There was an online buzz about one of the biggest, if not the biggest, rock bands in the 1990s that alternately made me teary-eyed and caused my heart to double its beat in anticipation. I didn’t know how true it was, but, as one of the bloggers who wrote about it said, just thinking about it gave me goose bumps. My initial reaction was, “Yeah right. Keep dreaming.” After all, I know that the band in question parted bitterly—so much so that one of them didn’t even check up on his bandmate when the latter had a heart attack. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that some of the bloggers cited were sort of insiders in the music industry too.
Over the weekend, the buzz was finally confirmed, thanks to one of The Philippine STAR entertainment editor and writer Ricky Lo’s moles: the Eraserheads are going to reunite for a one night only show on August 30, 2008! The venue is supposed to be the Cultural Center of the Philippines open grounds. The other details are still sketchy, but from what I gathered during my own online sleuthing—made easy because the blog posts were careful to cite references—a corporate sponsor convinced the foursome to perform for a big event that’s supposedly free to some 35,000 expected fans.
A Blogger blog of a hardcore fan wrote an entry about his “Eraserheads Reunion Conspiracy Theory,” citing several clues, from the three E-heads’ (Raimund Marasigan, Marcus Adoro, and Buddy Zabala) visiting the University of the Philippines again with Jessica Soho to Ely Buendia’s concert in Sydney, Australia as himself, not as Pupil, where he sang Eraserheads songs like “Pare Ko,” “Maling Akala,” “Alapaap.”
One Multiply blog gave hint of the reunion on July 7, citing his “mole” as somebody who worked for the sponsoring company. According to his source, “The estranged members have been wooed since early this year and they only relented when they were offered a staggering amount of P??, 000,000.00.” The blogger also said she’s already seen the teaser posters that are going to be released soon.
Another Multiply blog posted a blind item on July 9, posting an image of a black Converse Chuck Taylor shoe as a clue. On several other succeeding updates, more clues were posted, with the last being a picture of David Lynch. In the last post, he also stressed that money was not the deciding factor.
Finally, another blog posted what seems like a teaser poster: an inverted letter E, with the numbers 83008.
Some other unconfirmed bits and pieces I picked up: tickets would be free; ticket would be on sale soon; tickets would be available for download; and the corporate sponsor has a ton of money to spend on this project (apparently, they don’t do tri-media advertising and yet lots of people buy their product).
That’s all I know, so far, but you can bet I’d be waiting to snap up some tickets as soon as they’re available—free or not. I grew up in the 1990s. In fact, I partially decided to transfer to UP because of their song “Kalayaan.” I’m not a hardcore fan—and this I know because I’ve known some—and I’ve never owned Chuck Taylors, but I do have several E-heads stories, one involving making a pretend class project, intercepting them at their That’s Entertainment guesting at Broadway Centrum, and inventing a really fun on-the-spot interview at the parking lot. There are more, but this one’s the best, my own 1990s’ “Minsan sa may…”
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