history of some sort. PART DEUX.

So we found Rock and Rhythm and we found BJ and his Wendy Says and found the inspiration to start a fanzine. And start we did. Then us 3 girls – Bles, Joy and I -- started spending every weekends together, leading us to some realization that we’re not as homogenous as we thought and that Bles should do the reviews for the Pinoy bands and I should do the review for the indie music – if we could get hold of one, or of what Rofer’s could offer us. I bought a Quicksand cassette from Rofers and Dambuilders and some more I can’t remember. They are as indie as we can get here in Iloilo City. She said she also wanted to write about Frank Zappa. Frank Zappa, for chrissakes!! And I didn’t even have a musical culture prior to Nirvana and so I had to grope my way around for some history. She even listened (with an s??) to Grateful Dead! I only knew Grateful Dead because of the tie-dye fashion and hippies, of course, but nothing beyond that, really. If anybody thought I did, then I might have really acted so well I was able to fool you. But believe me I wasn’t really trying to appear so musically conversant and those were the days of daze…err, identity crisis in music.

Joy…well Joy liked a lot of things and she played some instruments as well. All I can recall was that in my senior year her mother made her burn all her cassettes and fanzines and she was left to listen to nothing but Christian rock. I still have her DC Talk cassette. I recall her talking about this Christian rock band Petra of which I have never heard of. We didn’t talk much about that around their place but their place was memories of sleepover and popcorn and movies…Man on the moon – because one of us had a huge crush on Jason London; Mallrats and Chasing Amy because we liked Jay and Silent bob. I wasn’t able to see Clerks 1 with them anymore. I think I have left for college when they did. But I got to see it last year, now on DVD-convert shit I downloaded from somewhere. I got to see Dogma in a moviehouse because Kevin Smith already went big time. And Joy’s is the room where all day is night and it was always us scrambling out of bed every time, late for some appointment because we overslept. When you turn the lights on and off, the glow in the darks would just light up regardless of the time of the day. It’s always pitch dark in her room.

It took along time for Jenny to return the Disintegration cassette which originally belonged to Fritz. Fritz is the guy who up to this day still hates me for calling him a trust fund baby. I wish he would enlighten me. I think it was Bles who borrowed it and then I borrowed it and then Jenny borrowed it from me and then I think it was Bles who took it from her and returned it to Fritz, who was leaving for Davao then, perhaps 5 or 8 years after this robert smith-haired fritz guy with black rimmed glasses lent it to her. I was with Bles when she met with him, carrying this medium-sized black garbage bag with all his things in it. But I still have his magazines: the very small booklet type Rock and Rhythm with lots of hair band guys on the cover. See, Bles even listens to the cure and I only knew the cure for their Friday I’m in love. I like to HOPE I didn’t hear it first from the baylehans in Antique. God, I hope. Or else we’re not giving any justice to Robert Smith. Or are we?

I’m a little lost on Aiza but she did have a brother who was some kind of a band member. His brother played drums for some local band. She would be the person we would later on beg for the interviews with the local bands. She just disappeared and I also left Iloilo so nothing follows.

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more to come!

history of some sort.

I’ve mostly found my friends through music.

I’d like to think I met Blesela during a Sigabong (clash number I dunno but I first watched it in 1994) in UP Visayas. I’d like to think that my memory serves me right; I seem to recall a scrawny girl in tie-dyed shirt with a backpack slung over her shoulders. if my memory serves me right I may be in my 2^ndyear then because it couldn’t be third year since Sigabong in my 3^rd year. Neither could it be on my senior year because Noreen, the one who introduced me to Bles would have gone to Diliman by then.

Noreen was my petite roommate, a math wizard. Her room was across mine and spent her time reading and listening to metal. Noreen influenced me a lot musically, although I sort of went the other branch of the music tree, eventually. I tried listening to Morbid Angel and Sepultura and Napalm Death and the likes but they didn’t stick, really and I had to give up. But I think it’s what you get for being a well-read rock fan because despite being a metal maniac you remain open to other sub-genres of rock. Noreen also listens to sonic youth and nine inch nails and some really popular bands like nirvana and pearl jam so that spells so much commonality between us. We also both tried so hard to learn guitar but being tone deaf really is an obstacle you need to overcome. I don't think she ever really did master guitar playing and neither did I.

Noreen left for college on my 3^rd year to high school so I was left alone to discover what kind of music really suited my ears. If we stayed together longer I may have developed liking for death metal also. With her gone, I started hanging out with Bles, who introduced me to Joy and Aiza and some other more…there was Jenny and Vanessa and this girl from assumption who’s kind ofstand-offish but in fact is a nice girl when you get to know her, fond of wearing weird earrings. There was no way to spend the day not talking about the bands and the music. We can’t play instruments so we turned to where we’re best at: writing and talking. And there was Blesela’s father who, I learned knew my father, and who also lent me1984when I came to visit Blesela one time. I hope I DID return it.

Rock and Rhythm wave invaded our group just before I left for college. Noreen was also the one who introduced me to the magazine back in high school; she was just 2 years ahead of me. She constantly checked Eddie-Mar newsstand in Delgado St., the one located near the Metrobank and Veterans bank. The place where you’d find people selling puppies and sometimes fishes and fruits some other odd things. Sometimes there’d be a blind man playing guitar with his chord inventions. It used to be a sunny, lively place but veterans fenced the whole area and Raul Gonzales, then a congressman, built a overhead walkway and now it’s not just the nicest place to stroll at.

Rock and rhythm was an underground magazine to us, read: early 90’s. Underground because here, in Iloilo City, it was a little hard to find and very few knew about it. Noreen was so rad she was reading it. And when I did, too, I became the rad girl also. It’s no surprise, Rn’R being an underground magazine inIloilo, because at that time Spin was almost a novelty that only rich kids can afford to buy. You can only find them, Spin, I mean, in IBAM. IBAM also sold porn magazines and rented out pocketbooks and imported magazines as well. You just have to ask the girl at the counter for the porns though, but I only knew about that much later, in my early 20’s when Keith told me. He said maybe the same trick still applies today although I think IBAM greatly suffered from the influx of malls and the National Bookstore, a store posing as a bookstore when it’s actually just a school supplies store and you’re not allowed to touch, more so scan, any fucking book on display. Early 90’s in Iloilo City was when Jollibee was the only national fastfood store andFilbar’s was the comic store, IBAMwas the magazine store, China Artswas the arts supply store, D’Topswas the bookstore and St. Vincent's was the textbook store, Sams was the shoe store, moviehouses were not inside the malls and you’d have to get home before 7pm or else you’d have to walk your way then. Alfredo Diaz was not teaching then because he begun his teaching career as journalism teacher for our elective course in 4^th year high school. in 1996. GaisanoCitywas already standing and the first mall to have a built-in movie house when Alfredo made the historical shriek to our class: “Frogs stop croaking!” . Yes, in 1996. Yes I am digressing.

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okay that ends the first part of my litany. i'll add more when i find time to wake at at 4:30 in the morning to write and finish some paperworks while listening to music and sometimes breaking my heart. but that's just really okay. hate makes us human. anger and aggression, too. also taking sides. too much sweetness and kindness and general lack of opinion for anything is just too boring; too good to be true.

ehhh...they have never had their bubbles burst yet.

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for noreen, bles, joy, vanessa, rn'r gang of idiots...the friends that i dearly miss.

Because

Because long bus rides are lonely and sad and heartbreaking
Because listening to this song breaks my heart
Because I want it to be 1994. or 1995. 1996. 98 99 again. But not the now. Not the last year or the immediate years before that.
Because lasted you haunted me in my dreams
Because it was heartbreaking and I just wanted it to be over.
Because it will give me the satisfaction I wanted, the conviction I wanted when it finally ends.
Because this, for me is redemption.
Because this for me is what I deserved.
Conviction and truth in my words.

NOW THIS REALLY REALLY MAKES ME WANNA LAUGH MY ASS OUT.

i'm giving this 2 thumbs up.

Time out

My friend's birthday party was set at 7:00 in the evening that day and I was out of the office by 5:00. i am left with nothing to do for 2 hours at my most un-creative moment and with a very uncooperative weather.

I would have gone straight to our watering hole or some place to eat, splurge my week’s allowance but I haven’t done that in the last 4 years it's almost seem alien to me. The last time I splurged was on a pair of hiking shoes and it was even on sale. Money really is harder to let go when you’re the one earning it.

After 5pm, I just don’t know where to go to kill time for the 7pm appointment.

Our watering hole would be filled with kids 15 or so years younger than me and it’d be too uncomfortable partaking the ice cold beer while thinking if my 2 year old son had dinner already. Weirder even because I haven’t drank alone in public for the last 5 years of my life. It kinda leaves an uncomfortable thought to me…what would they say? Never have I imagined I would even care about what they'd say. I’ve embarrassed myself puking in public, at my friends' apartments when I was young and risky, at the restrooms of my university, most memorable was at the wet lab while supposedly accompanying a friend for an overnight observation of her fishes, which ended with her mopping up the mess I made at the wet lab female restroom.

Your perspectives do change once a kid comes along. You at least want to prove you’re deserving of him. (Yet that doesn’t make us not want to teach him tricks to becoming a really out of this world kid.)

My phone died half an hour to 5pm so I can’t call the party people and ask who among them I can meet early or at least give me things to do before the party. I’m not a party person and these people know that very well so in the last 15 years of our lives they give me very little participation in party planning as possible. I could hardly even plan for the 1^st birthday party of our son, which we celebrated with a lot of beer and pulutan at a more respectable watering hole, and his father suffering from sore throat from too much puking and terrible hang over the next day.

little boy asking for beer and pulutan on his first birthday.

We do try to be model parents, really.

little boy on his first birthday looking so drunk.

Trusting my intuition I went straight from office to the house we’ve partied on, puked on, slept over, converted to a locker room, storage area, cried, scared ourselves to death, fought, and screamed, among others for the last 15 years, not to mention being banned from the whole community for being to rowdy and noisy during lunch. We were banned because our noise woke up the babies of the neighbors. What can you expect from 10 puberty-ing girls put together in one small house? A lot of noise, that is.

My friend’s mother was already there when I arrived, thank god. Otherwise I might really have to send myself to that drinking station and arrive at the party drunk.

Now that won’t really be a good example to the future parents, will it?