Songs to crash your car with

(Author’s note: One of the most consistent queries I get as someone who writes occasionally about music is what do I listen to. Since I spend a lot of time in the car, I thought it to be a good idea to write about the music I listen to en route to various destinations around the city. I have to apologize though to Scott Garceau who wrote a similar article a few years back; his article is, of course, superior to this one but I decided to rip him off just the same.)

Metro Manila is a strange place. It is all at once a science-fiction cyberpunk dystopia, a traders market of oriental charm, a debauched Garden of Eden with peroxide sunsets, a concrete jungle wherein a renascent botany is creeping through the cracks to exact a careful revenge, and a cultural Interzone of startling incongruities. And, by the way, did we mention that it still manages to be beautiful as well?

What better way to observe this bizarre city than by driving around it? Safely enclosed in glass and steel, one can wander its streets (if one has a Job-like patience but late at night it’s not so bad) like a spectator in a fairground amusement ride (with a safe distance between the sights and yourself). For those peculiar individuals who find such trips enjoyable, the selection of the perfect soundtrack is of utmost importance. For example, who can imagine riding in Travis Bickle’s cab without Bernard Herrmann’s sleazy sax-driven score? Here are some choice selections from my CD changer that have been making travelling around the metro a helluva lot more fun (and dangerous).

Naked City
Torture Garden
(Toy’s Factory)

If you are prone to road rage or schizophrenic episodes in the Philip K. Dick sense (like this writer) this is one album you may want to steer clear from. Led by indomitable John Zorn (and backed up by musicians like guitarist Bill Frisell – yes, that one – and drummer Joey Baron), Naked City is the sound of a genuinely gifted musicians not giving a f**k. Throwing anything from hardcore to abstract bop jazz to Bill Haley style rock and roll in the mix – and that’s just in the course of one track! – the band shifts moods violently and abruptly like brief sharp spikes in a madman’s E.E.G. Turned up loud while driving across EDSA, chain-smoking cigarettes with the windows closed, one can almost imagine David Lynch watching intently the monitors from his director’s chair as he anxiously awaits the climactic collision.

Richard Hawley
Late Night Final
(Setanta)

Being unapologetically romantic these days seems to have lost some of its drawing power, what with the word "love" being used in advertising jingles and the vapid warbling of offenders such as Ronan Keating and Brian McKnight (whose The Sorry Song has got to be the most awful song ever committed to tape and the biggest threat to highway sanity). A pity, given that Metro Manila, despite what many might think, is a romantic city. This debut album from the guitarist of Britpop luminaries such as Pulp, Beth Orton and Robbie Williams is for those who haven’t given up hope. Delivered in a classic croon that resounds but never fills those spaces reserved for lovers’ sweet nothings, the album is a classic lovers’ lane soundtrack, bristling with the fevered longing to find just the right spot while you manage the trick of shifting gears without letting go of her hand. Not even a car crash can break the spell this album casts.

Ladytron
Light & Magic
(Invicta Hi-Fi)

One of science fiction’s most potent symbols is undoubtedly the machine. (One SF writer goes as far as to define the genre as the body’s dream of becoming one.) Given the popularity of SF among the youth (one need only look at the fashions and themes in pop culture movements like cyberpunk and electroclash) and the cheapness and ready availability of technology, it didn’t take long for technology to assert its presence in music. (This isn’t new; the futurists were using industrial sounds way back in the first half of the 20th century. Also, it can actually be argued that technology has always been responsible for the evolutionary leaps in modern music – you can’t imagine Hendrix without his electric guitar, can you?) This Liverpool quartet – touted as brave new voices in electronic music by the British press – are actually descended from pioneers in the genre such as Kraftwerk, Gary Numan and Depeche Mode, not just in their fashion sense but in their knack for creating great pop tunes – more often dark confections of keyboard drones and catchy melodies. This is an album for anyone who’s pretended that their car is a space shuttle (navigating through the gaping potholes in Manila is like going through an asteroid belt) and having a deceptively friendly (but of course murderous) computer named HAL as your in-flight DJ.

John Williams
The Seville Concert
(Sony Music)

It is always a wonder why so many guitarists aided by the latest electric equipment and effects boxes somehow manage to express so little despite all their gadgetry. Even once-inventive fretboard stylists like Tom Morello in his latest guise as the axeman for the overrated Audioslave or any of his disciples in the local scene seem only capable of playing one emotion (and not very well at that, for anger is never that simplistic). Anyone with more than a passing interest in guitar music should do themselves a favor by listening to this album and marvel at the range and depth of expression one of the world’s greatest classical guitarists manages to convey with his instrument. Recorded live and mostly unaccompanied, Williams tackles diverse pieces from masters such as Bach and Vivaldi (particularly beautiful is the second movement of the latter composer’s Concerto in D Major which Williams plays with such tenderness) to more "eccentric" pieces by Yuquijiro Yocoh and Nikita Koshkin. (The latter represented by a personal favorite Usher Waltz, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story.) From dark to light, shocking and reassuring, the album captures the experience of cruising happy and contented on a Sunday afternoon but with the nagging feeling that the final destination of your journey may be a multi-car pile-up in a busy intersection in Ermita.

Charles Mingus
Mingus Ah Um
(Colombia Records)

Recorded in 1959, this album still manages to amaze a new generation of listeners every time. It’s not that it sounds particularly modern (although many of the things the legendary bassist and his troupe achieved on this recording is still miles ahead of most contemporary music) but rather in the sense that it seizes one by the lapels and transports one to an era of hipsters, smoke-filled rooms and film-noir lampposts. This was a time when freedom and rebellion was sounded out by a dizzying array of musical notes played on a saxophone or piano as much as it was proclaimed by screeching tires and the breaking of a bottle of whiskey in the dead of night. Yet even in these recordings one can hear the melancholy of a generation, addicted on junk and bearing the weight of encroaching adulthood; it’s an intoxicating mix that presents a complete portrait of Mingus’ world and times – a heady cocktail of dread and debauched liberty that sounds like the film score for an aging swinger’s last night on the town, picking up a call girl in Malate, having dirty sex in a seedy motel before parking his car in a secluded parking lot in Roxas Blvd. to blow his brains out.

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Thanks to the following for their help with this column: Francis and Lourd De Veyra of Radioactive Sago Project, the unflappable Igan D’ Bayan, the faithful Cris Sevilla, bass guru Noel Asisitores, Arnie Matienzo and the always dependable "religion" advisor David Zarraga.

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Happy birthday greetings also to Carlo Quisumbing, my bandmate and one of the most talented young musicans I know.

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Notes From Underground:

For those about to rock, feel free to go to Gweilos at Carlos Palanca St. in Makati. It’s especially great on Mondays when DJ Ro spins the best of the ’60s to the ’70s, from the Beatles to Neil Young, Led Zeppelin to New Order. No Earth, Wind and Fire though. Happy hour all night!

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Send comments and reactions to: erwin_ro mulo@hotmail.com.