02.16.2009
ROBIN RIVERA: GATEKEEPER
STEP INSIDE THE STUDIO WITH THE ERASERHEADS AS THEIR LONG-TIME RECORD PRODUCER ANNOTATES (Part 1 of 2 parts)
It has been said over: looks can be deceiving.
His dark blue shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes were hardly a give-away. The three stripes on his shirt's shoulders, though a vague reminder of the fashion sense of his most popular clients to date, could of course be worn by anyone. His graying hair and faintly bloodshot eyes gave him an intense air about him, although, really, he could have just been an intense accountant on his Mediterranean-cuisine break. When Robin Rivera speaks, still, he's more professorial than producerly. But he is both: an art studies professor at the premiere state university, and, well, the celebrated producer of the Eraserheads' albums. What record producers do, it seems, is something people never fully grasped, but it could be comparable to a musical performance in itself. While his clients typically wielded guitars and drums, Rivera wielded entire studios and captained the ship, so to speak. Without record producers, says Guardian writer Graeme Thomson, “U2 would probably still sound like The Alarm.”
Thomson, however, was alluding to the “knob-twiddlers,” and Rivera has proven that he is no mere engineer gallivanting as producer. “In Pop U, I'd already shown them the basic procedures. Apart from being their liaison [to the studio engineer], it was also my objective to teach them how it's done: 'This is how to set up an agenda.' 'This is how to arrange your tracking.' 'This is how to make your schedule.' 'This is how you record a guitar,'” the good professor shared in a single sustained breath, adding, “Because I'm a teacher—you can't take that away from me—tinuruan ko sila how it's done—'I want you to learn this.' To me, I also had a pedagogical objective. I wanted them to be able to do it on their own, eventually.” Indeed, as early as Cutterpillow, the 'Heads would dabble in producing other bands themselves. When the 'Heads wrapped up each session for their third album around suppertime, Ely Buendia and Raymund Marasigan would stay behind to produce what would become Sugar Hiccup's Oracle. “Okay, you're a big hit now, but what are you gonna do after?,” Sir Robin would prod them in the early days. “Heaven knows how long they would have lasted as stars, and thank God they learned, very quickly. They did a really good job on that album [Oracle]. That was a wonderful album. Apparently, I did the right thing,” the producer visibly beamed with pride.
Before his “students” were able to fully fend for themselves, however, Robin would be their full-time mentor. It was perhaps the pedagogue in him which prompted the studio ethic he adopted with the boys, and, unlike popular producers like Phil Spector (who worked with John Lennon) or, say, someone like Brendan O' Brien (who produced the early Stone Temple Pilots records), he would rather step back unless needed and let the children mill around in their high-tech playpen. “I worked with the 'Heads prior to [Ultraelectromagneticpop!]. While they were working on Ultra [which was produced by Ed Formoso], Raymund would come to me and ask for my advice. In my case, though, I got called by BMG. Apparently, the band lobbied that I be their producer,” the professor recounted. Rivera had no superstars in his studio CV, and, in the past, he recorded non-commercial material—classical, folk, choral—in pretty much the same manner Beatles producer George Martin did no rock prior to the Fab Four (he did comic and novelty recordings). “I think it was just [for] one song first ['Wating'], to 'test-drive' me—because the label didn't know who the hell I was,” Rivera began. “Before I knew it, I was called back to produce what became Circus. The deal was that I didn't want [to have] anything to do with the budget. Basta, sa akin, it was logistical: to set up the studio, help them creatively, help them technologically.”
Clearly, Rivera wasn't out to make himself heard or felt in these records. His design involved one thing and one thing only: record the Eraserheads and make them sound like a band playing on a good day. “The music was theirs, basically. The sound of the recordings? Maybe I had a part in it—maybe. The important thing to me was, if they asked me, 'We wanna do this, sir,' my job was to find a way to do it, to find a way to get it done—whether it was musically or logistically. I'd find a way so they can execute what's in their heads,” Rivera further explained, adding, “I wanted to be good friends with them. I wasn't looking to be an uncle or a father figure or a father-confessor. That's not my style, eh. I think naman that they considered me as that; marami naman kaming pinagsamahan, but it's all in the studio.” Slowly, their relationship grew from a rigid mentorship to a more intimate brand of camaraderie. Gradually, the “Sir” in “Sir Robin” was dropped, and a friendship rooted in studio geekery was forged. And when Robin gave, he gave his all: “When I was recording them, I stopped listening to the albums of the other local bands. I stopped altogether, because I didn't want to compare them to anyone. I wanted them to sound different, and the only way to do that was to not listen to the other recordings.” At the height of the insane 90s band boom, this was a most difficult undertaking, judging from the steady influx of local band material—Teeth, Rivermaya, Yano, Color It Red, Parokya ni Edgar—but Robin, true to his word, shrugged them all off and stayed with the 'Heads.
“Kami sa Eraserheads, we used a lot of studio time, but we worked our asses off. We never wasted any time whatsoever. Pagpasok namin sa studio, talagang—'Aaah!'—full speed ahead kami. And I was rather proud of that,” Rivera described. Often conducting himself like he would conduct a class, he passed out “homework” to the boys and often began a studio day saying, “This is what we're doing today, and by God, we're not gonna leave until we're finished.” More than looking out after the boys, Rivera was also adamant to discover new recording terrain, with, certainly, the rest of the music industry in mind. In the beginning, he felt that, despite the Eraserheads’ industrious nature, “We could [still] use more time, especially for developing new techniques. Because, if you don't have room for experimentation, you're [bound to] do the same thing. Everyone will benefit eventually, 'yung buong industriya.” And it did: when they wrapped up work on Aloha Milkyway in under two weeks, the Eraserheads' studio setup—like some religious artifact—was left untouched, so the others can marvel, and, hopefully, benefit. To this day, some of the studio sleights-of-hand they discovered in the process are still being used. “All the recordings that [engineer] Angee [Rozul] did after that project—he was able to use those techniques. I was very happy for him. Because of that, the way bands were recorded, in some ways, changed. That was a very challenging project. We didn't want to sound like the usual. The three [new] songs there didn't sound like anything we've ever done before. It changed the industry somewhat; that's what I'm very happy about.”
*Photo of Robin Rivera by Vin Dancel, whose self-titled debut album with Peryodiko was also produced by the former.
TAGS: Eraserheads Ely Buendia Raimund Marasigan Buddy Zabala Marcus Adoro
