The return of the Amboy
January 21, 2002 | 12:00am
As I might’ve predicted, last week’s column on the ‘60s drew a rash of reactions from my fellow fogeys – most of them happy to have been reminded of a time when the UP Ikot jeepney driver gave you change on a 10-centavo coin (likely as not, from his ear, which used to be a fairly convenient if less-than-hygienic coin purse), some of them livid with rage (I’m exaggerating, guys, no need to grab your keyboards) at the selections I made and the songs I left out.
Spanky Mata of the Technicolors wrote in to opine that Going Out of My Head by Little Anthony and the Imperials should have been on my list, instead of the Lettermen version, as well as Dionne Warwick’s Walk on By. Ronnie Dulay sent an e-mail from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia to correct my spelling of Mr. Dyingly Sad by The Critters; it should’ve been Mr. Dieingly Sad – dang it, that’s what I thought, but didn’t trust my memory well enough. Van Cebrano was looking for Jumpin’ Jack Flash.
The truth is, I groaned and gasped myself the moment I sent in my piece, struck by the realization that I had forgotten all about Petula Clark (Downtown) and Judy Collins (Both Sides Now) as well as – most unforgivable of all – The Doors (Light My Fire). A quick postscript to my understanding editors took care of that problem.
But all the editors in the world can’t help a spotty memory, which failed, in the end, to dredge up another glaring omission: Together – "Oh, we could be on a desert, lost without a place to go…." For the life of me, I can’t even remember who sang it, although I can name that tune in one note (that’s true, too – it starts with a staccato of notes, all of them the same). And where was Brasil ’66? Matt Monro? Roy Orbison? Shirley Bassey? L’il Richard? Del Shannon?
Reader Auggie Surtida did me one better by sending in a list that went beyond music to capture the Zeitgeist. Herewith, Auggie’s choices.
Songs: Ooo, Baby, Baby (Smokey Robinson and The Miracles); Ain’t Too Proud to Beg (The Temptations); Reach Out, I’ll Be There (The Four Tops); This Guy’s in Love with You (Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass); One Less Bell to Answer (The Fifth Dimension); Satisfaction (Rolling Stones); Gloria (Them, with Van Morrison on vocals); You Really Got Me (The Kinks); Before and After (Chad and Jeremy); By the Time I Get to Phoenix (Glen Campbell); Tell Her No (The Zombies); We Gotta Get Out of This Place (Eric Burdon and The Animals); Do You Believe in Magic? (The Lovin’ Spoonful); Sunshine of Your Love (Cream); and Voodoo Chile (Jimi Hendrix Experience).
Flicks: Blow-Up; Zabrieski Point; West Side Story; 2001: A Space Odyssey; The Wild Bunch; Burn; From Russia with Love; Lawrence of Arabia; A Hard Day’s Night- Lester; Zachariah; The Ipcress File; Satyricon; For a Few Dollars More; Yellow Submarine; and Woodstock. [Ah, but let’s not forget Barbarella, The Graduate, The Sound of Music, The Planet of the Apes, and Doctor Zhivago, among others – "The Movies of the Sixties": there’s a dissertation topic for you – BD.]
Fashion: Lawlaw trousers (with a pundilyo down to the knees, you could hardly walk); low-waist, tight-fitting pants; jeans by Macomber; jeans by Dan Gulapa of Morayta; shirt-jacs; Ban-lon; pima cotton; loud Hawaiian shirts (available at Quezon Blvd., Quiapo); phony Ivy League button-down shirts (materials bought at Divisoria and custom-made by Charlie’s at Blumentritt) for the Amboy look; zippered gamusa boots; Beatle boots by Glenmore; Converse high-top basketball sneakers; moccasins by Alex, Ang Tibay, Sebago or Nunn Bush; white socks; Red Ball sneakers (bought at Goldcrest Quezon Avenue, now Alemars). [And hey, what about Tancho Tique, Kaminomoto O-ban, Three Flowers pomade, Elpo and Spartan rubber shoes, Hush Puppies, US Boosters, Montagut shirts, Vonnel, chukka boots, Nehru jackets with obligatory sideburns and gold medallion, El Presidente and hopsack pants cloth, and stretch pants for the ladies? – BD.]
Buzzwords: groovy, psychedelic, pogi, alis diyan!, taratitat, ayos na ang buto-buto, where it’s at, where the action is. [Not to mention walastik, yeba, dyagan, and dehin-goli – BD.]
Radio stations: Boss Radio DZRJ, The Pacific Powerhouse; DZWS; The Big Sound; DZMT, featuring Jo San Diego. [And DZHP, The Sound of the City – BD.]
Print: Rolling Stone; Boss ERA (Rolling Stone rip-off by DZRJ); Teenstone (also by RJ and the Riots); Youngster and Home Life; The Saturday Evening Post; Dell Comics and Classics Illustrated. [As well as Hiwaga Komiks and Tagalog Klasiks, the Readers Digest, Hollywood Top Hits and Broadway Songhits, Boy’s Life, Coronet, DC and Marvel Comics – BD.]
Places to be: Rizal Theater, Makati; A&W; Aguinaldo’s; Goldcrest; Cartimar. [And life wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the Araneta Coliseum, Matsuzakaya, Arcega’s, Selecta, Little Quiapo, Ma Mon Luk, the Manila Zoo, Balara Filters, Ja-Le Beach, Forest Hills, Berg’s, the Cinerama, Butterfly, and Taal Vista Lodge – BD.]
Oh, what a time that was, and what innocents we were, despite ourselves.
There’s a word back there that I probably need to explain, to my kid if to no one else. In ‘60s Manila, the Amboy look was the epitome of neocolonial cool. To be an Amboy was – as the word suggests – an "American boy," or at least our conception of it, given how varied American boys looked even then. (And the politically savvy might argue that the Amboys – the real McCoys – are back with us chasing the Abu Sayyaf, but that’s another story.)
The Amboy was clean and mean: you started out with a short-sleeved, button-down (and always button-down) shirt in oxford cotton, preferably in thin vertical stripes or some solid pastel shade of purple or apple-green; shirts could be tucked in or, in the more usual Pinoy variation, left hanging out with the rear apron going down way below your butt; then you squeezed yourself into the tightest pants you could get your toes through – either "water-repellent" or some rugged cotton twill ("Burlington" is a name I seem to recall in this department); unless you were wearing ankle-high zippered boots, thick white cotton socks were de rigueur (the shiny, see-through black ones with diamond motifs were for your dad, to go with his lizard-like Montagut shirt); and a pair of burnished moccasins completed the effect (yes, we religiously Joe-Bushed, brushed, and polished our shoes back then, except for the gamusa varieties).
The Amboy look was drop-dead gorgeous and humanly irresistible – or so we liked to imagine, reviewing our razor-sharp profiles in the mirror before strutting off to the school fair and the inevitable party afterwards. Five brush-offs from the miniskirted chicks later, the coolness distinctly felt a few degrees warmer, but that was only because every other guy was also an Amboy, and while you could buy the get-up, you couldn’t buy Davey Jones’s or Paul McCartney’s face.
Amboy-dom would enjoy a kind of resurgence in the ‘80s with the preppy look, this time featuring button-down check shirts with rolled-up sleeves and the obligatory Topsiders or penny loafers, but preppiness more or less stayed within the coño campuses whereas, in the ‘60s, even your friendly neighborhood tambay or thug did his darnedest to be an Amboy.
As the early ‘60s rocked into Vietnam and Woodstock, cuteness and order gave way to hippie grunge and riotousness, and the buttons came off our button-down collars, and the collars themselves got long and loopy. For my generation, the onset of the First Quarter Storm meant a turn to proletarian basics: Mao T-shirts, frayed jeans, and "Ho Chi Minh" rubber-tire sandals. A few more years and martial-law decorum would deliver us to double-knit, Bang-Bang and Faded Glory denims, and pre-Dockers Levi’s. Double-pleated slacks and trouser cuffs remained far in the future, which is where we are today – fat and balding, in this boomed-out baby’s case, but still lucky as hell to be alive at all.
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