Ten years since Vin Dancel (Twisted Halo), Ene Lagunzad (manager for the erstwhile Dicta License), and their mighty-fine posse of then-marginalized music outlaws decided to take matters into their own hands and book a hugely unpopular hump night at Freedom Bar in 2001 for themselves. There was no murder involved (I guess “taking matters into their own hands” was a bit of a hyperbole) and they—Halo, Dicta, and the femme fatales of Fatal Posporos—didn’t necessarily make a killing at the gate, but they killed onstage, and that at-first-odd gesture of self-preservation is legitimized through the overwhelming love and support showed by people other than the core group and their familiars over the succeeding years. That initial Wednesday nightcap wasn’t so bad an idea, obviously, and Admit One became the grand-daddy of all “production” gigs, no easy feat when it merely tailed at the heels of older series shows such as Sunday Grabe Sunday. It was, in a nutshell, a showcase of the core bands (apart from the ones already mentioned, Sugarfree, Happy Meals, Cambio, etc.) and the friends they met along the way. It also became a matter of live curatorship, if you may, whenever the mercenaries of Admit One would stumble upon a young unsigned band elsewhere and bring them to the stage they have decorated with fine, emerging music. These acts went from well-kept secrets to embraced-by-a-sizable-few to huge-in-their-own-way, and I guess that barometer is still being continuously re-calibrated as we speak. A decade after, these series shows have become the norm somehow; anyone with an Internet connection can make new musical “discoveries” as frequently as they go to the loo; and the need for curators and elder indie statesmen and such is perhaps a thing of yesterday. Some of the indies got signed and no longer need help booking shows; some started mounting shows of their own; kids on the lookout for newer stuff looked elsewhere. They might not know what Admit One is, was, or what it meant, but after the show (dubbed as Admit Once and For All) regaled saGuijo and Freedom Bar audiences for the last two times, they might hear the faint echoes of their ates and kuyas moping and moaning about how there’ll never be another like it. (Aldus Santos)

Image by Adrian Arcega. Meanwhile, for yet another installment of “Pulse + Impulse,” Vin Dancel and Jason Caballa both look back on a decade of Admit One. Music excerpts used with artist permission. “Breakable” and “Miron” by Twisted Halo Philippine Copyright 2003 Guilty Pleasure Records.

There is something to be said of one art form influencing another, of apples and oranges practically shaping each other’s germination, each other’s fruition, if you may (pun obviously intended). I was reading the Jonathan Lethem-edited nonfic anthology Lit Riffs the other day, and it poses an interesting proposition: writers cover the songs they love, and by that I don’t mean writers suddenly taking up the electric guitar or miserably failing at finely-nuanced four-part harmonies; I mean writers doing renditions of these numbers using their axe of choice: the pen (or, well, the digital word processor). Neil Strauss, in his intro to the same book, stresses that songs inspire non-musical art all the time, with film being, perhaps, the biggest culprit (just look at the countless movies Hollywood churns out that adopt song titles as their own). Not much, however, apart from the more obvious—Lord of the Rings’ influence on Zep, for instance, or Patti Smith’s material being intertwined with the photography of friend Robert Mapplethorpe—can be said of non-songs informing the creation of songs. It is quite akin to the Filipino idea of paglilihi: how the non-human, the supernatural even, has a stake on the outcome of a human birthing. This imbalance prompted the creation of Lit Riffs (though, admittedly, music journo Lester Bangs already “covered” Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” before), and this same imbalance prompted me to ask some of my musician friends which, if any, non-musical pieces drove them to write music.­­

Arnold Arre: The Mythology Class

Peryodiko’s “Milenyo” captures that calm-after-the-storm feeling more succinctly and more effectively than any other song could. It does talk about the storm, yes, but songwriter Vin Dancel could have also been thinking of the art and fiction of National Book Awards winner Arnold Arre. “I wrote ‘Milenyo’ after reading Arnold Arre’s The Mythology Class. There was something about how Arnold told his story that touched me, man. It was exciting and engaging; it was also poignant yet very hopeful. It was so Pinoy,” Dancel explains.

Steve Martin: The Pleasure of My Company

With killer debut Themesongs and a follow-up that’s rearing to be even more colorful and multifarious, one wonders where the songwriters of Ang Bandang Shirley get their creative inspiration. Well, we’d be right if we say the various indie and punk bands they listen to and openly support, but we’d be grossly understating matters if we suggest it’s just that. Singer Selena Salang clues us in on the book that informed the writing of “Glacier,” a forthcoming track. “I loved the title of Steve Martin’s [The] Pleasure of My Company so much that I made it a line in [the] chorus […]. I just felt that it was a phrase that not many people used today when in fact it perfectly describes how we hope we are perceived by other people: that it’s a pleasure to be in our company,” she says, adding, “The book itself was about someone odd, someone not many people would think would be fun to be around, but I relished the idea that the persona in my song was strange, too, and it would be great if someone special could find his/her company pleasurable.” In any case, one can just picture Salang’s swoon-worthy croons inspiring Mr. Martin (or any author) back.

Luis Buñuel with Salvador Dali: Un Chien Andalou; Ridley Scott: Blade Runner

A man who once named a band of his after a sleeper of a David Lynch movie would, expectedly, have film in his creative sphere. Like the Pixies’ “Debaser,” Ely Buendia’s “Andalusian Dog” (from the Eraserheads’ Sticker Happy) directly references Buñuel and Dali’s Un Chien Andalou—Frank Black in his barking chorus, Buendia in his title, which is pretty much a direct translation of the film’s name, sans the article “un” (“an” in English). Apart from the mirror titling, Buendia also breaks out of the narrative form he was first associated with, this time crafting something more stream-of-consciousness, which is, of course, more in keeping with the surrealist mould in which Buñuel’s opus is crafted in:

Meanwhile, “Beautiful Machines” (credited to Buendia, Diane Ventura, and Jerome Velasco) first began as a reflection on Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Curiously, the song’s persona—in this instance vocally rendered by Ventura—exudes a coldness that’s reminiscent of the “replicants” in the movie, perhaps a Rachael-like indifference, crossed with and a Pris-like feistiness. “Through all the circuitry, I find a face.” Indeed.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that film has influenced me more than any other medium,” Buendia shares.

Ely Buendia: The Pillar [forthcoming]

Gaijin’s Jesse Grinter, meanwhile, is faced with the responsibility of actually being made to musically interpret a literary piece, Ely Buendia’s forthcoming graphic novel The Pillar, a dystopian tale as exhaustive as Huxley’s Brave New World and as darkly comical as Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. “In a broader sense, it forced me to write with a specific mindset and topic, which is something I usually don’t do,” Grinter shares. “Eventually, when the book and accompanying CD—which will also include music from several local artists—are released later this year, the goal is for that common topical thread to be on display in the sounds and the story,” he adds further. Two new Grinter tracks, “Looking Out My Window” and “Holiday,” are being considered for the project, both of which “were inspired by the whole overall vibe of the story, or at least my perception of it.” Grinter had a rich collage of “doom, the apocalypse, rising oceans, mutants, and cannibalism” to work with, and I’m as excited about his tracks as I am about the book. Can’t go wrong, really. (Aldus Santos)

When I say cheap of course, I don’t mean the kind of music, as it was the price of the music. I look back now and realize that I didn’t at all spend money on a concert, local or foreign, in 2010. It might have much to do with the fact that the last time I put out money for any concert was for The Final Set of the Eraserheads in 2009. After that 5K, no other concert has seemed worth the price.

Yet, there was plenty in music that was fascinating in 2010, for a girl like me who will not spend more than P200 pesos on a gig, and will buy CDs indie and otherwise whenever the wallet permits. There’s also always TV: I’m the girl who keeps it on as ambient sound, at anytime of day and night. Which means a lot of standard regular music, yes, but also the chance to be surprised by local music still.

Music Uplate Live. With its irregular late-nighttime slot on ABS-CBN, it’s easy to have gone through 2010 without experiencing this show. For the ones who are up after midnight though, this is music at its best, no matter that you might not care for the pop music artists who are the more usual guests, no matter that it’s also still that late night inanity of an SMS game show with a host screaming her heart out. What matters are Tutti Caringal of Six Cycle Mind and Yeng Constantino, jamming with all of their guests.

Off the top of my head, the late nights of 2010 with Music Uplate Live gave me: Sugarfree live, singing their old(er) songs, and Ebe’s guitar string snapping in the middle of it; Parokya ni Edgar live, the huge group forcing the stage to get bigger, the band members’ nonchalant way of responding to questions and requests working against the show’s format; Gloc-9’s performance refusing any form of jamming really, because who can do what he does? Ah, but my personal favorite was The Gatecrashers, made up of Aiza Seguerra, Juris Fernandez, and it I’m not mistaken Nyoy Volante, an informal group that makes songs so different, it could only be creative, if not sometimes absurd. Take “Maalala Mo Kaya” and make it into a rock song? Check!

Sarah Geronimo as Pinoy diva. In the past two years that saw Sarah becoming older, she didn’t just begin to look it, she also began to do things better—infinitely better than she ever has. Sarah’s solo numbers were one reason to stay on ABS-CBN’s ASAP XV in 2010, because it’s a measure not just of her singing, but also her dancing which has changed because she’s more comfortable in her own skin. She swings her hips without looking slutty, covers up or puts inner wear in clothes that are too sexy, and yet in the end with her long sleek hair and just her amount of talent, comes off as one of the better performers on that show, if not on all of TV-land. In 2010 Sarah proved that real sweet innocence plus age and confidence equal sex appeal. And tadah! Diva-hood.

Gloc-9 has more than nine lives. In the album Matrikula, this rapper proves he’s always been in a class all his own, even as FrancisM continues to live. Fact: Gloc-9 is of the social class he speaks of, and therefore speaks from there. Fact: Gloc-9 is not indebted to anyone, not a big network or huge capitalist, and so in the end can speak about anyone. This is exactly what he does in Matrikula. Filled with guests doing the singing parts in most his songs, Gloc-9 also fills this album with these times: its poverty and wealth, its contradictions and pretense, its glaring inequalities and injustices. This he does without preaching or sermonizing, instead doing it with some hardcore Pinoy poetry, using metaphors and analogies that deal with real feelings of hunger and pain, suffering and difficulty. Pinoy rap lives! Its got Gloc-9 written all over it.

Fact: in the now defunct Pilipinas Win na Win! Gloc-9, who was a celebrity contestant, did the short talent portion by doing an excerpt from one of the songs in Matrikula. Host Kris Aquino promptly demanded: “Puwede mag-rap ka ng tungkol sa masaya naman?”

I promptly fell off my seat.

Rediscovering Route 196. And yes, finding it worth the trip across two cities. In the year that Route 196 opened I lived on Katipunan Avenue, and I was there too often; transferring to Mandaluyong had kept me away for a time, yet 2010 made me come home to Route 196. Of course this is mostly about the artists and music that Route 196 hosts, but also it’s about everything else. There’s the ambiance of still being allowed to do things slap-happy, coming as you are, drinking what you will. The service is wonderful and friendly; parking while limited is made easy by watch-your-car-boys. It’s got the best—and I do mean the best—thin-crust pizza across our local bars, and those chili cheese sticks are wonderful pulutan, too. With no gig beyond P200 pesos, plus a free drink, good cheap lives!

The Collective, the konyo, and the rest of us. I love calling The Collective “Makati-X” because I’ve been told that the people who put it up hate being called such. It’s true after all that The Collective is different from Cubao-X. For one thing, The Collective ain’t easy to go to, or find, and there aren’t many shops that I can afford there. It also doesn’t have the layer of masa that Cubao will always have, regardless of how expensive the store you put up may be. But. The Collective has that huge space for concerts and events, many of which are worth going to. In 2010, I found myself there for bands like Outerhope and Arigato Hato, as well as Fete de la WSK, and while too far for comfort, there has not been a trip to The Collective that hasn’t been worth it. Enough said.

Meiday! Meiday! Speaking of Cubao-X, in 2010 on the weekend of Halloween it hosted Meiday! Meiday! and rocked it like no other. Videos of the performances that night are on YouTube, though that barely captures what it was like to be there. The stage was set up facing the side of Mogwai, and even when on around the corner a horrid bar was playing its own loud music—talagang walang pakisama ano?—there was nothing that could ruin Us-2 Evil-0’s performance, or Nyko Maca’s, or the now-legendary night that Sugarfree played three songs and made us all feel like we were in a concert. “Burnout,” “Mariposa,” and “Prom” in the dead of night, in the middle of the Cubao-X crowd, with Ebe practically singing over the stage, never sounded this good.

Johnoy and Kakoy. Of course it might and will be said that there isn’t much going for a duo that performs only covers. Those people obviously don’t know of Johnoy Danao and Kakoy Legaspi. 2010 was all about Johnoy and Kakoy in any of the bars they’d play at, rocking our world, doing covers like no one else. I’m the last person who would accept any kind of Bob Marley cover, but in the hands of these two, damn it, it’s time for an open mind and ready ears. Sitting through a Johnoy and Kakoy gig means being surprised half the time. And floored the other half.

In praise of Peryodiko. One band that got me stepping out more than usual in 2010 was Peryodiko. From 70s Bistro to Route 196, even all the way to saGuijo, I couldn’t but fall in love with this band even more, and I’m the girl who has memorized their whole album at that. Seeing them perform live only adds a layer of passion to the music, also because you see how the members of this band are actually and in fact all fantastic musicians. They’re also all humble and modest, thank goodness.

Jun Lopito is Alive! 2010 saw rakenrol legend Jun Lopito back in Manila after too long away, and yes, it’s difficult not to be awed. In one of his first gigs at the new bar Ten02, it was clear that he had gathered a crowd that cuts across generations, one that’s bound by some Pinoy rakenrol love. Lopito rocked it that night singing covers and playing guitar of course, yet more than that, seeing him live and in his element just makes for an overwhelming experience of seeing why and how Lopito’s a legend. One also realizes that it doesn’t matter when or where rakenrol happens; what matters is that we remain rakenrol.

Dong Abay is Alive! Another artist that put the tail-end of 2010 back on the rakenrol bus was Dong Abay’s most recent incarnation. Yes, we know him from Yano, then from Pan, then from dongabay. Now it’s still him with Coffeebreak Island, and that only works to Dong’s advantage. Because if you’ve seen Dong perform live, you know that he doesn’t take to that stage and stand there singing; he goes crazy on that stage as if in a trance. And with CBI’s guitarist and bassist going just as crazy, watching a Dong Abay gig becomes a feast for the eyes and not just the ears. Add to that original Pinoy music in beautiful stark Filipino poetry that speaks from the core of social inequity and violence, and right there you’ve got a night difficult to forget. Also, one that you’d like to repeat over and over again.

2010 was about many other things in music than just these of course. I would’ve wanted to mention The Hitmakers (Rico J. Puno, Marco Sison, Nonoy Zuñiga, Rey Valera) as an entity that lasted far longer than expected on nationwide noontime TV; and Willie Revillame’s album making it to number one on the record charts after only a week of release; and Lito Camo and the power of the composer to bring the same theme song from one channel to another, without fear of being sued.

Then again, this list is ultimately what was cheap and thrilling about local music in 2010. Undoubtedly, many things that were interesting or had me glued to my TV weren’t thrilling at all. In fact, as with plenty of other guilty pleasures, much of the cheapness was about it in the literal sense. And I know you know what I mean. (Katrina Stuart Santiago)

RJ Underground Radio 105.9 spent the last few weeks roaming the metro, wreaking musical havoc, and celebrating three years of on-air madness. Three consecutive weekend nights were filled with awesome bands and endless alcohol courtesy of Emperador Light Brandy and The Bar.

The rock jocks of UR—Nick Zinger, Memphis, The Mole, Billy B., and their newest addition, John Hamster, as well as the DJs of UR’s special shows—were present to make sure that craziness ensued and gave away prizes each night.

The tour opened on July 23 at the Eastwood Central Plaza, where Franco, Archipelago, Doki, Sleepwalk Circus, Musical O., Kjwan, Kenyo, Peryodiko, and the ten-year-old guitar wonder Luis Galang blew everyone away.

Then we headed over to Pasay to take over Uno Pizzeria at By the Bay. Even if the rain poured down hard, the music blasted on harder! Paramita, Juan Pablo Dream, Tanya Markova, Top Junk, Lady I, Luna, Soul Republic, The Powertones, and Cheeba gave the people a good reason to brave the crazy weather.

B-side was definitely flipped over during the last leg of the tour, where the sonic sounds of Identikit, Enemies of Saturn, The Out of Body Special, Sugar Hiccup, Reklamo, December Avenue, Salamin, and Turbo Goth satisfied our ears until the wee hours of the morning!

It’s been an awesome three years and the celebration was even better! We’ve got more things coming, so you all better keep on listening to UR 105.9! (Pulse.ph)

On July 15, 2007, a tiny radio station on the FM band started broadcasting. Since then, it has unsuspectingly built a quiet but steady reputation, as well as an avid, discriminating listenership. This month, they are celebrating their third year on air. And not without the appropriate rock ‘n’ roll shindig. This Friday, July 23, 2010, troop over to the Eastwood Central Plaza ‘round 7PM and party with RJ Underground Radio 105.9—with a little help from Franco, Kjwan, and Kenyo, as well as Peryodiko and Archipelago, and, my oh my, those ultra-talented Terno kids Musical O and Sleepwalk Circus! Doki will also be playing. Take those hands out of those pockets, ladies and gents, because entrance is, yes, free! The more awesome thing is that the Eastwood show will only be the first of three shows happening around the metro.

The R U Listening Tour of 2010 is made possible by RJ Underground Radio 105.9 and Emperador Light Brandy, and brought to us by Draven, Gweilos, Club Dredd Eastwood, No Seat Affair, Inc., and Eastwood City Walk, with media partners Uno, Pulp, Pulse.ph, Rakista.com, and Odysseylive.net. (Pulse.ph)