Pulse.ph : MUSIC + CULTURE
October 23rd, 2006
CHILLITEES: SECOND SERVING OF EXTRA RICE
October 15th, 2006
CONFESSIONS OF A STAGE GIRLFRIEND
In my Friendster profile, the line corresponding to occupation reads “architect, stage girlfriend, and hopeless idealist.” The first is a legitimate profession, recognized by the government, at least after months of studying and my finally passing that damn board exam. The last is not really a profession so much as an outlook on life that colors everything I do and makes actual work (especially in the corporate world) that much harder. And the second… well, the second is just a tongue-in-cheek way of excusing myself from feeling guilty for spending more time on my boyfriend Nick’s gigs than I do on any actual work. Nick plays guitar for the, er, almost famous band Sino Sikat? (And no, that sentence isn’t a question, it’s a statement, but the band’s name really does end with a punctuation mark, so it can get kind of confusing.) Anticipating that people who keep seeing me at the gigs will say something along the lines of “hay naku, kinakarir ang paggiging girlfriend,” I’ve decided to beat them to the punch. So there. Now, before names like Rita Wilson and Lynn Spears start running through your head, let me say that while I enjoy bandying about the phrase “stage girlfriend” (as in stage wife, or stage mother), I sincerely hope I am nothing of the sort. In fact, I am so not anything like it that I sometimes wish I was more involved in the “biz,” if you will. While I would like to indulge you with racy stories of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, my “confession” is actually the simple admission that I know nothing about the music industry, that I am a squeaky clean person who is more at home in a bright, climate-controlled, hushed library than in a dark, smoky, noisy bar, and that while I know who Jimi Hendrix is, I wouldn’t recognize any of his songs if a boombox playing them dropped out of the sky and knocked me square on the head. So what am I doing sitting in front of the stage, listening to Sino Sikat? Lead singer Kat reach the frenzied conclusion of Erykah Badu’s “Penitentiary Blues”—especially when I complain that sounds past 60 decibels make it difficult for me to hear myself think? Honestly, I don’t know. Ask me again when my ears stop ringing. “PARA ASTEEEEG” Chalk it up to love and a genuine admiration for what they’re doing. While I would make a lousy commentator on the popular music industry, being stuck back in the time when popular meant being British, wearing eyeliner, and dressing all in black (hey wait, did that ever go out of style?), I do at least like to think that I know how to appreciate good music. Whatever genre it may be. When people ask me what kind of music I like, I find I am at a loss for words. What I would like to say is, “the last time I liked a genre was in the 80’s, but now I sort of choose what to listen to based on whether I think it sounds good or not. If I hear it and it appeals to me, then hey, I’ll keep listening. But if it doesn’t sound good, even if it’s by U2 (a band as close to a favorite as I can ever have), then I’ll skip it and move on to the next song (which could be “2 Glocks” by Bone Thugs ‘n Harmony).” But that’s a mouthful, and it’s way too much to throw in the face of an innocent bystander just trying to make polite conversation. So I say “new wave” and get it over with as quickly as possible. My tastes don’t lend themselves to easy categorization. But then I’d like to think that nothing about me does. The fact that my listening selections are based on a sort of sound intuition and not on personalities, singers, bands, or musical genres makes it difficult for me to follow the conversations Nick has with his bandmates. What relevant (or, more often than not, irrelevant) pieces of information I know, I pick up from Nick. But bits of trivia an intelligent (or even nominally correct) conversation do not make. I can hear it in my head: RELI: Pare, gawin natin yung Everybody Here Wants You niJeff Buckley. NICK: Wag yun, gasgas na yun. Last Goodbye na lang. Paraasteeeeg. (Turns to me) Kilala mo ba yun, Bi? ME: Is that the guy who died with a squid in his shirt? Usually Nick ends up digging up the song from the hugely disorganized bunch of MP3s on their computer, I listen to it a couple of times, I decide I like it, and the next time they have that conversation it goes this way: KAT: O, gawin natin yung Last Goodbye ni Jeff Buckley. NICK: Sige asteeeeg. ME: (Nods knowingly) Oo nga. ALMOST USEFUL It took me maybe ten gigs to actually recognize most of the songs that Sino Sikat? plays regularly. After those early gigs, on our way home, Nick would ask how the sound was, which songs I liked, if I noticed any mistakes they made, and how the crowd reacted. Our conversations usually ran this way: NICK: Nagustuhan mo? ME: Yung third song, maganda. NICK: Alin? ME: Di ko alam yung title e. NICK: What did it sound like? ME: Di ko na maalala. Basta alam ko nung narinig ko, nagustuhan ko siya. Needless to say, my input was pretty much useless. But it was nice of him to ask, anyway. Eventually I borrowed Nick’s study—a CD with the songs they cover, which he uses to practice. I loaded everything into my iPod, and started listening to the songs in my car. Now I can give fairly intelligent feedback. I can tell when Kat goes flat (which I must say, just so Kat won’t whack me, is not very often), when something sounds discordant, when the guitar, or the bass, or whatever, is drowned out by the rest of the band, when the sound in the house is good, as compared to what they hear on their monitors. And Nick, bless him, still asks. His faith bolsters my confidence, and begins to spark my delusions of becoming a useful member of the entourage. ME: I can be a roadie, para may silbi ako. NICK: Sus, hindi mo na kailangan no. OK lang ‘yun. ME: I can carry your amp. NICK: Wag na, ako na. ME: (Tries to lift amp) Oooof. Sige, ikaw na lang. TECHNICAL TALK As if the music itself weren’t enough, there’s also that occupational hazard of every, well, occupation: technical jargon. I mean, I can’t even get the basic words right, as evidenced by an innocent conversation with one of their bassist’s lady loves: CAMILLE:Gusto ko talaga ang baho. ME: Hah?(In thought bubble: Allen smells fine to me… maybe it’s a pheromone thing…) CAMILLE: Baho.Bass. ME: Ah. Ok. (In thought bubble:Buti na lang di na ‘ko humirit…) Elevate that to a full-blown technical discussion, and everything starts to resemble Peppermint Patty listening to the teacher in a Peanuts cartoon. On a car trip to Manila with Nick and consummate jazz guitarist Aya Yuson, I tried—I really tried—to figure out their conversation, which, I gathered from context, was about how to put together a great guitar (or something like that, anyway). NICK:Is the wawawawawa better than the wawawawawa? I was thinking of wawawawawa a wawawawawa and just adding a wawawawawa. AYA:Well, the best sound comes from the wawawawawa wawawawawa, but if you add a wawawawawa you can get a wawawawawa. But the problem with that is wawawawawa, although you can fix that by wawawawawa. ME:(Brain matter leaking out of ears) Nor can I figure out what to do with myself when I’m surrounded by expensive-looking equipment, since I’m always worried that I’ll break something or maybe manage to strangle myself with all the wires, which leaves me uncomfortably standing beside amps, afraid to sit, and painfully aware that I must be in somebody’s way. So gigs are spent awaiting the inevitable point when Nick gets up and announces that they’re going to set up now, the point at which I have to restrain myself from whining like a little kid on the first day of school: “Don’t leeeeave meeeee!”, although I’ve gotten much better at it with practice: I now just sit quietly in my chair, trying to look as unobtrusive as possible. Occasionally I get a sense of belonging when they hand me a beer stub meant for the band, which then allows me to sit quietly in my chair, nursing my beer, still trying to look as unobtrusive as possible. Maybe one day I’ll take up smoking so I look like I’m doing something while I sit and try to look unobtrusive. Or not. As Nick likes to say, “High is out, clean is in.” It’s become something of a standing inside joke with the band: ang pinakamalinis na rock star sa balat ng lupa. And his equally clean girlfriend. STAGE BOYFRIEND Nick has returned the favor by occasionally playing stage boyfriend (not that architects ever operate on a stage; in a vacuum, more like). He drove me around the bowels of Manila for my board exam (which, while this may not seem like a huge feat for people who enjoy prowling Recto and Raon for various legitimate and illegitimate bargains, is a really big thing, especially since Nick also doesn’t particularly enjoy driving, much less along crowded and unfamiliar streets), and sat through five hours of pompous back-patting during my oath-taking. The three-day hell that was the exam was also at least punctuated by little episodes of me reverting to stage girlfriendhood (girlfrienddom? Girlfriendishness?): the first day we went to the pier to look for guitar parts, and the second day they had band rehearsals at a grand old house in the more genteel parts of Manila. I remember walking in and being greeted by a round of “O, kumusta ang exam?” and “Pasado na, architect?” from everybody. So yes, even stage girlfriends have lives of their own, and it’s nice to get reminders that people do know I have a day job. And about the rest of it… shhh… don’t tell them I’m not cool at all. But they already know that. And they’re cool about it anyway. Visit the band’s MySpace here and sign up at their mailing list here. Betty Tianco is a licensed architect and freelance writer with a degree in computer science, so she is, in all likelihood, smarter than you. She blogs about life and meaning at Seekers Anonymous.
October 15th, 2006
The Raconteurs are trying to tell us a story. It’s a story of four good friends, hanging out in a hot and humid attic, playing songs that sound like their childhood heroes and having a very, very good time. Broken Boy Soldiers is practically a fifty-fifty collaboration between The White Stripes’ Jack White and pop genius Brendan Benson. The Raconteurs are a more palatable and radio-friendly version of White’s usual band. Songs like “Hands” and “Yellow Sun” reveal the cheery side of White while “Steady As She Goes” and “Store Bought Bones” allow Benson to let his inner Ozzy loose. Their teamwork extends to sharing vocal duties, and it’s a testament to their familiarity with each other that you almost can’t tell who sings what. But it seems the boys are having so much fun being in a band together that they overlooked the inanity of some of their lyrics. “Intimate Secretary,” an otherwise excellent tune, shouldn’t be examined too closely: “I’ve got a rabbit it likes to hop/ I’ve got a girl and she likes to shop/ the other foot looks like it won’t drop/ I had an uncle and he got shot.” Lyrics like that are better off in kindergarten and I expected a little better from the men who brought us “Seven Nation Army” and “Alternative to Love”. Armed with a keen sense of rock history, The Raconteurs are a tribute band in a way. They mine their record collection for inspiration and they find it in the likes of The Beatles, David Bowie, and Joe Jackson (to name a few) and the result is a fun yet somewhat derivative sound. Not that The Raconteurs care. Minor quibbles aside, the record is a solid one. It isn’t merely a sub-par layover while we wait for The White Stripes or Benson to release new material. Along with The Greenhornes’ rhythm section, the palest super group in the world is telling you their story. And believe me, it’s a story you want to hear.
October 14th, 2006
If you frequent music stores, you may have noticed evolution occurring: a certain art form has, here and there, gotten more imaginative, more stylish, more beautiful and unpredictable. I’m not talking about the music itself—although, in many happy cases, that holds true as well—but about the skins the music comes in. I’m talking about album covers and packaging. Gone are the days when local album packaging meant boring studio shots, generic fonts, and standard stapled inlay cards. These days, among many other design elements, you can find digitally-created worlds, repurposed found objects, a quirky design sensibility and hand-drawn goodness parading across a CD’s cover. Jewel cases are no longer necessarily the order of the day; recycled materials and multi-layer fold-out cardboard sleeves can play their part as well. Part of this is due to technology: being exposed to work from all over the world via the ‘Net stirs inspiration, and digital tools bestow empowerment. But much of it has to do with good old-fashioned talent and drive. One of the most talented and driven groups powering this evolution of packaging is called Electrolychee, a.k.a. Bernie Sim (“Bruâ€) and Marcus Nada (“Marcushiroâ€)—two creative souls who happen to do some of the best album design work in the country. “We are from different worlds; one came from the land of robots and another from the land of ponies,†it says on their site. “We are armed with an arsenal of color swatches and a penchant for harmonizing chaos. We merge digital and analog art like a poetic dance to a punk rock tune on acid.†Their design work has been nominated for awards (their design for Paramita’s “Tala†won Best Album Packaging at this year’s Awit Awards), and these high-voltage lychees are also full-time visual artists, who frequently showcase their pop-inspired artworks in the metro’s alternative galleries. Besides “painting, participating in design conferences and collaborating with both local and foreign artists,†the design studio also produces Electrolychee-branded Strange Creations merchandise. According to them, “it’s a do-it-yourself endeavor that’s part of our long-term goal of being a design studio and a lifestyle store in one.†Chillitees, Extra Rice BRU: Another juicy fan girl moment in which giddy chinita falls in love with indie band’s music and asks if she could concoct the visual to the aural. Amazingly, the Chillitees said yes and let me go totally bonkers. We stuck to the first study because they went totally bonkers Chillitees’ music is so Pinoy and organic that I wanted to do this by hand with lots of drawings and collages, thanks to glue, lined paper and those swirly drawing toys I used to have as a kid and recently rediscovered in Divisoria. Marcushiro actually bought extra rice at a fast food place (guess which) just so I could scan in the receipt for the album (the receipt also says “Ang Sarap Maging Pilipino!â€). This is my favorite album design to date kasi, ika nga ng Chillitees, “wala siyang katulad.†Imago, Blush BRU + MARCUSHIRO: Imago’s latest release is very pop, so we came up with something similarly light and upbeat. This project had to please a lot of parties, so it got pulled in a different direction from where we originally started. The band’s photos were also the main elements here, as opposed to our other bodies of work, which relied on illustrations. We really insisted on the die-cut because it’s never been done here before. [Tidbit: We tried copying Aia’s moves at home, but Marcushiro was more successful at it than Bru.] Cambio, Derby Light MARCUSHIRO: Raimund “Squid9†Marasigan saw a teaser poster of Bagetsafonik in a local bar where we usually hang out and asked the owner who did it. He then remembers that I was also the same guy who approached him during one of his Squid9 gigs and gave him one of my Analog stickers. Then he gave me a call. I took inspiration from the title of their album and their band name. It just so happened that their music really reflects both. Quirky- high- octane- indie-rock. The process was a masterpiece on its own done D.I.Y. Some inside photos were shot while on a road trip. We stuck out our heads from a moving car trying to capture the sides of buses passing the opposite direction. I guess this is what the thrill of derby racing is all about, baby! I photographed the CD face of the driving wheel of an abandoned car I saw in an empty lot. I then composed the photos and my illustrations on the computer. Nothing can compare to doing album packaging for people who trust me to make it look good. Thanks guys! THINGS ELECTROLYCHEE HAS LEARNED BY DESIGNING ALBUMS: Don’t be shy. DO offer your favorite bands your design services (be it a poster or flyer for their gigs, album design, button pins, shirts, etc). DO design independent albums. They’re almost always more fulfilling creative projects. In the same way you don’t like musical copycats, DO NOT rip off somebody else’s designs (we’ll know and call you on it) DO try new things (pink can be a guy thing too, just ask the emo kids) DO push the boundaries. Try to experiment but always remember that concept is 50% of the equation. Execution could be a daunting task, so try to work according to your strengths. Or else it’ll look forced. DO visit electrolychee.com and drop us a line at our blog!
August 31st, 2006
It’s half past 3 AM as I write this, on a Friday morning in Quezon City. I just got home from attending a Play 4 Serve production gig at SaGuijo in Makati — and I’ll be heading back to Makati in a couple of hours, so that I can get to my office on Ayala Avenue in time for the start of the workday. I should be half dead, but I’m not; I’ve still got a buzz going, and it’s not from beer or anything less legal. It’s from catching the last number of Bagetsafonik’s dream-rock set, “Song for the Sunlight”; from bobbing my head to Imago’s energetic, heartfelt mix of songs from their albums present and past; from shouting my approval as the Brass Munkeys swung through standards and Metallica songs with equal verve; and from totally grooving to the sexy, eclectic sound of Nyko Maca — a mélange of latin rhythms, hip-hop attitude, soulful singing and all-around excellence. The music’s still bouncing around in my brainpan, keeping me up, keeping me grinning; like love, music cuts through the routine and reminds us that we can still be touched, that we’re still alive and kicking and dreaming. Which brings us to this site. It’s about spreading the word; it’s about celebrating the music scene, which is more vital these days than it’s been in a long, long while. We plan to make PULSE.PH the ultimate Pinoy online destination for people who want music in their lives. With features on artists local and international, reports, reviews, and behind-the-scenes looks, not to mention music and video downloads, we’re going to keep your ears, your eyes, and your music-loving heart very happy.
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