patintero/habulan/larong kalye (from "debut" shirley docu)

patintero/habulan/larong kalye
from "debut" an ang bandang shirley documentary by kathy gener (shown at out album launch last year)

eto na yun music video nya talaga haha.

quiet is the new loud (reprinted themesongs and tsuper duper videos)

Huy! Hello! Sorry! Ang tahimik namin now pero soon after when the dust settles wow! Haha! In the meantime:

1.) Goodnews! New stocks of newly reprinted and repackaged version of "Themesongs" (in envelope type) is now available in all Odyssey, Astrovision/Astroplus, Fullybooked and SM Records Bars.

Hold on to your digipaks kase i think almost soldout na yun versions na yun tas bili din tayo ulit nitong new packaging para masaya! Collector's item!

2.) FYI: last year, Level Up! commissioned Ang Bandang Shirley to make a Crazy Karter version of our song Tsuper Duper for their video game Crazy Kart (you'll hear the song whenever you choose the Pinas Map) but we've just discovered these youtube wonders now: ANG AASTIG!

TSUPER DUPER CHIPMUNKS VERSION
CRAZY KART PINAS PH: PINAS MAP (tsuper duper as themesong)

AND FTW!



>>kathy

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

Best of local music in 2008

and our debut album "Themesongs" is on the list! :)

SHIRLEY MANILA TIMES ARTICLE

"2. Themesongs by Ang Bandang Shirley and Bring Your Friends by Ciudad —Geeks do cry and when they do, they do it so eloquently that they can express their sentiments in a 3 to 4 minute song in a way you can relate to the best blog you’ve ever read."

thanks Cris O. Ramos Jr! :)

themesongs track 9

"Ang Pag-Ibig Alinsunod Sa Karanasan Ng Isang Pangkaraniwang Jeepney Driver A.K.A. Tsuper Duper"

this is probably the hardest song to write about: it was the first-born, the earliest song written for the band before the band ever took shape. and this first-born isn't a baby anymore, tsuper is a hyperactive 6 year old that knows how to read and asks you all these questions about self explanatory things ("but why?") haha.

sometimes i listen to this song and i feel like i've heard it TOO MUCH, there are a gazillion versions of this song (three lo-fi with love demo versions, an ean 8-track version that never saw the light of day, the rizal day session, and then the album version) and it has made appearances in scenes from ang pagdadalaga ni maximo oliveros, tv promos, songwriting competitions (haha) and assorted high school and college plays. i hate this song sometimes.

last night good friend and distant cousin to lourd (haha) ramon de veyra messaged me on ym, saying "u know what for someone who detests pop I actualy really enjoyed them," and i'm all "what do u mean lol" and he's all "[that's] my friend, after i sent 3 songs from your album hahahaha" and i'm all happy, thinking "yay my band is so cool" haha and then he continues, pasting another direct quote: "parang theyre not trying hard to be anything eh, i like the tsuper song the most"

and then i'm all wow, and then ok, and then fine, and then i decide to write this post about the song that started it all and i remember the time that i used to play the bassline (now the synth part) of this song between songs back when i used to play with paramita (haha old school) and norman and ria would laugh and it would be some carribean-flavored jam, then we'd stop. but i wanted to take it further and i thought it should be in tagalog, and it should be a love song, and "i dunno i wanna fall in love" haha. i was a kid.

anyway i ride this jeep, i sit in front near the driver, but between me and the driver there was another passenger, a pretty girl and she was paying her fare and the driver goes "hinde miss, sagot ko na pamasahe mo" and i'm all "omg basta driver sweet lover" and then the song writes itself and then the old cautionary tale of being careful for what you wish for happens, and the song has taken over my brain. i hate singing it cause after the song finishes my brain is still singing it and i've listened to a lot of stuff between the writing of tsuper and today, and tsuper feels amateur (hindi sya avant garde haha) and fun and it reminds me of being a kid and riding that jeep. i remember the rizal day session recording for this, me and mark v. at tracks 4am, both of us super sleepy and i'm closing my eyes playing the synth parts and while recording mark apparently has this supernatural encounter (he tells me on the drive home: "naramdaman mo ba yun?" and i'm all: "zzz") and then he dubs the song TSUPER DUPER, making this visual rhyme very difficult to say haha.

i guess the point is, if it weren't for this song, the band wouldn't be here. so yay. haha. watch out for the release of the joe fontanilla version of this song very soon. haha.

-owel

why you should get an ang bandang shirley album!

our good friend jaton zulueta who's in new york right now because it's a lot cooler to be a struggling writer in new york than a struggling writer in the philippines (haha i love you jaton sorry about this picture) is making up for his inability to attend saturday's party with an incredible post about running around central park and loving fried food and getting onto TFC, with the incredibly compelling title "why you should get an ang bandang shirley album" haha.

read it here!

themesongs track 7

"sa madaling salita"

a less is more approach to words, with the simple G-C verse and the Em-D chorus, then the G-C-Am-C outro. i guess this song is a high point in my songwriting efforts, reactionary output to early comments to my work haha. the story goes like this..

vin dancel of twisted halo and now peryodiko is a great person, and when i was the excited little kid who first got to go watch gigs, twisted halo was one band that stood out, what with that intense drumming on brad, and the mindblowing outro part of hiram, and MAN THEY HAD THREE GUITARS and i was really amazed when vin went up to me after seeing deltajoy play and telling me that i could play bass well haha. then i auditioned to play bass for twisted halo (remember that day ean? hahaha memories) but then they picked some better guy (buddy zabala!!!) haha. and even though we really didn't become bandmates there was this sort of distant mentorship going on between me and manong vin, sort of, kind of. haha. i remember this gig at millenia and he was there and i was there and i was just telling him about how my studies were going (bad) and he was all finish that shit and i was all wow and anyway, when i gave him a copy of the rizal day sessions ep, he said it was good stuff, but it needed something anthemic.

so i went and thought wtf man these are anthemic but then i thought about things and i wrote sa madaling salita, exploring the duality of crippling love and incredible uplifting love in my brain, and realizing that there was no way to put it other than just really saying those words in the song and then that freed me up, anthemically speaking. the riff was a fun thing to play, and it's me studying a wolf parade song and magnificently failing, landing on some other totally different beautiful thing, and the chorus part where joe's guitar is all chicosci on top of everything, and man this song really wrote itself. i remember the practice when we were arranging this, and it was a pretty good time for shirley, getting things in place really fast.

zig's drumming (a lift from dcfc with minor revision haha) and the BASS + SYNTH W/ WHITE NOISE AND EBOW bridge part is what i think makes this anthemic, the outro just riding in like a cowboy and then the song ends with the same killer "chorus" riff except it's slow and jing's harmonizing on bass and that was perfect which was why recording this thing was such a bitch, cause it had to sound really good, and honestly the recording still doesn't sound as good as the song sounds in my head but that's okay cause we got it out. i remember doing the main guitar part and just being totally frustrated, breaking down in the middle of some takes saying "DISBAND NA TAYO GUYS DISBAND" and joe and ean and joey santos just reassuring me hahaha that was fun.

then endo came along and man endo that's a whole different story, crippling uplifting love and if you guys haven't seen it you gotta see it, and if you feel like it changed you afterwards then you're my kind of person, and if you haven't, then you gotta live a bit more i guess? that movie really killed me, i remember reading the script and crying in my room (the early drafts were a lot more hardcore emo haha) and well sa madaling salita just snowballed in meaning

cause i had this meaning X for the song, which is really hidden deep inside, and then since it's so simple and then because of endo meanings Y and Z and A-W also add up and then it's such a meaningful song because it's just about a feeling and therefore you can attach that to whatever makes you feel that feeling so the range of possible meaning only depends on the person listening so everybody can sing along to this and feel like the song is about something about them and i guess that was what vin was talking about when he was saying it was anthemic.

tayong dalawa ay dakila/alila

hehe

-owel

ang bandang shirley: where dreams come true

hi guys! remember this article that came out on supreme? where me and the guys had our influences and shoutouts broadcast? well funny things happen!

kathy wrote in "john lloyd cruz" as an influence and even threw in a (hi) so when i met up with my good friend JLC as i call him (haha) i showed him the copy of the article, and well, dreams come true!



(hope to meet you, kathy)




JLC with his copy of themesongs! get a copy now!

-owel

themesongs track 5

"together forevers"

most noteworthy is the amazing snare sound that joey santos gets on this song, the release/decay of that 80's hit is really what makes the song! also, forevers is the selena solo track for this album, and the first of many selena oriented songs. the owel-sung demo version released on the today is tshirt day comp was a take-off point, but where that was a stalker-ish "sigurista" lovesong, this is an out and out guarantee of sorts. and and the outro, where selena and the synth duet into this papapa-fest is this suprise that came about while we were recording. the live version of forevers used to include a "time after time" outro, where we'd sing time after time haha. but the album version couldn't include that, of course, so we had to figure out something, and then amazing amazing amazing selena just pulls out of her indie-pop hat this papapa phrasing and papapa melody and then we were all "do that on the synth!" and then that ending comes out and then we were trying to mix it and then during the final mix of that joey has this miscue where only a few tracks were faded out and then what happened was a gradual fade, leaving selena's voice and the guitar chord, and then that was another OMG moment.

i remember the time when after recording most of the basic tracks for forevers, me and joey santos really considered it the least like-able of the shirley tracks so far, so we kept on figuring out ways to re-do it, but then the gang vocal recording day came along and i guess what we just needed were the "barkada" shouts and the voices of the whole band + melvene (sobrang lamig ng boses ni melvene!) on the sing-along chorus. also featuring the keys (as in susi) in tribute to a song on the rivermaya green album (plus points for whoever figures that out hehe)

i love you ang bandang shirley! see you at our fans' day and debut premiere!

-owel

themesongs track 4

"theme song"

the track opens with a very frustrated zig drumming the ending of the song and then making a mistake and throwing his sticks angrily hahaha. see, themesongs was made differently from most albums (im guessing normal bands use metronomes hehe) because we didn't use any metronomes for the album, all the drums were recorded from zig's memory. honestly that was an amazing two sessions of recording, just watching zig pound away at the drums, with no other instruments. sometimes i'd play along on a guitar, but the early love one another studio setup did not allow for comfortable headphone placement for the drummer, so we had to make do. and then the whole idea stuck, no more metronomes, and we'd use zig's natural tempo for each song, so that if he lags a bit then the whole song would lag, and if he reaches back to his thrash metal roots and then the whole song would feel a bit faster. that and zig + joey's decision to keep the drum level lower than most albums really makes it sound different. early listening sessions with some friends would often result in a few comments along the lines of "pare ang hina ng drums.." or some variation of that. i didn't get it at first either, but then you get it, and then it's a wow thing. haha.

anyway all the drum parts were done in one take ( ASTIG NO? imagine the monster drumming zig did on patintero/habulan/larong kalye, or the triplet break in the bato outro), and theme song was a particularly difficult one for zig, resulting in the gorgeous AAAAAAAARGH growl at the start of the song. haha. mikey amistoso commented on the not so polished cut of that take, leaving an abrupt end to the growl before the song starts. he kept on saying that that moment was a work of genius, or something like that, like "other bands would have wanted to keep that a clean fade or something" but we just left it like that. haha love one another magic.

the song is full of the kind of recording techniques you google and then decide to try and then i dunno something happens. we used a pignose amplifier, the one with the latch that opens and closes the thing, and we close-miked it with one mic in front and one mic at the back of the speaker (phase inverted) and we had a room mic, and then there was this wide open sounding guitar that we got. i love the sound of the guitar parts in theme song, and the pignose amplifier was one of those important bits that just made everything work (i miss you!)

marco's roland jx3p also played a huge part in this song, adding the disco pad at the ending, the vibe at the disco outro, and the arpeggios in the main song, with that wonderful filter just opening up at the end of every phrase. i dunno why i'm rambling on about how we recorded this song, but i really feel happy when i remember how this song just fell into place. hehe.

at 0:17 into the song, i do a wrong harmony part into the right speaker, and then i laugh, and that bit just whizzed by during all the mixing, we really didn't notice that. and then listening to the mastered tracks on headphones it was all like "OMG WHAT A HAPPY ACCIDENT!" haha i love that part.

the video is also very cool, haha. it features marc inting of twin lobster, doing his best to win the hearts of music video channel viewers everywhere. vote for his band twin lobster in the nu rock awards this year! hehe.



==========================================

jugs of the itchyworms texted me the other day, congratulating us on the cool video, and thanking us for placing their "self-titled" album poster on the wall of our earnest manliligaw protagonist hehe. if you haven't gotten yourself a copy of that album, buy one now, for your own good hehe.

my mom bought a copy of themesongs! she found it at the odyssey branch in alabang town center, and as she was bringing it to the cashier, the saleslady remarks "bakit ang daming bumibili nyan, sino ba sila?" hahaha

AND AND FINALLY, THINGS ARE GETTING EXCITING FOR THE SCARY DEBUT + FANS' DAY ON THE 25TH! LOTS OF SURPRISES TO COME! (pero secret muna para ma-surprise kayo para pati hindi malaos hehehe) 


-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

themesongs track 2

"masamang damo"

this gaddi-penned masterpiece is all at once the new wave-y post-punky song from the 80's showing jing's age (haha) and the funkiest cut on the album, c/o atty gaddi's groovin' bass parts. i remember playing this for the first time at the UP fair a couple of years back, jing just busting out the song at one of the shirley practices and all of us just falling in love with it. I remember it reminding me of the strokes' someday, i love that song. haha.

fun fact! i wasn't supposed to be the one singing this song, mr. gaddi was supposed to be the one on the mic, and we were maybe toying around with the idea of having joe sing the song. but then this opportunity came knocking, when we entered the world battle of the bands (upon the real christian bautista's suggestion) for the song to be on the radio. we hadn't finished the vocal recording yet, and i think jing couldn't make it, so it was me and selena doing all the singing. i think i did a good job though (hahaha)

the last verse (without lyric) was supposed to contain a jing monologue, some diatribe about how it isn't cool to steal other people's things or some other "crime doesn't pay" thing haha. but again, we were rushing the song, so in place of that i just started grunting, and i remember the loa guys enjoying that. it was a fun bit of cathartic screaming. i was going for a homer simpson on one of the screams haha. fun stuff. and then i dunno, we just decided that the screaming would be a better fit for the song, making it more of a universal "ANGST" song instead of a specific "DO NOT STEAL MY IPOD - jing" song haha.

i super super super love jing's lyric here, the wording is brilliant, and the song is APT haha.

the synths are bastardized from depeche mode (HAHA) for the verses and then we tried to put in some beatlesque organ to cover up jing's rip-off of another shirley song ("i can name that tune in 2 notes..") hahaha. but i swear i swear, the pièce de résistance for masamang damo has to be that killer drum + bass break into the harmonized guitar solo i love that i love that whole thing, i mean wow, we recorded that! it was perfect! haha

starting off with the decay of the chorus organ part, leaving zig and jing and then the "scary keyboard sound" and the big muffed solo guitar, then the "supot" harmony guitar, and it's over like that, and man i wanna hear the song again so i can get to that part again hahaha

sorry that i'm raving about a song on the album we just released but i didn't write it so it's not being boastful, i guess. haha.

BILI NA KAYO NG THEMESONGS!!!!

-owel

themesongs track 1

"kagabi nanaginip si morrissey na may nagmamahal sa kanya"

xmaslights was recorded first, around november of 2006, with this coming a close second. we were going for a "rivermaya covers goldenboy" vibe, with the prominent acoustic guitar and heidi's analog yamaha doing the bleeps in the background. i remember being really unhappy about how it sounded in the early mixes, so we replaced some of the acoustic guitars with electric guitar overdubs. another curious thing about the recording is the chorus guitar part, where the harmony riff is actually more prominent, the live version sounds nothing like it and i love that.

my favorite part in the song though (aside from the alarm clock intro, which totally makes this song work) is the solo in the middle, 1:30 or so into the song. the guitar doing the solo is actually just a scratch track, to be replaced by another electric guitar overdub (possibly with one of our stratocasters, this album was very stratty, featuring my green squier strat and joe's maya and pacifica strats) but then during the mixing, me and joey santos (i love you joey!) couldn't find the actual solo take. i remember him shrugging and saying "ok na naman yung scratch a.." hahahaha i love loa. anyway the super thing about the scratch take that i recorded is that i make a mistake on the second pass, but it sounds like a deliberate variation on the guitar line haha. as mark villena would say: "that's a very human element!"

if you listen closely, there's also a new synth part that comes into the solo, that's from marco harder's roland jx3p, i love how it just blankets the whole thing without being totally overpowering. i really love the sine wave square wave saw wave synth sounds and cheapo drum machine loops, so this song is an exercise in those things, hehe. plus! the early days of ang bandang shirley saw songs written specifically for loops, we just used my old casio tonebank keyboard for all percussive purposes hehe.

the words came after the riff, like most of the songs i write. inspired by the smiths' (duh haha) song of the same title, but i was going for more of a hopeful pov. wrote this around 2003, so this is 18 year old owel talking hahaha.

yehey

-owel

FOR SALE: pawis at dugo at maraming alkansya na binasag para pambayad ng gastusin (in CD format)

saw three copies at the astrovision at festival mall alabang, get em while they're hot

-owel

matuto ka na maghintay

Hello guys!

It's been a crazy and busy month so i apologize if info regarding our debut album is a little confusing. We're sorry for those who have been pestering record bars and receiving clueless looks from sales people etc. Our album is SEMI-OUT --- meaning the album is available in limited ODYSSEY, ASTROVISION AND SM RECORD BARS FOR NOW. I just got word this afternoon that as per Viva they had  already delivered our cds in Ortigas and Makati areas. So friends, a little more patience is entailed. We promise that before september ends all is smooth and you'll see the album anywhere including FULLY BOOKED (friday daw idedeliver sa kanila). Anyway copies were sold last sunday during our mall show at the SM Mall of Asia (shoutout to Mokay who already bought her copy last sunday!). So i can safely say that our album is also available in MOA.

Anyway while most of you are still waiting for the chance to hear the album in its entirety...here's something to quench your excitement haha our first single off the album titled: "Themesong" should be playing on your favorite radio stations this week so please please please help us spread the love that is ang bandang shirley music by requesting for it. The video will also be soon debuting on MYX and MTV.

alright. seems like. that's all (+/- hehe),
Kathy

p.s. Album Launch on October 25 at Kolektib in Cubao Expo. Details to follow :)

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

Ilang tulog na lang...

Hi everyone!

First of all:



Yup! ilang tulog na lang talaga...and if the deadline is to be followed: Our freakin' debut album "Themesongs" will be out in the market by the end of this week! woohooo!

Ayun.

And on to related stuff: The band had a photoshoot yesterday hehe. It was fun! and we ate a lot of popcorn and spaghetti and hotdog and pandesal plus we wore red. haha. We'll upload the photos soon. Ang galeng ni Heidi! Many thanks to Black Ink Productions and Nina Torres-Urbino and Mogwai.

Soon: music video for "theme song" hehe.

love, kathy g.

more teasers from pepper

'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

yehey

themesongs (one word haha)