Osang and the Stones

Item: Actress Rosanna Roces and daughter go to Hong Kong at the onset of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) to watch a concert of the aging rockers, the Rolling Stones, and get freaked out when everywhere they go in the former British colony, most people wear protective masks. Worse of all, the Stones, spooked by SARS, cancel their concerts.

We’ve caught on the evening news how Osang, during the runup to the war on Iraq, had attended and hosted and even performed at the three-night concert-marathon at the UP Commonwealth Avenue grounds, that had a proud battery of bands less perhaps one named Battery.

There she was singing almost like Madonna, only better because proudly Philippine-made, she came in colors everywhere she’s like a rainbow. And who can forget the clip and soundbite with her raising the finger and shouting for all the world, or at least those present at the concert including TV crews, to hear: "F*** you, George Bush!" I forget now if she specified the Dubya, and we can only imagine if, say, it was Clinton she was addressing.

And so we read from PM, news item accompanied by a delightfully provocative photo of Osang, that O. is a Stones fan. This fact confirms our long abiding suspicion that she is a prototype of a rock and roll mama.

There’s a good chance that O. has a CD of the Stones’ latest, 40 Licks, which copy we barely missed at a designer pirate store at Greenhills. A double album of hits through the years, 40 Licks has a music video that has been shown piecemeal on TV, mostly shots of the band young and lean. Now they’re still lean but already old.

Osang won’t tell that to Mick Jagger, much less Keith Richards, both of whom could be as old as her father. Of the original band, the Glimmer Twins remained along with drummer Charlie Watts. Original guitarist Brian Jones was found OD’d or blissed to death in a swimming pool, some say a victim of drowning. Founding bassist Bill Wyman has since retired to concentrate on royalties and his marriage to a woman young enough to be his daughter, one who couldn’t be older than Osang.

After Jones there came Mick Taylor, whose definitive guitar work with the band can be heard in the song Time Waits for No One from the album It’s Only Rock and Roll. Or in Can’t You Hear me Knocking from Sticky Fingers. His fretboard runs could hold a candle to Santana, who by the way also canceled his HK concerts due to SARS.

Then when Taylor left, enter Ron Wood, guitarist of the Faces and sidekick of Rod Stewart, who kicked soccer balls into the audience during his concert at the Araneta.

None of the Stones, as far as can be gleaned, ever visited the Philippines –we know for sure that the band never played here. They just as well could have taken the cue from the experience of the Beatles during their tour here at the height of the band’s popularity and the spring of the conjugal dictatorship, when the Liverpool moptops were chased out of the country (Ringo even beaten up by the first couple’s thugs at the airport) for snubbing an affair at the Palace. Right then and there John Lennon was quoted to have said, already safely in his airplane seat as the jet began to taxi on the MIA runway: "What a fascist state!" or similar words, he already knew in 1966 or 1967 the country was in for a dictatorship.

Tyrants notwithstanding, it isn’t very comforting to read how name acts decide to skip some Asian playdates due to either terrorism or health scare. The Stones aren’t getting any younger, and so may be more susceptible to disease. Prudence is also the better part of longevity.

Will Saddam soon be listening to Exile on Main Street of rock’s most famous infidels, now that the defenders of Baghdad are a moonlight mile away from being routed by dem bloody liberators?

Will the information minister be singing Bob Marley’s Crazy Baldheads during the heat of the battle for the capital?

I and I build the cabin/ I and I plant the corn, I and I drill the oil wells, but see who’s taking over that country. The view may be cynical but also realistic.

What have the Stones and Osang got to do with this? I remember an old video of O. where she starred with an obscure macho actor, and they get it on how they get it on in a variety of positions, breasts bobbing.

Was the music of the Stones playing in her head as she was banged (in the movie)? –maybe Memory Motel or Fool to Cry, both from Black and Blue –which is what Iraq will look like when the war has rolled over and died.