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color our world

A few weeks before I left home, I promised a friend I’ll help with her volunteer work. So this morning, I went out and looked for a way to reach pangarap foundation. It was faaaaaar from my “home” here – took me lrt and mrt rides and a few meters of walking (yes, I was late). Good thing the people I asked for directions were very helpful and friendly too. When they heard where I was going, they were prompt to point the way, one even asking if I want company (I said no thanks…hehehe).

So I reached the place and met the other volunteers. There were six of us in all, and it was nice to meet new people who share the same passion as mine. I also met the kids – all 31 of them. I was told that some of them go to school while some do not and it’s only through the volunteers where they learn to read or write. They were excited about the day’s activity.

The day’s activity was about art and was called “Dreams in Color”. The Saturday Group of Artists helped, giving lectures on painting, drawing and cartoon making. They also showed some of their masterpieces – I was amazed at one work where the artist used sandpaper for his canvass. The kids were eager to learn and were full of energy all throughout the three sessions. When workshop time came, some even managed to come up with two or more beautiful outputs.

The artists were wonderful with the kids. They were patient despite the “kuyakuyakuyakuyakuya”s from the kids. They showed them different techniques in painting/drawing/cartoon making and what I liked most was that they always remind the kids not to be afraid to express themselves through art, not to give up on their dreams and not to be ashamed of who they are.

We ended at around 430pm with lots of outputs and lots of happy kids, eager to learn more and eager to continue what they have started this day.

As I was leaving pangarap foundation, their credo caught my eye: “huwag bitawan ang tibay, lakas”. For these boys, the future is bright as long as they do just that.

anxious

i was anxious the whole morning yesterday coz i was about to get my compre results. i took the exam last october and i felt so bad coz i wasn't able to prepare for it. it was a do or die moment and what kept me going were the people who pushed me and told me it'll be okay (may pahabol pa nga "k lang na if d gd makayanan, retake eh!" waaaah!!).
so......i finally got my result and oh.my.lord...I PASSED! 1.25 baby! (imagine me jumping up and down, screaming my lungs out...jacqui and khrizna laughing)


thank you to everyone who helped pray for me and who pushed my big ass to take the compre despite my being not ready. you know who you are. aylabsyu!!!

now....on to the dreaded thesis....another anxiety attack about to come.

one more!

THE "FINAL SET" DECAMERON

by Aldus Santos

It’s final. The Final Set is over. What do we look forward to now? I seriously wonder. The Eraserheads were our college roommates, our drinking buddies, our eccentric neighbors with the dirty sneakers and the exotic Nella Sarabia eyewear. They fought and broke up (a feud that’s simultaneously private and public—private in its details, public in its impact), and they ceased being these friendly things to us. No proper goodbyes were said. That kind of thing happens in real life: you lose someone’s number, you quarrel, one of you leaves, then the furniture in the small, cramped space that is your life gets rearranged. When the Eraserheads reemerged, they reemerged as different people. They wore different things, spoke differently, and their expressions have lost that collegiate playfulness of yore (okay, Marcus still has that signature dazed expression). With the continuation of the reunion saga last March 7, however, the farewell finally had a semblance of conclusiveness. In no particular order, the ten things that made The Final Set the definitive Eraserheads experience:

1. “Basag—ipagdiket-diket” (The Piano). Ely Buendia went Jimi Hendrix on the Sticker Happy upright piano: doused the top with lighter fluid, lit a piece of paper, and set the damn thing a-blazin’. It could still be salvaged, you thought, and Buendia trying to jam on it for the outro of “Ang Huling El Bimbo” gave you a momentary glimmer of hope. “It was just for show.” By song’s end, you thought, guys with small fire extinguishers (or buckets of water) will rush to the stage and mum the crackling fire. It didn’t happen. He stood up, kicked the piano down, and pogo’d on it like a child on a racket, sending the black and white keys ricocheting in several directions. It was a good show prop—iconic and instantly recognizable—but it was also a physical representation of an impalpable dream now turned vapor. It was a true artifact, and now it’s gone. (Well, at least publicly. Pinoy Rock Central, a music fan’s blog, quoted Pupil co-manager Day Cabuhat saying that it’s currently being restored and will be kept in Buendia’s home.)

2. “Akala ko’y pumasok—sablay” (The Paraphrases). The “jam” approach of the Eraserheads towards their material live (on songs that are practically eons away from jazz or the blues) doesn’t only include instrumentation. It also involves tweaks on the lyrics. To several E-Heads know-alls, these paraphrases were like private stories told to them once long ago by older, cooler cousins: stories that stuck, jokes that didn’t get old, anecdotes that required constant retelling. “Eh, medyo panget ka pa no’n—hanggang ngayon.” “Akala ko, wala ka pang alam sa kama; ‘yun pala, ang dami na.” And who could forget the newest of the bunch, Marcus Adoro’s reggae-tinged paraphrases on “Huwag Mo Nang Itanong”: “Chika ang inabot ko” and “Ayoko ng ingay mo.” The otherwise word-perfect sing-alongs were sporadically interrupted by these gems, and the effect they had were one of disorientation, like being, out of nowhere, pushed into the water (in your jeans or your cocktail dress, whichever the case may be). You cuss out the moron who pushed you, but you’re laughing anyway, dripping with the excitement of a new discovery.

3. “Please, please come back to me” (The Divorcees). It’s like Christmas dinner and everyone is there, and there’s the cousin everybody thinks you hate, and, seeing the two of you approach each other, the relatives trade whispered guesses, elbow each other in code, and smile innocently when the two of you pass them by. “Are they really okay?” their eyes seem to say. Part of the charm of both The Reunion and The Final Set, it must be said, is the Peeping Tom in the E-fan: “Are Ely Buendia and Raymund Marasigan really okay?” The stage is huge and wide but nothing is too fine a detail to the obsessive. When the singer and the drummer had to do quick pocket meetings to consult each other about—I can only guess—songs or arrangements, people cheered, jeered, and yihee’d to oblivion. When Buendia introduced Marasigan as vocalist on “Slo Mo,” “Alkohol,” and “Insomya,” you can feel a spine-tingling chill, because the people beside and around you suddenly, giddily freeze. When in mid-verse the gyrating Marasigan stood skin-to-skin beside Buendia, the back-talking relatives weren’t able to hold it anymore and they almost went ballistic with glee. The strongmen of the Eraserheads may not be malling or booking cruise trips together, but at least they can share a stage. Magnificently at that.

4. “I’m a thousand miles away from my number-one fan” (The Fans). In the Eraserheads’ heyday, their collective onstage demeanor, generally speaking, was one of detachment. It was almost a trademark. No elaborate spiels. No banter. No messianic visits to the pit to shake people’s hands. Until now. It took age, fatherhood perhaps, and lots of time, but they are finally comfortable with the love. “I love you, Ely!” a manly man’s voice pierced the balmy Saturday night air. Hesitating only for a second, the guitarless singer (who was being backed solely by pianist Jazz Nicolas on the lounge rethinking of “Kailan”) answered back, “I love you, too, pare.” The Final Set was almost like a good, evenly-keeled conversation. Or, to appropriate singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche, a “two-way monologue.” After Adoro and Marasigan’s respective turns at the mic—presumably to give Buendia a needed breather, to prevent you-know-what—fans started chanting “Buddy! Buddy!” and, yes, like a good conversation, Zabala responded curtly by singing, as a tease, the first line from Fruitcake's “The Fabulous Baker Boy.” In a nutshell, they gamely responded when spoken to, and vice-versa. “Group hug!” the several-thousands-strong crowd insisted, to which Ely quipped, “Kayo muna!” Also, it’s totally cool that the fans played that game of “Ely says” (a la “Simon says”) quite well—that is, with an almost-blind fanaticism—with the singer barking one-word commands, e.g., “Sing!” or “Jump!”

5. “Ibato mo na lang sa ulan” (The Throws). Throwing projectiles audience-bound: it’s standard rock-show fare. And, because the ‘Heads were anything but standard in their active years, their arena-rock gestures at the big show by the bay were taken as little surprises. Ely threw guitar picks, or at least tried to, as said guitar-playing implements landed, at best, on the front row (physics would dictate that he can only do that successfully without wind resistance). Raymund, meanwhile, threw drumsticks, which are infinitely easier to throw and get to actually land somewhere. And, because one of the band’s strongest suits is unpredictability, they also threw unpredictable things. After the first onslaught of songs, Buendia rid himself of his designer jacket, helicopter-twirled it a la Pete Townshend, and hurled it at the crowd. During the latter half of the show, he threw out, erm, a shoe. Imagine the chaos in that portion of the pit: girls with foot fetishes, inflicting bodily harm on each other for a used sneaker. Okay, girls and boys with foot fetishes. Okay—girls and boys with every Eraserheads-related fetish imaginable. Is this fanhood? It’s religion. (Scroll down in this page to witness the fate suffered by said piece of Eraserhead apparel.)

6. “There are B-sides to every story” (The Non-Singles). Sure, “Magasin,” “Pare Ko,” “Overdrive,” and “Ang Huling El Bimbo,” among others, were must-plays during The Final Set. However, the inclusion of B-sides and non-singles alike gave the diehards serious to-die-for moments. The most memorable, hands down, would have to be the triad of Marasigan-led performances: Cutterpillow’s “Slo Mo” and Circus’s “Alkohol” and “Insomya.” Gladly, the members of the audience were impressively clued-in types: they effortlessly breezed through the spokenword of “Slo Mo,” chanted the Radioactive Sago Project paraphrase of “Alkohol” (“Utak mo’y buhol-buhol!”), and went totally primal on the choruses of “Insomya” (“Agahan ko sa hapon, tanghalian sa gabi, hapunan sa madaling-araw!”) It was evident how the Man from Marikina has truly become a full-pledged frontman now: a facet of his that has always existed, but something which was perhaps solidified in his post-Marc Abaya work with Sandwich. He clearly owned the crowd, like he was a punk-rock Moses atop a rock 'n' roll Sinai. However, the most surprising—to most, at least—was Marcus Adoro’s aforementioned reggae take on “Huwag Mo Nang Itanong.” Makoy has been doing this version of the song in his bar stints with Markus Highway for quite some time now. There is a subtle salute to the intro of “I Shot the Sheriff” in the opening, and the accents and syllabication were mildly altered. When Raymund dropped by my book launch last January, we bumped into each other during MHW’s set, and they were doing said “revival.” Marasigan did a double take when he heard the crowd singing along inside saGuijo. “Si Makoy ba ‘yan?” he smiled, visibly amused. Noteworthy runners-up, for me, include “Walang Nagbago,” “Poorman’s Grave,” and “Back 2 Me.”

7. “Ako ay kaibigan, na lagi mong maaasahan” (The Man from Manila). A day before D-Day—pre-show crunch time—horrid, abysmal news came. Francis Magalona (a.k.a. “Francis M.,” a.k.a. “Francism,” a.k.a. “The Man from Manila”), the president-elect of the Pinoy rap nation, succumbed to complications from leukemia. He was 44. He was a multi-faceted man: a film star, TV host, musician, toy hobbyist, photography nut, entrepreneur, but mostly, a family man and a good friend. He also wore the flag proudly, on his heart and on his (literal) sleeve. He redressed nationalism so that it ceased being an outdated thing. He stripped it of its furrowed-brow pomposity. As a musician, meanwhile, he was setting his horizons further in the early 90s, looking into the then-burgeoning Dredd scene to hook up with “alternative” rockers, one of them being the Eraserheads. The friendship that was fostered bore fruit when Kiko did the rap outro for Cutterpillow’s opening track, “Super Proxy.” The famed rapper developed a particularly intimate friendship with Ely, and they were currently collaborating as “The Sickos” (an allusion to their simultaneous bouts with mortality) when he passed away. The project was something which has been keeping him “alive,” to quote the late musician loosely. Ely opened the encore set of the big show by leading the crowd into raised-fist chants of “Francis! Francis!” The Eraserheads then ripped through “Super Proxy,” with Buendia subbing for his dear departed friend on rap detail. A montage of music videos featuring the late rapper flashed on the screens, and the band segued from the last few notes of the down-tempo rearrangement of “Alapaap” to the first few chorus bars of Magalona’s “Kaleidoscope World.” To appropriate Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach this time, “There were tears at the birthday party.”

8. “Tapos na ba ang kanta—ba’t may tumutunog pang gitara?” (The Real Encore). People were already bee-lining for the exits. Some of the installations were already being prepared to get dismantled. And then, Marasigan’s voice was heard through the house speakers, which were still on. “Nasa’n si Marcus? Tawagin n’yo si Marcus!” Faint chants of “Marcus! Marcus!” were heard from certain sections of the audience. Ticketless fans have stormed inside the venue and were about to witness spontaneous history. Ely appeared guitarless onstage and confirmed everything on-mic, “Okay— three for the road.” “Wala na ‘to sa set list,” Marasigan I think added. The paying fans rushed back in, and the band did unrehearsed renditions of “Ligaya,” “Sembreak,” and “Toyang”—all of which were previously part of August 2008’s The Reunion. The spontaneity of the thing was marked by Buendia flubbing a song outro. “Ah, tapos na ba?” he asked mock-innocently.

9. “Lumipas ang maraming taon; 'di na tayo nagkita” (The Curtain Call). The bittersweet thing was the formality with which Ely said, when it was all done, “We are the Eraserheads. Thank you. Good night.” For at least four to five hours that night, they were the Eraserheads. For at least four to five hours that night, it was as though “Sugod” and “Disconnection Notice” haven’t even been written, because we were back at the AS Steps, the Main Library, the Film Center, the Sunken Garden, worrying about physics midterms in the second semester of 1996 and raising our middle finger to fascism while losing our heads in the Eraserheads. They were the Eraserheads that night: we knew it, but hearing it made a universe of difference. They were like ex-spouses who decided to sleep together one last time—okay, sorry, chat and hang out for old time’s sake—before they proceed with their respective current lives. For the sake of the kids, as the movies go. Arms around each other—with Nicolas in tow as “Extra” (with the inverted “E”), as one of his shirts proclaimed that night—they took a bow. Curtain call. I guess that was the group hug. Insert smiley and clapping emoticon. Thank you, guys.

10. “Life's a journey anyway” (The Bonus Track). Okay, this part didn’t transpire onstage. I talked to three of the guys a couple of days post-show, to gush and drool and shriek like a baby. No, to ask them how it felt saying goodbye this time around. Buddy went, “It’s more of a ‘See you later’ than a ‘Goodbye.’ That’s what you tell your friends when you know you’ve had a good run and have done well. [It was a] good gig!” Ely was in a good, comic mood, saying, “I’ve never taken sole credit for the E-heads’ success, but I did expect people to thank me for breaking up the band. Shockingly, nobody ever did!” He permitted himself a chuckle and added, “I had fun this time, even if it was still tinged with sadness. I hope we made the fans happy. That’s it.” He mysteriously furthered, “Don’t call us—we’ll call you.” Makoy, meanwhile, said with as much mystery, “Four words: ‘huwag mo nang itanong!’”

in honor of last week's event

10 greatest moments of Eraserheads’ Final Set


By Pam Pastor
Philippine Daily Inquirer
03/14/2009


Close this IT WASN’T a group hug but it was pretty damn close.

After failed attempts by the audience to cajole the members of Eraserheads into doing an embrace (Ely Buendia told the crowd, “Kayo muna!”), Ely, Raymund Marasigan, Marcus Adoro and Buddy Zabala (and the Itchyworms’ Jazz Nicolas) walked to the front of the stage, put their arms around one another, and took a bow.

It was just one of the great moments of the Erasherheads concert last Saturday.
The others:

9 Souvenirs for the crowd. Many fans went home with souvenirs. The boys threw all sorts of stuff at their captive audience—water bottles, picks, drumsticks, even Ely’s shoes. (He was poised to throw his socks, which made everyone laugh. He didn’t.) Ely also gave away his jacket which, to the horror of countless fans online, was eventually cut up by the six people who caught it, so each of them could take home a piece. One crew member joined the fun—after the concert, he hurled at the crowd the container of lighter fluid Ely used when he lit up the piano. And people actually caught it.

8 Marcus singing a reggae version of “Huwag Mo Nang Itanong,” to the delight of the crowd. Raymund letting Jazz take over the drums so he could sing “Slo Mo,” “Alkohol” and “Insomnya.” It was funny to watch the crowd react every time Raymund teasingly approached Ely (of course, the whole world knows why). Buddy finally giving in to the crowd’s requests to take over the mic too, by singing two lines from “Fine Time”— “I don’t care if we sleep all day/Basta kayakap ka ay okay.” The ’Heads were more playful this time—it became clear they were more relaxed in this concert than in the previous reunion. They were actually having fun.
It’s always been said that the Eraserheads aren’t big on connecting with the audience and talking to the crowd, but not this time.

7 The sala set. After the first break, the boys emerged onstage in a more intimate setup, with Ely sitting on a couch and the others wielding acoustic instruments. That part of the concert felt so intimate—strange, given the crowd that numbered a hundred thousand. That brief moment, it didn’t feel like we were in a huge concert venue; it felt like we were in a small bar watching our favorite band. Ely deadpanned, “If you have any requests, pakibigay sa waiter.”

6 Ely singing the word “t---ina” when they played Pare Ko. I don’t think a cuss word has received that much applause, ever. When a guy shouted, “I love you, Ely!” Ely replied, “I love you too, pare,” without missing a beat.

5 The insane fireworks of “Overdrive.” They came as such a surprise that some people in front actually ducked.

4 The crowd singing “Ang Huling El Bimbo” while waiting for the Eraserheads to go onstage again. That was a goosebump-moment.

3 The tribute to Francis M. On the day of the concert, people were still trying to come to grips with the news of Francis Magalona’s death. He had been due to perform in the concert. The Eraserheads prepared a tribute instead— “Sumigaw tayo para kay Francis!” Ely said. The crowd broke into a deafening chant, “Francis! Francis!”

Raymund held up a sign that read, “Rock Ed Salutes The Man From Manila.” The band played “Superproxy” and “Kaleidoscope World,” with Ely rapping, instead of Francis. Many people online have written that the teleprompter set up in front of the stage must have been a big help when Ely had to rap “Superproxy.” Truth is, the lyrics of the rap were not on the teleprompter. Yes, Ely knows them by heart.

2 The burning of the piano. There was a confetti storm when the Eraserheads finally played “Ang Huling El Bimbo” but there was a bigger thing happening onstage. Before a shocked audience, Ely set the “Sticker Happy”piano on fire. It was Ely’s old piano which had been at ’70s Bistro for a long time, the piano featured on the “Sticker Happy” album cover. “We actually wanted to use the piano pero sira na ’yun. I don’t know if it was too expensive to repair or we just didn’t have enough time,” Raymund said. Did he know Ely would burn it? “He kinda mentioned it as a joke. He really wanted the piano onstage. But I guess he knew he’d do it; he had lighter fluid.”

1 Three for the road. The Eraserheads had done an encore, the show was over, or so everyone thought. People started to spill out of the concert grounds, the crew took over the stage and started packing up.

But then, Raymund returned and said, “Gusto ninyo pa ba?”

The crowd went wild. “Tawagin niyo si Ely!” “Tawagin ninyo si Marcus!”

Soon, the four were back onstage, standing in a circle. Ely asked the crowd, “Kaya ninyo pa ba?” Everyone was still going wild. “Okay. Three for the road,” he said. They played “Ligaya,” “Sembreak” and “Toyang.”

Ely finally left his comfort zone behind the mic stand and actually went down to the crowd, making people sing parts of Toyang. Asked later why they decided to play more songs, Raymund said, “Sobrang bitin pa kami ni Buddy! Gusto ko pa nga ng sampu eh!”

The extra songs may have been unplanned (and unrehearsed) but they did not come as a surprise.
Apparently, in the last rehearsals, Ely said, “’Pag hindi tayo tinigilan, dire-diretso lang tayo.”

This part of the show resonated so much with the crowd not just because they played three well-loved songs, but also because it gave fans hope that maybe, just maybe, like the fans, the Eraserheads didn’t want the night to end.

The End

THE END
Jessica Zafra
http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=447890&publicationSubCategoryId=84

The reunion of an important rock band is laden with enough emotional and literal baggage to crash an airplane. In the Philippines in the 1990s, the Eraserheads were the Beatles. Whether you bought their albums or not, you know their songs. They came at you from all sides, they got their hooks into your brain. You may not even be aware that you know them until years later you get stuck in traffic and one is played on the radio. Why do you know all the words, including the backup vocals? “I should’ve gone with you to the reunion concert,” a friend told me last year. “It turns out they’re in my subconscious.”

The melodies were fairly simple but insidious; they were viral before viral went... viral. The lyrics were also simple — the kind that is difficult to replicate. There’s a topic for a thesis: “The Deceptive Simplicity of The Eraserheads Oeuvre.”

Every other Tagalog song is about thwarted love, but which one nails it like the band’s first hit, Pare Ko? The narrator addresses the listener directly, as a friend and confidante. How can you not like a band that addresses you in this manner? To seal your imaginary shared history he adds, “Wag mong sabihing ‘Na naman.’” (“Don’t say ‘Again.’”)

Then he expresses bewilderment, that universal human condition, and declines a drinking session, chiding you and himself for your beer bellies. By the time he gets to the chorus, you have lived his entire relationship with the girl who gave him this misery (and you feel like thanking her for providing the material).

Ah, that chorus that offended the guardians of morality. Thank you, guardians, for kicking up a fuss that generated free publicity and sold more albums. But isn’t it the most natural thing in the world to cuss when you’ve been dumped? It’s not a literal description of anyone’s mother. “I look like a fool. She gave me false hope. Screw this love.” That’s the nice translation.

Later these upright citizens would express outrage over another Eheads song, Alapaap. The offending lyric: “Hanggang sa dulo ng mundo/Hanggang maubos ang ubo” (“Until the edge of the world/Until this cough goes away”). All right, the whimsical lyrics about clouds did imply being high, and cough syrup may have been involved. However did you know that?

A writer friend notes that more than any other lyricist, Ely Buendia gets the meter, phrasing and internal melody of Tagalog. The problem with many Tagalog pop songs is that the syllables seem to have been squeezed in or drawn out to fit the melody, with awkward results. In Eheads songs, the melody seems to derive from the words themselves.

“Kamukha mo si Paraluman” (“You looked like Paraluman”) begins their best song. That name suffices to recall afternoons spent watching old movies on black and white TV. Ang Huling El Bimbo is an ode to childhood, innocence and first love, then regret, bitterness and death. A complete lifetime in three minutes. It ends with a line that sums up all the disappointments of adulthood: “Sa panaginip na lang pala kita maisasayaw” (“Only in dreams can I dance with you now”). In the wonderful music video directed by Auraeus Solito, memory is a ghost rising out of a pile of dead leaves.

These lyrics were written by a notoriously difficult interviewee, one who deflects questions with quips, wordplay and unconcealed boredom.

Getting Ely to open up is like squeezing vodka out of a rock. Raimund Marasigan, Buddy Zabala and Marcus Adoro aren’t exactly chatterboxes, either. If you think about it, the Eheads attained mind-boggling fame while managing not to gut themselves in public. Despite the intense curiosity about their personal lives, they managed to hang onto much of their privacy. What an amazing concept: celebrities famous for the work they produced.

I have this theory about why Ely decided to be the interviewee from hell. Apart from the fact that not everyone is thrilled to reveal his innermost thoughts to the media. It’s like this: Ely has already put the contents of his life out there. They’re in the songs. If you really listen, you will know more about him than you can possibly need or want. Here lies his evil genius: he’s made you think that the songs are about you. And the songs are true, not in their specific facts — you may never have hung around Tandang Sora or lived next to a videoke — but in their sensibility. He’s presented you with chunks of his life; what more do you want?

This is not to imply that Ely alone is the Eheads. Their songs are true collaborations. The initial draft of Ang Huling El Bimbo bears little resemblance to the one that haunts us. The opening chords, the hypnotic arrangement — all four of them took a crack at the material, as they did on all the other songs. Of course there was a lot of tension in the band. Any group in which everyone agrees on everything is doomed to be forgotten. Forgotten bands don’t summon tens of thousands of fans to an open concrete field by the bay.

There were fights, unspoken arguments, unresolved quarrels and divisions. These led to now-classic songs, and they also led to the band breaking up. The collaborative creative process is not a picnic.

Ely left the band. He has said that he felt enormous pressure as the frontman to connect with the audience, and he didn’t have the stamina.

The stress of being a hit-making factory probably contributed to the decision. It’s a fact that after their juggernaut “Cutterpillow,” the Eheads began turning out more musically adventurous, challenging material. The comforting melodies that anyone could sing were almost gone; the words alluded to experiences unfamiliar to the audience. Album sales declined.

Buddy, Marcus, and Raimund kept the Eheads going, hiring a new vocalist and performing the Eheads catalogue. This heightened the ill will with the original vocalist, who for years refused to sing any Eheads songs. The band eventually broke up. There was an air of anticlimax to the disbanding. They never said a proper goodbye to their fans. This reunion is in effect the long-delayed farewell concert.

In the post-Eheads era it’s Raimund who’s really blossomed as a performer. Since being liberated from behind the drum kit at the back of the stage, he’s gone on to front the band Sandwich and engage in a host of side projects. Buddy, doomed to be the resident adult, plays with The Dawn and other bands and composes music for the movies.

Marcus, who has always been his own person, goes surfing and releases his own albums. Ely fronts the band Pupil, writes stories, and has just made a short film. In 2006 during a Pupil gig, he suddenly felt very tired and weak. He went on playing. After the show he went to the hospital and was told that he’d suffered a heart attack.

Maybe I’m being a Lit major about this, but when one is faced with his own mortality as a non-abstract concept, it just doesn’t seem worth it to carry around all that baggage from the past and pay the extra charges.

The reunion concert was organized, with all the attendant drama — legal issues with the sponsor, cancellation, change of venue. Two days before the show Ely’s mother Lisette Buendia died of cancer. Halfway through the concert Ely felt very tired and weak and was rushed to the hospital. He required another angioplasty.

With Ely healthy again, take two of the concert was scheduled. The day before the show the band’s friend and guest star Francis Magalona died of leukemia. Farewells piled on farewells; if the reunion were a work of fiction it would be rejected for lack of plausibility. But this isn’t just their story anymore. The Eheads have written themselves into our story, and really, who cares about plausibility at a time like this? The gates are open. It’s time for your last goodbye.

In the Raw

re-live the final set with this youtube channel:


The Final Set

more!

my favorite, Father Markus singing:







i can't upload the vids i took..dunno why. salamat sa mga friends who sent these to me.

pics!!!

am excited!!!!

this is my reward for the very busy days i had and will still have =)

let us be thankful

Let us rise up and be thankful,
for if we didn't learn a lot today,
at least we learned a little,
and if we didn't learn a little,
at least we didn't get sick,
and if we got sick,
at least we didn't die;
so, let us all be thankful.
--------------------Buddha

bad day