Not Everyone In My Country Is A Hero (But I Know At Least Two)
“Regrets I’ve had a few, but then again, too many to mention…” — Morrissey
Vinyl fills the heart with joy. I started reigniting my childhood love affair with it a year ago and began digging up old LPs as well as buying new ones. On the latter, it’s become easier to find Matt Monro, Paul Anka, Herb Alpert, Paul Young, Spandua Ballet and others really, rather than anything of musical merit. But I love it. Perhaps the only reason I still frequent places like Cubao Expo anymore is to check out the wonderful shop of curiosities called Vinyl Dump, which houses LPs galore on the second floor. Literally spending hours there listening and just looking at all the half-naked black men adorning the covers literally adds years to one’s life. But there are finds there: a lotta Rico J. Puno, Pilta Corales and Cecile Licad (with Andre Previn doing the orchestration nonetheless) can be found in the stacks. Plus all the soul records you’ve forgotten or never heard of come out at you with horns a-blazin’ and grooves that no white man could ever hope to Viagra to. But I’ll admit it is nostalgia, more or less. Unlike the hipsters who treat the compound as if it’s Manila’s answer to Williamsburg I am deaf to the apparent superiority of vinyl over its digital counterparts. Mostly, like Duster’s Katwo Puertollano (who I’ve bumped into there a couple of times) I buy them for the covers if not the music. And the sheer ritual of dropping a needle onto a record and just waiting for the first new notes of When All’s Well by Everything But The Girl trickle in. Cheap thrills, if you ask me (also the name of my favorite Big Brother & Holding Company LP) but one that’s well worth it. Now if they only had more hardcore on sale (i.e. Millions of Damn Christians) maybe we’d see a lot fewer hipsters. I hate them more than hippies — the latter produced music that I still enjoy; the former just fashions that beg for them to be strangled with). The Nazis burned books; White America incinerated Beatles records; now the “fashionate” Filipino just begs for their fabric to be burned as well. And not as effigies.
Time For Heroes
There’s been stuff on the independent circuit that’s been worthy of our ears full attention. First off, it’s nice to hear that ex-Urban Bandit Arnold Morales is now gigging again with all-original material under his new band, The Tsunamis Tsunamis. The country’s foremost punk godfather, the author of anthems such as Nagpapansin and No Future sa Pader as well as the seditious (at the time) Do You Rebel Rebel? with its appropriation of the skinhead-fringe sect of “Oi!” punk to a tribute to the late Senator Benigno Aquino III. Slain on Aug. 21, Morales would take the stage in red socks in deliberate provocation and chant, “N-I-N-OY-OY-OY-OY!” (To be honest it still delivers shivers whenever I hear the cassette recording that Tommy Tanchanco’s Twisted Red Cross label released. Defiant and utterly irresponsible, it was a time of heroes.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have the very much-respected journalist and publisher Teodoro Locsin Sr. turning down Ferdinand Marcos’s offer (reportedly a number of three times to reopen the country’s greatest and longest running news weekly The Philippines Free Press just as long as he refrained from criticizing the First Couple). It was a tough time for Locsin who had also suffered the humiliation of the mass resignation of his senior staff including eminent names like Pete Lacaba, Gregrorio Brillantes and Nick Joaquin to being incarcerated during martial law. With nothing coming in, he seemed a defeated figure, a once-dashing figure now cut down to an angry old (not young) man. But listening to stuff that he might’ve listened to, such as Frank Sinatra (which I highly suggest you kids buy up as vinyl because this is one rare case where even I can hear the difference). Though I’m partial to Ol’ Blue Eyes’ version of Brazil (just because it creates the possibility of a better place in just a few notes — anywhere but here, as some of those incarcerated in Fort Bonifacio would wish, with not just a hint of both bitterness and optimism), I’m sure Sinatra’s My Way (a song he apparently he hated but which summed up his career up until to that point) would find much resonance in Locsin. All conjecture, of course — but valid methinks.
Elvis did his version and later Sid Vicious would, too. In his book Mystery Train, Greil Marcus would do a fine job of delineating the differences between the three of them. To these ears, each one is valid: summation, affirmation, defiance. But Locsin didn’t need to sing a note; his words were enough.
Morales, on the other hand, just sang his own tunes. And although I’d love to hear his take on My Way and how he would attack it, it really isn’t necessary. It’s the fact that he’s now singing new songs, with a new band and, by what we’ve heard so far, his way.
