’re a man of steal, so is your spandex costume? (You’ll realize that one of the most notable scenes from that movie is when Superman was being fired at by a gattling gun.) Why are there no holes on his costume after that? And why was it so easy to take it off when Superman was in the hospital? (The theory goes, there’s probably a zipper at the back.)

Singer hints to a sequel by introducing Superman’s son. To this, I can only say two things: 1.) He’s not too cute, and 2.) How did he happen? Let’s dwell on the second notion more since it calls for more immediate attention. Again, fans ask: How did Superman do it with Louis Lane? When I was in Manila, a friend posed a similar question: If Superman and Louis Lane made love, would it rip Louis Lane apart? It sounds plausible. To be a bit more imaginative about it, by the time Louis Lane’s “done”, Super’s probably looking back at her with a relaxed look. Then again, you’d have to consider the possibility that it takes a great amount of control for Superman to do his “normal” tasks, i.e. putting on his coat, hugging his mom or even, opening beer bottles. Perhaps, when they were making love he had taken the same conscious effort to keep that control. Ladies and gentlemen, this is where I insert my opinion that: if Superman can be as “normal” as he wants to be, and human beings transform into “monsters” when they make love; therefore, Superman tends to become a monster when he makes love. Yes, Louis Lane would have to be left in pieces by then.

Hands up, I loved that movie nontheless. How couldn’t you? Heroes were heroes, and villains were villains. It may not have Kevin Spacey’s oscar-winning performance in American Beauty but I still love the way he’s bratty in that movie. Parker Posey is read: snark shark. I love her. I really, really do. Kate Bosworth portrays a seemingly more pragmatic and more jaded Louis Lane. A lot of critics think it’s bad acting, I on the other hand say, in this case, bad acting works. She’s lousy and not too inclined to shrieking – isn’t that more realistic? (If I were Louis Lane at that stage, I’d probably think Superman was a jerk and would therefore start smoking.) And what about Routh? Brandon, Brandon Routh. I’ll burn our house down and slaughter an elephant just so he would save me. Whoops, Calamity.

I deserve entertainment, people.