top chef

arrested development left me on the cusp of age 29 without having learned to cook. thus, i took the opportunity this sabbatical in Kuala Lumpur has provided to finally face my culinary fears. kailangan din eh. i'm from ang bandang shirley, and food is important to all of us.

armed with a photocopy of a nora daza cookbook, stock knowledge from all those food network shows on basic techniques, and almost zero knowledge about how to work my friend's stove, i decided to learn to cook one dish at a time.

 

first dish ever cooked: pork sinigang (tom yumerntz)

this is my favorite dish ever, and i was quite overwhelmed that it was the first one i pulled off -- and very deliciously, if i do say so myself. what made this particularly challenging was the lack of a sinigang mix in KL (no way am i going to even try figuring out how a tamarind "works" haha) and kangkong as well. i improvised by using tom yam mix and just okra and sitaw. the sauce was a bit thick with the many tomatoes i used, but still very yummy. my OFW friend was very pleased with this reminder of home.

second dish: pork with tomatoes and rosemary

 

i had to work with the available ingredients at home as well as consider what techniques were accessible to my limited understanding of how to handle food. i found this recipe on one of those food channel websites, only the original called for capers, which i replaced with olives. it turned out ok, though presentation left much to be desired. my friend said it tasted like a foreign version of adobo. hmmm. the jury is still out on whether that's a good thing or not.

 

third dish: chinese asado

 

this almost became a failed experiment because i still wasn't used to guesstimating proportions. i followed a recipe that called for a kilo of pork, and then only realized that i only had about 350g of meat when the entire thing was happily simmering away. i had to throw away most of the sauce (which tasted really good, though, because i used maple syrup in the absence of brown sugar) and the meat was still very black -- but really tender and tasty! it was one of those dishes that went well with a LOT of rice.

 

fourth attempt: bacon and sunnyside up eggs

 

so you'd think this'd be a no brainer. wrong! hahaha i realized that making sunnyside up eggs entailed more than just dumping them in the pan and hoping the yolks won't break. i broke my egg (which is fine, since i actually prefer them scrambled) so i tried my best to do the other one without breaking it. i succeeded, but then realized that i didn't have enough oil to cook the yolk on top of the white. lest i give my friend e. coli, i just sort of folded the white over the yolk and flipped the entire thing to cook it.

fifth "meal": goatherd's delight (or heidi wants to lose weight)

 

because i'd rather not cook if it's just for myself, i usually prepare something dummy-friendly for lunch. in an attempt to be healthy, i put together a green salad with a simple vinaigrette, white bread and cheddar cheese (nothing fancy), and an apple and two cookies to cap it off. it's kind of what i imagined peter the goatherd in heidi would eat in the mountains for lunch. haha, nothing like a little child's play to spice up a tamaderntz meal.

sixth meal: malaysian pansit

JOKE LANG hehehe. hindi ko kayang magluto ng ganito, no. this is what we had when we went to an island getaway last weekend. it tasted good: like pansit, but with more exotic spices and seafood. but it was the only yummy local thing we ate during that outing.


(real) sixth dish: beef with broccoli




awww, the pic is blurred :( even if it's really simple, i'm proud of this one because i got the proportions and flavor right, plus i added a dash of orange juice to take the edge off the saltiness a little. next time, i'll make this with less beef and more broccoli.


yay, so i can cook now. that's all.

love,
selena

brewrats!

many many thanks to all the new contacts of the ang bandang shirley multiply! i cannot begin to express the gratitude welling up inside my heart for all of you, and especially to dj tado, dj angel, and dj ramon bautista of the fantastic radio talk show brewrats for helping make ang bandang shirley famous (haha)


non-chronological kwento in bullet points

- energizing walk from the boni mrt station to the paragon plaza building because of ricoa chocolate factory smells
- girlie kathy
- baby owel
- mahinhin joe
- "conflict kagad"
- "how many of your fans are jumping jologs?"
- novaliches -> baluarte of jumping jologs
- "sinong banda ang gusto nyong makaaway?"
- "papasikatin namin kayo; gusto nyo bang mag double platinum?"
- kathy learned how to use lights at a photoshoot
- owel learned basic use of macromedia flash
- joe learned to keep right near the manila city hall if you want to go to qc and not to sta. cruz
- "guangzhou!"
- "it's a lovely song" (pero hindi naman shirley haha)
- tado reminiscing about viva hot babe myles' "pagkababae" haha
- the jacq ruefner visit ("ikaw na yung pusher namin a")
- "idealistic ako e"
- the engineering connection.
- silent sanctuary and the right of reply
- "para kayong shoegaze na eraserheads"


haha baka may nakalimutan pa ako. next time ulet!
 

a lesson in geography (a not so musical post) [by jing]

ever since i was young, i've always enjoyed looking at maps -- painstakingly deciphering them and imagining myself navigating through not-so-imagined territory ("not-so-imagined" because i know those places exist although i've never been to such places). i enjoyed reading road maps even more than i enjoyed reading telephone directories (yes, very peculiar reading fare, i know hahaha). one of my treasured books then was this dog-eared copy of "ins and outs of metro manila" which i found in my late grandfather's library. eventually my copy of "ins and outs" turned outside-in and fell to the insatiable mercies of termites and silverfish.

nevertheless, my likewise insatiable quest for the road obtained its wish fulfillment when i finally learned how to drive. finally, no more imagined navigating, i thought to myself. to further equip myself, i got myself a new road map book of metro manila (see first photo). this book also proved very useful when i had hearings and consultations to attend in places like caloocan, malabon, and navotas.

when i joined shirley in early 2006 (or was it late 2005? it escapes me), i found myself blessed with such diverse bandmates -- diverse not only in the musical-personality sense, but also in geographical terms. in getting to know people, the question i'm most wont to ask is "where do you live?" or "where are you from?" i guess asking such questions stemmed from my childhood love for reading road maps. whenever i'd hear people answer my questions with "i live at so-and-so...", my mind immediately visualizes the maps i've read and i ask rejoinder questions like, "so is that near this-and-that street?". most times they'd answer yes, not knowing that i've never actually been to those places -- only theoretically.

so when i discovered that my shirleymates lived kilometers apart from each other, i got excited to say the least. in the second picture i posted, i plotted the respective locations of each shirley member and traced the distances that set us apart. glancing at the map, you can say we practically span metro manila in its entirety. despite this jaw-dropping realization, i can proudly say that i've travelled to each and every shirley point plotted on this map. much more so, i'm also quite proud to say that the kilometers which set us apart only bring us much closer to each other. i told you this was a not so musical post.

recording diary 3/13/09

photographic evidence of the band's latest recording sessions at love one another studios

Recording Diary - Tambol Version

I really intended to write this a couple of weeks ago but I...uhhh...forgot. Hehehe. But my bandmates are really good at this "documenting the recording process" thing so I guess that makes up for my laziness busy-ness.

But all's well that ends well, right? I finally managed to start working, which is the first big hurdle for any procrastinator. So here goes...

Late February, we started work on a handful of new tracks some of which, like Pauwi Na and Wealth of Nations, are already part of our song rotation at gigs. Owel mentioned to me that he wanted the drums to stand out a bit more on the new songs--news that I really liked, for obvious reasons--so I locked myself in a room with my drumkit and hammered out my parts so I could attack the recording session with confidence. During the Themesongs recording sessions (as well as the Rizal Day Sessions, er, sessions), most of my drum parts were not final yet. If you listen carefully to the playing on the album vs a gig, you'll notice a lot of changes.

Another thing I did was use a click track. We didn't use a click track for any of the songs on the first album, and sometimes you can hear portions where I got a little excited and rushed things a bit. For the new songs, I intend to use a click as often as I can. An early exception would be Jing's punk-infused Saan Na, which felt better without a click.

I'm also gunning for a more consistent sound this time around so I'm using the same set of gear for the songs. Here's a photo of the rig I used at my last recording session:

Cymbals (Zildjian)
13" A Custom Projection Hihats
18" A Custom Fast Crash
19" K Dark Crash Thin
20" K Custom Dark Ride

Drums
14" x 5.5" Ludwig Acrolyte Snare [Remo coated Ambassador on top, Evans reso on bottom]
Yamaha drumkit (13" and 16" toms, 22" bass drum) [Remo Pinstripes on everything]
 
Except for the Yamaha kit, which is the house kit at Love One Another Studios, the rest is the same equipment I lug around in my yellow gig bags (also in photo) at each and every gig. Yes, I bring a LOT of gear. It helps me play better knowing I'm playing gear I'm used to. (Btw, those two dashing icons of virile masculinity are LOA engineers, Pancho and Wacky.)

I guess that covers drums for now.

Ciao.

Zig

recording diary 03/07/09

we three shirley kids (read: me, joe, ean) spent the eraserheads evening recording new material at joey santos' famed love one another studio. aside from the early acoustic guitar jangle c/o the morris parlor guitar, it was a multi-drive pedal kind of night. we used (in no particular order): a zvex fuzz factory, a vox cooltron duel overdrive, a tech-21 gt-2, a proco you dirty rat, and the beautiful bluberri drive pedal. and instead of going back to the themesongs strat-dominated sound, we used our newly acquired maison lawsuit sg standard, and joe's neck-thru vantage. hooray for new gear hehe.

some interesting moments include:

1) pancho asking - "wala ba kayong mga kanta na may distortion?" leading to a bit of fuzz factory overkill haha

2) the new palm-muted chording in nakauwi na and the lessons learned by engineer joey from his boy elroy recording experience

3) pancho stating "you are such a mammal"

4) ean stating "nonsense yung b-string mo e" (band conflict! haha)

hahaha.

pics!

joey documenting the scene, ean tracking with the vantage, and joe chilling.

when we recorded themesongs at loa, they didn't have any of this gear yet haha

engineers pancho + wacky having a well earned panciteria san jacinto break. note pancho's penchant for calamansi.

-owel

recent history

pic by joey alvero

we've been gigging a lot recently and our set has been mutating, featuring different permutations of old vs new songs. also, sickness and wealth issues have caused some of members to miss a few gigs. this post is dedicated to the ang bandang shirley extended family members: mikko quizon of abs combo, as well as mikey amistoso and justin sunico of ciudad.

more gigs to come, more new songs to learn, more family haha labo

-owel

(pictures by joey alvero, brendan goco, and luis buenaventura II)

themesongs track 10

"xmas lights" signified a lot of firsts for shirley. before this track was conceived, we were basically just playing gigs and practicing new songs from owel, ean and jing, trying to coalesce as a new lineup and figuring out our sound. but any thoughts of "album" and "making it big" had been far away from what we were focused on at the time, which was just to stay alive and keep playing. it was only when owel brought up the fact that sir toti dalmacion had offered us a slot in jam 88.3's upcoming christmas album that we considered the challenge of putting ourselves "out there" in terms of publication.

i think owel had a clear vision even then that he wanted shirley to go far, but most of us were going about this recording thing tentatively. he had a riff, though, and we all fell in love with it immediately when he played it for us during practice. we jammed some more to get the drum tracks pat, but it was still largely unfinished and the deadline was looming.

then there was the problem of finding the right recording studio. although most of us had day jobs, almost half were still studying, so we didn't have much of a budget. up dharma down's bassist, paul yap, recommended the fledgling Love One Another Studio, run by boy elroy guitarist joey santos. we decided to check them out and found instant chemistry with the studio's staff (plus, the name is just so shirley).

so zig puts his amazing drum skills to work, to which jing adds a perfect bass line, then owel lays in the guitars and that lovely, lovely riff. earlier, we'd all agreed that we didn't want to do a straightforward Christmas track. so owel penned a few sad lines, injecting some subtle verbal hints of Christmas ("disyembre", "regalo" and "kumukutikutitap") here and there -- and we had our Christmas track for all seasons!

the song was mostly constructed in the studio, adding the elements one by one. i remember one recording session where heidi was adding her synth parts and there was this one particular note that underwent a particular effect that sounded borderline noisy but just perfectly capped off the bridge part ("itong regalong bubuksaaaaan" TWENNGGGG!). we didn't have the melody until it was time for us to lay in the vocal parts, and i was quaking in my shoes for the dreaded moment when i'd have to sing because i had no idea how to make melodies. this sounds stupid, since i'd done okay in the four months or so since i'd officially joined shirley, but we had existing melodies for those songs to which i only had to listen a few times before i could add my harmonies. the process for "xmas lights", on the other hand, was entirely new and frightening for me.

at the time, i was scared that owel would one day find a reason to kick me out of the band since backup singers have always been found throughout history to be dispensible. so i told myself before my vocal take, "suck it in, selena. it's make or break time," and steeled myself for the recording process. but joey and owel were very supportive when it was my turn to sing, and they never tired of giving me time to practice my harmonies, repeating the track whenever i felt like i hadn't gotten it yet, so that it ended up being an effortless session after all. owel was pleased, and i was amazed to discover that i could actually be musically creative.

after recording the song, we realized that we had enjoyed working with Love One Another so much that we wanted to continue working with them and we resolved to start making our first full-length album ASAP.

shirley during mixing of 'xmas lights', november '06

jam 88.3 accepted "xmas lights" and included it in their compilation, as well as played the track during the christmas season of 2006. but shirley friends continue to request the song even during the rest of the year, so i guess it was able to transcend owel's description of it at gigs, "a seasonal longing song reminiscent of 'pasko na sinta ko'."

- selena