On The Eraserheads (To be concluded)

“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.” – Bruce Feirstein

Writing in an ungodly hour and succumbing to it is one of the best things a writer can experience. You see not all writers get to be this close to their muses. Some would even go to far flung places just to be able to write while others would have to smoke packs and packs of cigarettes and gulp down liters of liquor just to be able to write something from the top of their heads.

Needless to say I just can’t fight against not writing at all even if my biological clock gets mixed up in the process.

I’m going to write about the greatest band that ever existed in the face of our country and I think everybody would agree with me when I say this, I am talking about the Eraserheads.

The four great musical geniuses (Ely, Marcus, Buddy, and Raymund) whom I believe captured the hearts and minds of my generation and the next and have become the finer example of Filipino music.

But let me take you back to that time before they even existed.

It was a time of what one may say the grunge era of music. Kurt Cobain is in while Axl Rose is slowly diminishing in the background.

It was a time of musical extravagance the birth of new music, the end of glam rock and the evolution of industrial rock to alternative music.

The best bands of those times hailing from Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Cranberries, Soundgarden, Metallica and Pearl Jam to say the least have paved the way for a new kind of musical enlightenment and became the standard of the generation which we fondly call the Generation X.

Ask anybody who knows great music and he would quote one or two bands from the 90′s, thats how confident my generation is with the kind of music it listens to.

But I am only talking about the international scene and mostly from the U.S. where most records are up for grabs in the local music store.

Then came the Eraserheads.

For all its irony I’ve never seen them play, and perhaps its the most regrettable moment in my life that I wasn’t able to see the guys play, even though in every step of the way I had the chance to watch them.

But first let me give you an idea of what was the local music scene around that time.

Most of the bands that sprung in those times tried hard enough to sound like the ones I mentioned above. Such low voices as Backdraft, to the more Cannibal Corpse like heavy metal Kabaong ni Kamatayan (Death’s Coffin) to the more mundane but whimsically famous on their own Sky Church. There are those who were melodramatic like After Image and Introvoyz to the more elegant and equally rocking Razorback, Wolfgang and Rivermaya.

Club Dredd is in and Mayrics is the local talent pool of local producers waiting for the next big band.

Yet all of them with respect to their talents and fame, pales in comparison to The Eraserheads.

Their brand of music is what one may call encompassing to all ages and generation as they tackled the simple problems of everyday life, the angst and the insecurities of a generation yearning for its own identity.

The experience of the band was legendary in the sense that it was baffling and equally idealistic that until now the mystery of their breakup is being contested over and again and everybody is looking for a sign in the albums they created.

And I bet everyone and all bands existing as of the moment are willing to die to just see them play together once again and sing their songs.

But to begin with rock is rock and pop is pop and whoever mixed them together in categorizing the Eraserheads maybe lost his senses altogether. If I could describe the music genre of The Eraserheads I can only say that they are what they are.

They are what they are being one that was able to kindle the hearts and minds of Filipinos everywhere in the country despite its rabid regionalism and western taste on music.

Their first album Ultraelectromagneticpop summed it all up.

My personal favorites being Tindahan ni Aling Nena (Shop of Old Nena), Pare Ko (My Friend) and Ligaya (Happiness) made me realize that what I’m hearing right there and then was not just an ordinary band but a band that would blow everybody’s mind away.

I can proudly say that I was one of their first converts as I listened to that album day in and out that I wouldn’t listen to any of their other albums as if comparing them would do justice to the band. But no I listened intently and zealously and thought that the band lost its touch when they created their second album.

Honestly speaking I lost touch of the band after their being too famous. Perhaps there’s this feeling of strangeness when the ones you enjoyed personally and emotionally is being aired again and again in FM and people are already calling themselves Eraserheads fans like 4 years after their first album after hearing a song from their 3rd album and that just made it more ridiculous for me.

Like hell, you would recognize a genius when you hear them the first time around and not just 4 years after when you think that you’d get the girls just because everybody’s listening to them and they’re IN? Right?

For me it was hypocritical and downright absurd really.

I know it was wrong, well I only knew it later that its wrong but how can you blame a 16 year old peddling around a cassette tape telling everybody that they are really good and nobody believing him only to find out that the people who once doubted you and shooed you away are now calling themselves hardcore fans?

Its just like now when everybody is wearing Havaianas no matter how absurd the price is just because it’s the IN thing while before when you wear flip-flops and not a Birkenstock to school everybody would treat you like a squatter.

But anyway before we begin sounding even more melodramatic I think around that time when I was so discouraged by the people around me and when my mind was close enough to say that their first album was the only album that mattered I went deeper into rock and listened to Wolfgang and other alternative music.

I looked at that stage when I was in awe of The Eraserheads as something shameful and has come to pass which only could be remedied by listening to more rock.

Blame it on the wannabees but I just felt around that time that If people are going to celebrate the music of the four crazy geniuses they might as well better be weeding out the people who are just riding on the bands’ popularity, and appreciate them according to their worth.

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