back to the future

there's this memory of being in baguio, december 2005. a post-christmas trip with the alvero family, i was on a couch under a blanket thinking about the band and how we ended up doing a white stripes (eg: me on guitar and zig on the drums) set cause of unforeseen circumstances, and i was using marco harder's roadtone 335, split to two amps w/ the stereo out of a dd3 that i borrowed, so at least i had some of that going on. i remember playing grand finale, habulan, and a really fast tsuper, it was one of those crash and burn gigs that you remember cause it was horrible and exhilarating at once. anyway i was thinking how "i really thought that was the band," something along the lines of "what do i do now" or "where do all the songs go" and under the blanket on the couch up in baguio i get a text message from mark villena, asking if i would be interested in recording with him, as he needed a band to demo @ his tracks job. i go "that would've been great, but i think we disbanded" or something to that effect, and he goes "e tangina sayang yung mga kanta nyo" which was what i was thinking, and i guess the idea of preserving the songs led to the rizal day sessions, recorded dec 30 of 05.

joe was graveyard shift-ing at a computer zombie job, ean was between a rock and a hard place in terms of band membership + friendships, i was having trouble with school (what's new haha), and zig had other bands and i guess i didn't want to burden him with the idea of finding stability in a lineup when he had a lot of other things on his plate. rizal day was supposed to be a graduation picture of sorts, a "hey we had great songs and a good time," postscript. mark was talking about giving labels a copy cause the material was ace and he believed in it, and that was great, but even getting a skeleton of the band together to record at tracks was difficult, so all the "getting signed" talk felt like delusions of grandeur haha.

things changed with the friendster message exchange with selena, cause i was a fan of her old band and her singing, and i wondered if it could be possible to have her on the ep, singing on habulan. she got to the studio and i was all worried about how our music sounded, cause we weren't that "indie" haha and she came from a scene with well-documented snobbery (not that that's a bad thing) but she sang and it was great, and then the proverbial snowball snowballed when we (mr rabara and mr harder) went to eat at the tapa king near the studio, and upon returning we found attorney gaddi playing bass to the early backing tracks of do you videoke, explaining himself with: "may naisip akong bassline eh.."



2005 saw the release of the fearless freaks documentary on the flaming lips. i was really deep into the yoshimi album then, and i was starting to go through their discography in reverse, liking the soft bulletin, falling in love with transmissions from the satellite heart. and i downloaded this thing, and i was all "yeah that's what i want." there was this chaos to their live sets, like there was early video of them having a motorcycle onstage at a bar, using it as a noise/smoke machine, and then some drunken mistake involving the brake and the throttle in some wrong order got the motorcycle flying off the stage. intense.

flashback to early shirley, keyboard + guitar + vocal shirley, with the first gig at the now defunct fox square club, last song was sampung buwan and ean was on guitar and i left the keyboard loop on and i went to the drums and i was floor tom and crash cymbal machine and i was really really really drunk (red horse was the new water) and i jumped from the drum stool to in front of the drums and i didn't really stick the landing, my shin hit the high tom i think, it's a vague memory. anyway the shin still hurts, haha. i wrote songs as skeletons, excuses for jumping around and being noisy and looking stupid.

somewhere down the line we started getting tight, and the songs got a lot more riffy, and gigs like the one we had last tuesday at guijo are reminders of the old days, back when i used to talk back to the audience (ean naalala mo yung bastos na host sa che dati tas nag-sasakyan kita outro for tsuper haha) and when i could jump like this



or when we were thin like this



man that picture tells so much, joe still had his pacifica, ean still had his butterscotch tele, that was the gig before star wars: episode iii came out, and we had this song written to perform for just that night, dv (darth vader) where there's this pseudo rap thing (i was trying to approximate lcd soundsystem's daft punk is playing at my house) and there's this METAL imperial march interlude haha. that was a fun gig, and we've had a lot of those.

the album's still on it's way (after a couple of years of being on it's way) and there are new hitches (letters of consent and film alignments and size discrepancies and whatever else) and i don't know what to think anymore about that album cause i've been living with those songs for quite a while now, the oldest songs on themesongs come from 2002, the newest one (bato) came from 2006, and between the time of writing and the time of release we've written a ton of stuff. my bandmates are fucking intense songwriters and musicians and COOL people and i feel like that's been a secret for the longest time, and when themesongs finally does come out it'll be like, letting other people in on that secret.

and i miss love one another already, and i can't wait to get into the studio again, and i can't wait to start playing new songs, and i can't wait for everybody to hear the album and attach meanings and feelings to songs that i've attached meanings and feelings to and i can't wait to write about the things on that album and show the documentary to people so that when you have your copy and you're listening to it and you're wondering what that weird sound was or why that happened on that song or how cool this band is, then you can refer to the future post about the music or the documentary so you get your question answered.

-owel