11.12.2009
A WARDING OFF: THE ROCK AWARDS (AMONG OTHER THINGS)
October 30, 2009; World Trade Center. There was a girl donning a shirt that read “Rock Couture,” and it was somehow symbolic of the fashion gesture that rock has become: somehow there’s a band-themed anything every two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Nowadays, we can read paradoxical things like “Rock Couture”—on a shirt or elsewhere—and shrug it off, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Yeah, I know: there’s the practical mindset that insists that you can’t sustain a good thing by being faithfully underground/punk/indie—but, really, can you blame the laughter-deprived folks who lose sleep when their favorite bands go a tad too popular? It’s like The Beach: a virgin sanctuary so beautiful it has to be kept a secret, or else: murder (or death via gangrenous wound). NU107 has navigated the possibilities (pleasing and displeasing, but who can help it?) and continues to do so with the annual NU Rock Awards. Outside the “awards” mentality, the yearly be-seen shindig can (hopefully, still) be seen as a galvanizing thing for the scene. From any angle, I think it is a harmless ceremony to uphold on a regular basis; after all, you do it for the kids, not the bickering uncles and cousins, so to speak. In other words, what is at stake anyway? A hummable tune is a hummable tune, Song of the Year or not.
That being already said, the 2009 installment—sub-dubbed as High Definition—was replete with gestures and symbols that are, also, mathematical pseudo-truths (i.e., these citations are, after all, balloted). One such breathing symbol: how else can you negotiate the fine line between Pinoy rock’s true “spirit” and its current media-savvy status, if not by throwing in Ramon Bautista (of the “very dangerous” The Ramon Bautista Show) with the goddess-like Iza Calzado (of countless GMA-7 shows) to serve as hosts? Ms. Calzado peaked, in my opinion, when she did her own rendition of the guttural “kupaw” sound (read: Reg Rubio’s intro to “Mr. P.I.G.”); that brought the house down.
And, meanwhile, an earnest gesture: when the glorious Armi Millare went up onstage to receive her Vocalist of the Year award (she was in a tie with Ebe Dancel), she said, “Thank you; I hope things get better,” her calm voice on the brink of breaking (though it didn’t). Millare, along with her family, was one of the countless victims of recent catastrophes on the weather front, and I can only assume she was alluding to the harrowing experience. The band she fronts, Up Dharma Down, also bagged Artist of the Year and Album of the Year, for their sophie Terno outing Bipolar. I wish her the best, and those awards under her (and her band’s) belt seem like a good start. After all, their leap from promising newcomers to above-the-rest world-beaters (and only within a couple of years) was something short of amazing.
Oh, and three-fourths of this obscure (and defunct) band called the Eraserheads were there to help out in the Artist of the Year proceedings.
The other cool string of wins, for me, were Peryodiko’s 1) Best New Artist award, 2) Guitarist of the Year award for Kakoy Legaspi (about friggin’ time!), and 3) the unarguable Producer of the Year triumph for the good teacher, Robin Rivera. I sometimes get into extended debates (with my best friends) over Peryodiko, whose no-frills approach I personally favor over the laborious denseness of most of recorded rock today. If you put Vin Dancel in a sort of Buffalo Springfield-Neil Young-Crazy Horse continuum, I’d dare say he’s tangoing along all three incarnations: a folkie at heart, but playing a distorted Telecaster. And speaking of no-frills, it was a joy to watch those goons from The Lowtechs perform during pre-show. I was rooting for them for Best New Artist, too (balimbing confessions, anyone?). It’s a thrill to think that hard-line D.I.Y.-type work is still occasionally rewarded.
Thought: if this were a Palanca year, it’d be like that year Paolo Manalo won First Place for Poetry for his zeitgeisty volume Jolography.
But of course, there’s also a reason why seasoned masters are seasoned masters: because they are. Rico Blanco’s “Antukin”—vintage ‘Maya melodiousness and smart-quirky lyricism, minus the pageantry of “Yugto”—went away as Song of the Year. The moving tribute to the late, great Francis Magalona, posthumously honoring him as Hall of Fame awardee, had his widow Pia accepting the citation in his behalf, and his son Elmo (with an all-star Ely Buendia-helmed cast in tow) performing in his stead. In the performances department, meanwhile, there’s virtually nothing that can top a Razorback appearance. As surely as dilettante-artistes will try to reinvent the wheel on every given turn, bare-bones rock in the tradition of Kevin Roy and Company, splendid in its ballsy traditionalism, will always delight.
As a third serious storm was making seemingly empty threats across the night sky, a different storm persisted indoors at the WTC (and, yes, this is not the first time I’m making this analogy). The NU Rock Awards have always promised spectacle, and it does know how to deliver on a promise. Peaks on the “spectacle” front were, for my money, Pedicab’s zombie-rrific turn onstage (bloodied body parts, dark encircled eyes, tattered aswang chic, Raimund Marasigan’s uber-fun keytar) and Juan Pablo Dream’s ’60-era Top of the Pops-style caged dancers.
One the things I loved the best about the NU RA, when it was just starting out, was the idea of the instrumentalist citations. Those, for me, were really special. As far as I know, AWIT, et al. does not honor axemen and skinsmen—not their fault, because pop doesn’t pretend to care about these things anyway. Anyway, NU decided early on that they were going to honor licks and chops, and this is something I have always respected, notwithstanding occasional disagreements with their choices. Apart from the criminally talented Kakoy Legaspi, Armi Millare, and Ebe Dancel, all of whom I’ve mentioned in passing earlier, I also find myself nodding along to Allan Bordeos’s Drummer of the Year and Ivan Garcia’s Bassist of the Year wins. I’m not the biggest Kamikazee fan (though I’ve always found their singer ruthlessly funny in a kanto-boy way), but I know enough: Bordeos provides much of the mass (musical, not physical) that the comic band enjoys, especially during live shows. As for the low-notes meister of Hilera, his is a fresh (and refreshing) approach to rock-bass playing, and I’m not just saying that simply because he sports an upright (although it does provide him with a tonal edge).
All in all, hopefully nobody went home in tears, or with a mad-eyed desire to start a new religion. Because, after all, it’s only rock ‘n’ roll.
But, fuck, I like it.
Read about the official announcement over at the official NU107 website, which is over here. Photos used with kind permission, courtesy of NU107. Visit the rest of the official photo set here.
