In the Garage

 “The mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground.” Frank Zappa

YUCK, UNDERGROUND? THAT’S LIKE SO YESTERDAY! OR COME ON, THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS UNDERGROUND ANYMORE…

Nothing is more insulting than to become something you are trying to vanquish.  Oftentimes hate comes first, then love after– all that cliché. Say, you used to hate with all your heart anything feminine, and a slight hint of softness or pink disgusts you, but then you discover in the end that you’re gay, ouch; or you are a staunch drug-free advocate and hates junkies to the point of insanity, until you tried your first doobie.  Such things.

The predicament of our supposed underground movement dances to a very similar tune. As far as I know and want to believe in, this thing we call underground is nothing but an alternative movement pure and simple. Dissecting it literally, people “go under” either to cloak things supposedly unpopular, like the musical dregs of the mainstream radio, to subversive ones like communism or toppling over a fascist regime.  Because of its potency and tempting romanticism though, many are lured to its liberal and liberating ideas, and like most movements it could only take so much diversity among its followers, who through their non-conformity and fear of becoming homogenous, tenets of which this movement is founded upon, ripped apart the very philosophy they were establishing by their modifications and denotative fabrications.

To the point that some of them even claim that there is no such thing as underground, because everything is possible, publishable, audible in this age of cyber miracles…such anarchic post-modern bullcrap.  Obviously, it is clearly futile and stupid to achieve a uniform definition of this movement, charged to the human race’s varied culture, traditions, preferences, not to mention aesthetics and those other big-named ideas.  Artists from other nations have already revealed their conviction to or disillusionment with this movement, and I believe it is high time for us to voice out what we think of this matter, once and for all.

WAR OF CONTEXTS

It would be like comparing houses in the polar caps and in the desert if we are going to say that Western underground is the same as what we have here. There are many things aside from culture, and the other considerations I had already said, that would show that Tabaco or Albay is not Seattle or even Recto, for that matter. Artists from these places may have experienced the same alienations but that’s just that. They still belong to different contexts, one of these would be the economic status of a country or place, the availability or scarcity of equipments or even bars and events, so on and so forth.  

It may no longer be fashionable to be underground in Seattle or Manila, but it breaks my heart to hear someone from this region saying or implying being underground is no longer hip. What underground are they talking about? When was it no longer hip? “No longer” implies that it did exist from a certain period in the past, operating up to a certain point in the present. I’m sorry, misinformed as I might be, but I firmly believe that there has been no such thing as a hip underground, or just plain underground for that matter, in this place but now (now being 20 year ago up to the present). Yes, there were bands all over Albay, but that was it.  They were just bands, roving along with other bands in the clubs and mobile discos, and dance parties for the elderly. All of these were just tails from a bigger movement from someplace else, copied because of its hipness. We had heat here but sorry there was no fire. There wasn’t a genuine existing Albay or Tabaco underground in the past 20 years, in my standards, as far as I remember.  How can you tell something is no longer “cool” when it has not happened yet?

PERFORMING TONIGHT, LAST NIGHT’S SHOWBAND

All we had were “show” bands: bands that simply perform music. I apologize to these people, but I could only give them so much respect with their instrumental virtuosity, and their stage presence, but other than that there’s nothing more worth noting, sorry but nada. What have they done, aside from earning money and entertaining the alcohol-high public?  They have changed nothing but their names and band members; and worse they have a direct hand in propagating this shallowness which destroys whatever musical culture we have. They feed people with junk; they are substitutes for the real thing. I’m sad to say that the same goes to those bands that live to play other people’s songs. It’s the same thing. It doesn’t matter if they cover “underground” bands, they’re still the same tribute waste of time. And what’s even bad is that they had actually unearthed these bands from down under to the open to be preyed upon by and become trivial instruments of the corporate world. Have you ever wondered how the Generation X wound up in TV commercials? It’s because of these posers. What happened in the past was this exactly, the era of tributes and posers. I came from that era so I know. You can get girls to line up for you if you play Nirvana or Collective Soul and tie a bandana around your head or a checkered long-sleeved shirt around your waist and swoon like Eddie Vader– and it was good while it lasted, but in the end, what do you do after you had covered all of Nirvana’s albums, now that they’d disbanded you look for the next cool band to mimic. Fuck that. The blind hobo playing in the sidewalk for food has a better direction.

Yes, yes, we have to earn a living, and all that…so why not go get a job? Being in a band for food is nuts. Being a rockstar and living in a playboy mansion is a consolation, but not the goal. That’s where I draw the line between artists and performers: performers show music as a living, artists live for the music. Performers play for pay; artists just play.

And I’m sorry, only artists can be in the underground, those who care only for one thing: the achievement of an original tune, the creation of something better.  Those who don’t settle with the established good, eventually will create better. And it is with this reason that Krear Bathala play their own songs, to constantly polish them, and eventually create at least a song deserving the term Tanog Tabaco. That is our goal, nothing else. We do some covers too, but those are just side dishes, played to give a little variation, or to honor an audience’s request. We are still performers after all. But I am proud to say that the band, together with a few others is taking a counter-flow movement, an alternative path, away from all these popular show band culture. If that is not the way of the underground, I don’t know what is. Underground will never be passé, as difference in opinions will always be a characteristic of human discourse. The underground is another way, or maybe the better way, around the same things we share as men. As long as popularity fails to embody what is absolutely good, beautiful, and great, people will always strive to look for something else. While, those supporting the popular do everything in their power to stunt the progress of the other choice, people prosecuted by force or through a simple action as stopping a band in the middle of their performance just because the music they are playing does not agree with what most people think as “music,” will always go underground and do what they have to do.

Last weekend was a bottleneck. Everything just happened so fast. We had a new record, we played in Naga and we almost lost (we may still be losing) a bandmate.  We’ll come to that later. Everything’s just sinking in.

The Naga trip was a sort of brutal shake to our stagnating little lives. That day, was sorta "our most productive" day for years, as a band. You can’t help but miss the time when you were just coming together, wide-eyed and full of hope and happy thoughts that you’ll be okay. But then shit happens, once, twice, until you don’t notice how often it happens, until you no longer even give a rat’s ass if it does happen. Until that fateful Friday.

It started out from the beginning. By nature and by human frailty we were becoming hopelessly late for the long trip. Rain and heavy drinking the night before ditched our scheduled 7:30 departure to a mind rattling 10 am. Yadda, yadda, yadda, long trip, silent, long, sleepy, landscapes of green and smell of carabao dung, we arrived in Naga, a little before lunch. More private detours, then we started looking for the Canamaan studio.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, questions for directions, missed turns, shouting, arguments, until we finally found the place. And the first thing that’d come to one’s head would be: what the fk happened to the city? It was a little like the middle of nowhere. The transpo left us, and we started looking for food. The drummer from Negative 13th Xray, met us and thanks to him, we sorta have a connection with the world as we knew it. He "assisted" us with the ups and downs of the place, until we all realized it’s all downs, and by down, we mean, there was no place for lunch!

It’s one of those mistakes "yanos" commit when they speculate that anyplace Metro is a "complete" spic and span place. And on that day we made the same tragic mistake to think that Canamaan is still part of the glorious Metro Naga. So on that day, the menu was cup noodles, and a pack of soap-flavored crackers. Plus we have to disturb the studio guy for borrowing all sorts of utensils while Negative was laying down their tracks.

For a while with our filled bellies we calmed down. But another predicament arrived. The catch was, the studio things were rented by Bob Marlin for a reggae mon gig later that day, in other words, we have to like record as if the world is at the end of a burning wick if we want to produce something that day.

And of course the pressure was on, and showing. Eric the guitar whiz, had to repeat his tracks a couple of times (which I guess naman is normal in more humane situations), and, I don’t know and I don’t really wanna know, who kept on farting an unmoved baggage-fart, INCONSIDERATELY, in the air-tight room.

When exhaustion was bending us down, all we wanted was to wrap it up and finish the task. And so we did.

Skip, skip, skip to the Wharf gig. And Flat Earth played their last song for the nth time (heheh). Time to assemble for the mattress. Cheeky goodbyes, drunken banter, high fives, we are the best yowls, and then it was over, doors were closed, paths home were taken…finally. Then the realization: someone was left behind.

Then the drama. And a little blood. And a long, dragging night of arguments in repeat mode.  The endless cycle of apology volleyed by drunken minds. Tirelessly a dead end was sought. Until finally sleep took us all.

In the morning, if you had seen the movie "Almost Famous" that part where there was a crazy party where Still Water’s guitarist jumped off from the roof to the pool, shouting "I am a golden god" and his friends picked him up in his boxer shorts, and they were all silent inside their tour bus–we had a moment like that. Unfortunately we didn’t have an Elton John song for us to sing with and make everything cool again. So there.

You find yourself in this artificial and temporary world. Everything seems nice and tolerable…a pool and comfortable beds, food. The chic furniture, the people, blow you away. Soon enough you forget that this is temporary, you get used to it, and adapt and accept. You make friends, you make enemies, and fall in love promising forever and ever, and actually feel a pseudo-happiness, and forget that this will end sooner or later.

And so you continue to sleep and be woken up by some joke expressed in music, and do what the big booming voice tells you. And if he’s pleased you get a reward, a promise of a vacation in a paradise or some heavenly place, now or when the time comes when you have to leave.

Some, who despite the “beautiful world” inside, still wanted to leave before their time, too homesick or just plain sick with the monotony, either do things that would piss the big voice off or simply decide and call it quits. They just simply stop “acting” the artificial life and just become plain annoying. Usually, when they leave they are never heard of again, banished, unforgiven by the host of self-righteous fans. 

For to these zealots, you are a pet, a tamagochi that they need to take care of every night, nurturing your survival with SMS votes. You can’t just give up and get away with it.

And when you leave, your house mates cry as if they’ll never see you again, as if this is the only world. As if they’ll be forever stuck in that place. But you, who is about to leave, who can describe your expression? You who is finally allowing, after a period of calculated denial, the truth back in to your consciousness.

And when you are outside you will be met by your loved-ones, unconditioned by the world where you had come from, they seem to be wiser, for they’ve always known the truth.

And as you are debriefed before admitted back to the absolute, your whole life inside the “house” will flash in front of you in a big screen, as if to rub your foolishness in.

(Cross-blogged from http://lakadbulan.multiply.com)

From his introduction to the Bhagavad Gita As it is

"Here the material world is described as a tree whose roots are upwards and branches are below. We have experience of a tree whose roots are upward: if one stands on the bank of a river or any reservoir of water, he can see that the trees reflected in the water are upside down. The branches go downward and the roots upward. Similarly, this material world is a reflection of the spiritual world. The material world is but a shadow of reality. In the shadow there is no reality or substantiality, but from the shadow we can understand that there are substance and reality. In the desert there is no water, but the mirage suggests that there is such a thing as water. In the material world there is no water, there is no happiness, but the real water of actual happiness is there in the spiritual world."

HARIBOL to everyone!

The picture shows Krishna and Radha in Goloka Vrindavana, the spiritual planet of God.

It is said that if you remember Krishna, in the moment of death, you will attain Him. There is no doubt about this.

Cross-blogged from http://www.lakadbulan.multiply.com

I guess this is to warn our dear LCC shoppers—the whole month of May is feared to be exciting and meaningful. No longer will the

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, be tormented by its slot machines’ tone deaf rambling and the equally nerve-racking renditions in the VideoOke by our enthusiastic city-mates. Instead, the loud and brave convulsions of Tabaco original music will fill this commercial void.

All this is new found substance, is brought to us, without a shred of shame (and loving it), by the musical cult-supported event by the infamous name of Urag-urag (grievance). Urag-urag is the brainchild of the arts and culture group ABKAT; it is also its more familiar project among a teeming of others still unnoticed. It was started several years ago, attracting bands with varied musical genres united only by the fact that they are to play nothing but original songs. Not only the event was a smashing success, but it shattered the age-old tradition of non-creativity and cheap coverage of radio or MTV-established numbers. Some bands, though, despite the good example, still remain to be stubborn slackers of cover-playing for easy recognition. And of course, they are supported to the point of fandom by the audience who can only appreciate—guess—cover-playing.

But if ever there is a real cultural revolution in this City, this is it. For with the conception of the Urag-urag, Tabaco has made its first baby step, and joined other communities in a conscious pursuit of having a real musical culture.

The last massacre of indifference to the musical culture revolution in Tabaco, just happened last Sunday. People were awed and had their mouths in a wide O, saliva streaming down their cheeks in some, for the two solid hours of unheard of renditions, straight from the underground. Some were shocked, pissed, and wanted to spit in the bands faces, given the chance, but I am sure among the audience present there in that historic event, someone had said: I want to have worth—I’m tired of playing someone else’s song. And that my friends is the beginning of fulfillment. Most of the bands in this number aren’t paid, yet they keep on—what fuels their drive to play for free? That my friends is the secret happiness shared only by those who had the balls to play their own songs in front of a hundred people or so. Let’s cut this showband attitude of playing for food, enough with the cheap boy-band antics, and chick magnetry. It’s time to ask one’s self, when. When will I ever make something that is me?

I am not saying that all the bands in the Urag-urag bandwagon are all good, the world is not as perfect as that. And Tabaco Original Sound is still a fleeting ideal. We’ll give our detractors that, but we believe that the path is already set toward that direction, and it is only a matter of time before its eventual attainment.

So this is also a sort of call to my fellow bands, and bands still out there lurking in the limbo of impersonality. Don’t just play for kicks, or because you love playing—you’ve already done that. Try playing for something else. Something that will benefit not only you or your band mates, but also those that know what good music is, and what music is, period. Something that endures even when your band disintegrates into bits of warring points, something beyond you or time itself. Something like an original sound, a sound that is us alone. A sound that was handed to us by tradition or sung to us when we were young. Something that we know with all our hearts. Lets try to touch that area. It is not enough that we are composing originals. It’s always having an original sound that counts, at least for me.

Ok, I may have cried a bit in that portion. Any way here are the bands who performed in the last Urag-urag at LCC:  Play As One, YParusa, Krear Bathala, Flat Earth Society, Kalbaryo, Amadeus, Rash, Time Rosary, and Green Diary. Yay to us all.

Yay also to our kick-ass, host Richard Madrilejos.

Yay to Julius Bariso for the pictures.

Yay to Jun Lim for the Engineering.

And yay to Kuya Erwin, for just being gay and ignoring us.