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

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

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

ang bandang shirley on SOUNDTRIP!

many thanks to lawrence and the other very cool people at inquirer.net for having us on their webcast show called soundtrip!

http://www.inquirer.net/vdo/player.php?vid=2052

see how awkward it is to sing in front of a camera without a mic haha. happy holidays!

-owel

versus

hi guys! long time no post, i've been sick and the band's been busy. i just wanted to share this pic of last night's performance with you. way to go selena! (pic by joey alvero)

-owel

themesongs track 3

"patintero/habulan/larong kalye"

the first of three "epic" tracks that absolutely had to go into the album. it's a sort of trilogy actually, anchoring the beginning middle and end of the whole concept of themesongs, actual theme songs for set occasions in the developments. p/h/lk is early yearning, sms is the middle intense section and bato is heavy endgame. pretty intense stuff to keep in your head, especially while you're recording the album, thinking about how the songs relate to each other and to you specifically and it's just great that it's out and i can stop thinking about it so much haha. it's a love-hate obsession with patintero/habulan/larong kalye.

it is a 3-segment song, during the writing of this thing i was heavily into brian wilson's smile and the fiery furnaces' blueberry boat and the unicorns' who will cut our hair when we're gone and these albums were all full of ADHD i was really into the whole idea of a multi-part song so i was writing with that in mind: first came the habulan section, which i was originally thought would be the opening part, written late 2004.

the patintero segment was written for fete de la musique 2005; i remember very vividly the practice where i was teaching the guys the song and the new segment. it was at the blue room studio along maginhawa, and janji of aizo was hanging out, and i remember being afraid of what he thought about the song and how we were arranging it as a band during the practice haha. i kind of cheated with the segue from patintero to habulan, nicking some manila sound areglos from vst haha.

the larong kalye segment happened naturally, we would just jam an informal outro, and i guess i just started singing on that. the album version of larong kalye was a pretty fun thing to record, all scratch takes and trial runs that joey santos recorded anyway, the relaxed feel owing to the "nah this isn't going onto the record yet.." and i guess that was pretty cool.

another cool thing about the album version are the SYNTH PARTS!!! i was absent when they recorded the synths, and loa engineer marc de vera did his thing, tweaking heidi's cs-10 and layering multiple tracks of the keyboard to give it this really really warm feel. i especially love the habulan chorus part, "kung ika'y aking mahuli.." with the 16 beat hihat, the palm-mute guitar and the surf rock bass, the synth really really really stands out and i love that part so much AAAAAAAAAAaa haha (self-sabunot moment)

the recording of the vocals for this song is also another conversation point. selena is a studio natural, if she's problematic with the harmonies, she'll just take some time to work them out in front of the mic, and usually most things are one-takes with her. but i am the brute force to her finesse, and this song was particularly amazing because joey and marc were engineering and everybody was playing with these ratatouille scratch and sniff cards, and i remember marc was playing with paper and scissors, trying to make paper dolls. so i was doing the vocal take, and usually when i hit a bad note joey or whoever's engineering at the time would stop me and we'll redo from there, and during this song we didn't have one redo (cause i thought i was singing so well haha) then i guess i just sang it all out. if i remember correctly, the whole segment in patintero where it goes "nais kong mahagip.." until the habulan part was kept as one single piece of breathless song-ery haha. only at love one another.

so many things about this song! jing's bass parts, especially in the larong kalye portion. the ROLAND JC-20 we were using to track all the guitar parts, guitar parts shimmery because of it. and all the history!

attached is the old lofiwithlove demo version circa 2005. that's me on everything, in front of a computer.

BILI NA KAYO NG THEMESONGS!!!!!!

-owel

Attachment: ang bandang shirley - habulan LOFIWITHLOVE.mp3

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

'look ma, i'm on tv!'

this morning, i turned on the tv after a round of pilates, resting before breakfast. i was flipping channels lazily when i landed on MTV and saw a very familiar face in profile -- owel! our video, "sa madaling salita" was playing on MTV... and not in the wee hours of the morning, but at prime-time 9AM! woohoo!

so our helpers and edwina and i crowded around the tv, laughing at how fat i was at the beginning of the year (hehehe). there i was, huffing and puffing in earnest, there went heidi with her hands and fingers splayed out like chicken wings, there was ean's "L for love" hand pose at the second chorus...

when the video is finished, mom comes down from upstairs and says, "you looked nice in that video." hahaha i love you, mom.

anyway, just wanted to share how pleasantly surprised i was to see that video on MTV months after we stopped promoting it for Endo. i hope it picks up again, though, cuz our album is almost almost ALMOST there. we have about 10 meters left to the finish line. i think it would help very much if all our friends could take a few minutes out of their schedules to do this simple little ritual i made up and help us visualize our way to an expedited album release:

1. find a quiet corner. sit in it. if you can't find one, imagine a quiet corner inside your mind where you will be able to shut out all unnecessary stimuli. find that corner and sit in it (figuratively speaking).

2. take a few deep breaths until you are very, very, very relaxed. do this until your mind begins to empty itself of all irrelevant thoughts.

3. picture in your mind the faces of each member of ang bandang shirley. allot about 3 seconds for each (making sure to silently add "mississippi" after each number to ensure the correct passage of time). sequence is of no consequence. if you're not sure what the members of ang bandang shirley look like, please refer to the pictures at the top of our multiply site. also, if you'd like, feel free to interchange someone's face with the appropriate approximation (e.g. jing gaddi may be replaced with the image of the bearded viking hat-wearing man on dragonball z; heidi may be replaced with catherine zeta-jones; i may be replaced with tyra banks; and so on...).

4. picture a 5x5.75inch "square" of white light dancing before you and slowly repeat the word "themesongs" over and over again.

5. when you have found this mantra fading away, replace it with "august 2008", again saying it until it fades away.

6. open your eyes. you're done! thanks! we're *this* much closer to getting our album out because of you! :)

- selena

Album Recommendations By ABS

Hey guys! Two of our friends are coming out with albums!


Ciudad is coming out with their fourth studio album, "Bring Your Friends". We've loved their live renditions for the past year or so, so we can't wait to hear them over our headphones this month! Copies will be available at this month's Attraction! Reaction! at Route 196, Katipunan, Q.C. The band will also be playing that night. Yay!

+++

They're out with a full-length album! P100 gets you a custom-made package, original Twin Lobster "art" (hahaha), and more surprises as well as 16 smokin' tracks of original, imaginative rock. "Hell Is The Place Where Flames Grow" will be available at all their upcoming gigs.

Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/twinlobstermanila. You can message them there for copies of their album. I think they're planning to come up with a PayPal account soon...

- selena

missing LOA

i was watching the smashing pumpkins' vieuphoria this afternoon and couldn't help recalling all the footage we've been collecting so that kathy our super videographer-cum-korean-secret-weapon can concoct a cool documentary for our upcoming shirley album launch. we pretty much have the same kooky slice-of-life stuff as the dvd, though they probably can't hold a candle to d'arcy's tea party segment...

one of the interludes was a behind-the-scenes look at the making of siamese dream. manny chevrolet interviewed the pumpkins and butch vig (drummer of then-unformed garbage), the producer of the album. his sober answers to the questions reminded me of master engineer joey santos of love one another studios and his poker-faced replies to our own queries. he and the other sound engineers of LOA were integral in setting the right mood for the trippy artistic atmosphere that our album could only have been conceived in. discussions on light sabers, the making of paper dolls, and the formulation of alternative "papapa" sounds were just some of their invaluable contributions to ang bandang shirley's creative process. this kind of joyous interaction between joey et al. and shirley members seemed to me not unlike the pig-head dance butch vig and another man performed by the engineer's board at triclops studios, which surely must have directly begun the germination of several of the pumpkins' future works of outstanding craft in their heads and hearts.

chevrolet: how do you guys like working together?
corgan: as much as any two men could like working together.
vig: (pause) good answer.
chevrolet: (to camera) i gotta go. bye.

- selena

we are bad bandmates

kathy and i have failed ang bandang shirley! mission aborted! all we have to show for our celebrity stalking is sam milby's double-chin prosthetic (with free sweat).


kathy says we shall make up for it with more basketball players in the lineup hahaha.

merry christmas, shirley friends

hi! just some updates to make your christmas merrier:

we finished mixing all our songs for the album about two weeks ago. all that's needed is final tweaking and then mastering. we hope to be ready with everything by february and we're all excited about it :)

this weekend, we'll be playing at a wedding in tagaytay. first out of town gig for shirlley! i wonder how that's going to turn out...

and please support death cab for cutie night 2 this january 5 at route 196!

happy new year!

The Secret of Happy Bands

I just read an interview with TC of Stars and I loved his views on art and politics. But the effect on me is some internal thing that can’t really be expressed in words so never mind that…

 

What struck me most (and is relevant to this blog) is how he described their songwriting process. He said what works for them is having a Taste Leader who, after everyone has banged everything out of his or her instrument (ooo), says “I’m satisfied” and that will be that, since everyone generally trusts his judgment.

 

I agree. I think different flavors/influences within a band is healthy and makes for some intersting nights out with alcohol (haha), but it helps to believe in someone who can take everyone in a direction that satisfies everyone simply because they all have faith in that person’s musical taste. It’s just simpler that way.

 

Which is one of the reasons why we are happy.

- selena

09:11 am - "the smart band" hahahahahaha

 

shirley was on rj underground this morning. owel woke up really early and he called me at about 545am to ask me what i wanted from burger machine. i said i needed to take a bath hahaha.

i was out of the house by 610 and got a cab despite morning rush. the atmosphere in the booth was really relaxed and we were just talking and laughing and teasing and i don't really know if it made entertaining radio, but WE were certainly having fun.

when ean arrived, i could only stay a few minutes, and i really didn't want to go because there was another whole hour to waste away but the boss expected me at work by 830 so...

... tore myself away at 815 for a sprint to citibank center and i barely made it to grace period! continued listening to bandmates on my player and shocked officemates several times by lauging out LOUD suddenly hahaha. this only confirmed what they've suspected for a really long time....

now it's back to the real world.

+++

rewind to staurday. had lunch with the joyluck club at mom and tina's. things will be ok.

kathy invited me to a screening of cinemanila that night. they changed the schedule! we ended up watching waitress, which was ok. it touched me in some ways. quietly. then i became depressed for the rest of the weekend (but part of that was the hormone pills).

+++

but the point of this whole story is: thank god for my support group.

+++

"i love you all. i love the world--- despite what it's done to me!!!"

haha.

 

- selena

Meet the engineers!

Waskan Week Night 1! Kathy gave me scratch n' sniff Ratatouille cards last Saturday and I shared them with the group. Our album engineers, Marc and Joey experiment to see if they really work.

Love One Another rawks!

- selena

On Recording

Kathy sent us the WBOB mix of Masamang Damo and I couldn't stop listening to it for about an hour. I love it! It's so addictive. Last night, we listened to a rough mix of it in Joey's car (to round out their mixing perspective) and I liked it well enough... but today it sounds so adorable hahaha and I feel much, much better in many ways because of it. I agree with Owel that our recorded vocal performances are improving, and I'm immensely proud of the work we've done.

 

I'm also proud of the album in general. There's a lot of variety we put in there and i feel it will appeal to something different in everyone. Good job, guys! I love you all hahaha.

 

We'll be putting in the final tracks within the week, and next week LOA will be doing marathon work on it so we can finish by the end of the month. Expect to see the fruits of all our hard work sometime in September. (Don't tell Dolguldur, shhh...)

 

- Selena :)