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There was a time when being a rocker meant something.
You had to have balls, because it meant being an outcast. No one
understood us. We, too, didn’t understand it much ourselves at the
time. It was simply who we were.
Thirty bucks and a weapon search
got you into Red Rocks where the toilet beside the stage always was
rank, the plump girl in Goth gear always danced by herself and there
would always be some punk who would get his head smashed. Bands that
knew how to play their instruments were rare those days and bands
that dared play their songs were even rarer. Local acts didn’t
much airplay on popular radio stations back then. The only
recordings you could get were musical compilations and underground
audio tapes of punk bands from the Twisted Red Cross label.
But that has all changed. Pinoy
rock has become pop. That’s pop as in Ultraelectromagneticpop. The
Eraserheads was the first band that everyone could listen to and
identify with, be they jolog fans of Sharon Cuneta or coño-rockers
grooving in brazen Boracay. Their songs are not only the anthems for
their generation; they are now rock classics younger generations
revive and rehash.
Nearly 14 years after the
Eraserheads released their first major record album and spearheaded
the second coming of Pinoy rock, times are better than ever for
Filipino rock music. We have a healthy local music industry where
all genres from trip-hop to punk-jazz thrive and there are record
deals and gig spots for everyone. You can now earn a descent living
and be a good provider to your family as a rocker these days. With
groupies hounding pogi-rockers and teenie-bopper idols co-opting
rock bands on noontime variety television shows, it has become what
the late rock journalist Lester Bangs labeled as “an industry of
cool.”
It’s now time for all those who
came of age with the Eraserheads—all you thirtysomething rockers,
especially the uncool among us—to reminisce the days when to rock
was to struggle and when to dream was to dare punch the sky.
Tikman ang Langit: An Anthology
on the Eraserheads, compiled by The Manila Times’ Jing Garcia and
Melvin Calimag edited by Ces Rodriguez, with foreword by Robin
Rivera, features essays by: Dimpy Jazmines, Abigail Ho, Claire
Maneja, Edwin Sallan, Erwin Olivia, Faye Ilogon, Michael Gaddi, Joel
Pinaroc, Joey Alarilla, Julio de la Cruz Jr., Marco Abella, Vernon
Sarne, Vincent Batacan, Rodriguez and Garcia.
The book also features blurbs
from rock journalist Eric Caruncho, poet and Radioactive Sago
Project front man Lourd de Veyra, novelist Jessica Zafra and
Eraserheads band members Raymund Marasigan, Buddy Zabala and Marcus
Adoro.
The printing of the book itself,
done in black and white, is a throwback to the days when you got
word of through do-it-yourself xeroxed leaflets that looked like
ransom notes with their cutout letters and pictures. The typography
and the photography are so low-fi it hurts, literally. All you
30-somethings will find it cute on the first glance then will find
it a hard read that demands bifocals. Still the insights,
revelations inside are worth the eyestrain.
The contributors for this
anthology are not all music industry insiders, rock literati and
audiophiles like Garcia. Most are like you and I, regular music
fans. Their insights and recollections are unabashedly personal and
opinionated. There is no effort to balance viewpoints or offer a
space for any who may have felt slighted to offer their rebuttal.
Just as well. Never mind the bollocks.
Refreshingly humorous are the
entries of Maneja with “Walang Nagbago: My Affair with Marcus
Adoro and the Eraserheads” and Ilogon with “How to be the Girl
in the Eraserheads Song.” Ardivilla comes out in a most revealing
and witty fashion with “Hey Jay, Don’t Go Away or How the
Eraserheads Took a Sad Song and Made It Happy and Gay.” Garcia
comes out swinging with his insider revelation as a record producer
and regular denizen of Club Dredd/Red Rocks in “A Dreddful
Story.”
Tikman ang Langit shares many of
the qualities that endear us to the Eraserheads. It’s honest and
unpretentious. Give it a licking.
 --Rome
George
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