Nino and papa's music

 "Gigising si Gaspar! Gigising si Gaspar!" Thus the dreamish words classical music legend Fides Cuyugan-Asensio in the Cinemalaya indie film  “Nino” by Director Loy Arcenas.

Cinemalaya has always been my favorite venue for watching  excellent acting, especially from veteran film and stage performers who effortlessly shine in their meticulous characterization of roles. Such is the case of “Nino” by Director Loy Arcenas. His casting boasts of the ever-regal but acting-reclusive Fides Cuyugan-Asensio who pits acting bravura with equally talented but always accessible (you always see them in GMA-7 teleseryes) Shamaine Centenera-Buencamino, Raquel Villavicencio and Tony Mabesa.  Here’s the sysnopsis: 

The Villa Los Reyes Magos, the decaying mansion of the Lopez-Aranzas, is the only remaining emblem of the once illustrious family of Gaspar and his sister Celia. When former congressman Gaspar slips into a coma, his opera doyenne sister Celia waits for a miracle through her grandson Antony, who she clads in Sto. Niño garb. But harsh reality in the figures of their children, Merced, Mombic, and Raquel, pushes the inevitable: the impending sale of the mansion to give way to a commercial venture. Celia wages her last battle to regain the glory of the past by hosting a splendid tertulla, her final eulogy to her own moribund class.

 I believe the role of Celia was tailor-made for Fides Cuyugan-Asensio, what with the character’s penchant for opera singing and the like. I also like the representation of the Sto. Nino in child performer Jhiz Deocareza while he is running around the old house with a wood sword and caped/crowned just like the Child Jesus. And in a family drama like this, you can’t help but be engrossed not only with the story, but with how differing personalities are fleshed out on the big screen. I like the scene of the gathering of old friends who sang to Gaspar  serenading him as if it is a grand opera night before he died.

Tony Mabesa's role playing of a person in coma is somewhat a replication of our family experience.   My father fell into coma for almost eight months before he died in November 2003.  A year and six months after mama’s death, my father, Papa Ponching to many, died  November 16, 2003 a Sunday, due to pneumonia after being bedridden for almost eight months brought about by complications arising from an operation on his brain (hydrocephalus). I have told relatives and friends that  Papa could have been dead during the second week of April due to the gravity of the hydrocephalus  if not for that incident when he fell from our stairs. Maybe Mama pushed him so that the hydrocephalus and tumor could be detected. '

Music is papa's world and passion. He will always sing to us old songs of his generations. He brags that he always won during competitions and his fond memories with his guitars and choirs.   I vividly remember when i was a child is his penchant to singing of lullabyes for us to sleep. Then on weekends our house will be filled with reverberating music from his collection of long playing albums of old songs.

 During the early days of his coma, we were given the option to remove the (breathing) tubes since they said that he will not wake up. But we held on our faith. Then one day, he started to talk though soft and slow until  he became normal for only a short period. We asked him what he remembered during the time that he was in coma. He said that he just remembered the voice of Beng-Beng or Bro.Stephen. Since Beng-Beng was based in Australia and he could come home due to his religious obligations there, I just I asked him to send us a cassette tape which recorded his recitation of the Holy Rosary, songs of praise and words of wisdom.It is said that when  a person is in coma, or he is in  the brink of death, the last sense that he will lose is the sense of hearing. Thus, the popular superstition that if someone is going to die, whisper to his ears words of love and kindness which will he will bring in his journey to the afterlife.

When we were growing up, I remember times when Mama scolded us, “Buti nga kayo di nyo naranasan ang magtinda ng kamatis sa palengke.” Then she would cry. Perhaps, this was her way of saying that whatever the benefits we were enjoying then were due to their hard work..This is something that children have to realize: that parents will sacrifice a lot for the future of the kids. If mama would say the “kamatis” story, Papa, on the other hand, would tell us stories when he was still a security guard in a government agency before they got married in July 1968. Papa was a security guard by day and a student by night taking up library science. When he graduated, he proceeded to be a librarian in the same office until he retired in early 1990s.

"Gigising si  Papa! Gigisng si Papa!" perhaps will be my version of Fides Cuyugan's lines.  Faith is always the best weapon.

fra lippo lippin who?

 FRA LIPPO LIPPI WHO?

That was the question i overheard from  some of the locals of Ormoc, Leyte when i chanced upon Fra Lippo Lippi  during the February 10, 2011 concert in this town whose congresswoman is a showbiz personality.

I cannot blame them since based on the crowd i saw, most of them are in their teenage years, as  i bet  Backstreet Boys is  the "Fra lippo lippi" of their generation.

The Pinoy love affair with Fra Lippo Lippi started in the mid-’80s. The band was organized in the late ’70s but it wasn’t until Per Sorensen joined as lead singer in 1982 that they had a taste of chart success. From a band, Fra Lippo Lippi became a duo composed of founder and bass player Rune Kristoffersen and Sorensen. Worldwide success came in 1986 with the release of the single Everytime I See You.
In 1987, Walter Becker of the Becker Brothers (Sneaking Up Behind You) produced their next album Light And Shade for Virgin Records. From that point on, there was no turning back. When they visited Manila in 1988 for the first time, they sold out six shows at the 8,000 capacity Folk Arts Theater at the CCP complex in Pasay in two weeks.In 2000, Kristoffersen retired from Fra Lippo Lippi after a performance in Cebu. Sorensen continued and carried the legacy of Fra Lippo Lippi.

No other band or performer has done this feat in Philippine music history.

For 400 pesos, i joined the Ormoc crowd in reliving my bagets "new wave" era as Sorensen sung the hits like Angel, Stitches & Burns, Light & Shade, Beauty & Madness, Everytime I See You, Shouldn’t Have To Be Like That, The Distance Between Us and Later.

Coincidentally, i stayed in the same hotel where he stayed so i got too close and personal to him , the picture with sorensen as evidence .

When many bands began disassociating themselves from punk, New Wave era in the 80s and 90s  is characterized by music that tended toward experimentation, lyrical complexity, or more polished production.  It represented a break from the smooth-oriented blues and rock & roll sounds of late 1960s to mid 1970s rock music. "New Wave" came to imply a less noisy, often synthesizer-based, pop sound. They incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, and disco, rock and 1960s pop music.

In my IPOD, their music are usually sourced from the New Wave Diary mp3 series which includes The Human League, Depeche Mode,  a-ha, New Order, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Ultravox , Pet Shop Boys, The Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds,

Who will see the beauty in your life
And who will be there to hear you when you call
Who will see the madness in your life
And who will be there to catch you if you fall

Everytime I see you
My life turns upside down
I tried so hard to find out
How to make you come back
But even if I told you
I can't hold you again
Everytime I see you I know




Baby, you don’t understand our love lies lost
But you’re still holding my hand
Oh and then you walk away
Just tonight, I want you to stay
You’re turning me on, you turn me around
You turn my whole world upside down

xxxxxxxx

More lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/f/fra_lippo_lippi/#share

eraserheads, my roomates

(a reposting of March , 2009 fb notes)
Hey  they were  my roommates!

Perhaps, that is a statement that I can say with pride as I watched the “Eraserheads: the Final Set” at the MOA grounds  last  March 7, 2009, Saturday night, along with an estimated crowd of “more than a hundred thousand” fans.

            Buddy Zabala and Raimund Marasigan were my roommates for two years at the Molave Dorm during my last college years at the UP Diliman (1989 to 1991) before I was booted out from the dorm since I already finished my B.S. Economics in March 1991. Our room was identified as “AS 101”, with high ceiling and huge windows,  which was at the end of the second floor of the Molave boys’ wing. Ely Buendia’s room was also at the second floor, a few steps away from AS 101 I think in front of the shower room. Marcus Adoro was a regular “visitor” at our room, who was staying at the Narra dorm, and  sleeps  in an extra cushion being pulled out underneath Raimund’s bed. During my birthday in 1990, I did not go home to Las Pinas and instead celebrated my birthday with Buddy over  ice cream while watching an old film at the TV room.  Buddy is a bookworm who loves to stay inside our room in contrast to  Raimund’s gimikero character who usually arrives late in the evening  and misses the breakfast as he wakes up late.   Too late for breakfast and too early for lunch.

            Everytime they made our room as their “practice area” I usually go out since I can not study due to the “noise” they are creating.  It was beyond my comprehension that the “noise” that I tried to avoid made them known as one of the most successful, critically-acclaimed, and significant bands in the OPM  history earning them the accolade, "The Beatles of the Philippines”.

            I had no intention at that time to watch the concert. I’d rather see them in person again over  dinner or coffee and reminisce our dorm days. It was a last minute plan due to proddings of my friend Atty. Shiela, who called from Thailand three days before the concert  and insisted that we watch them upon her arrival. And we did watch “UP Sunken Garden” style, watching and  listening from the periphery. We stood in front of Starbucks just outside the main VIP entrance at the right side of the stage. From our location, we can see four big screens placed at the top of the stage, with each screen showing one member of the band.

My roommates  performed most of the materials during their early days, or from their first three albums namely Ultraelectromagneticpop! (1993) Circus and Cutterpillow (1995) Majority of the songs included in the mentioned albums were highly popular as they were all released at the time the Eraserheads were at the peak of their game. Colorful fireworks adorned the evening sky as the final strains of “Huling El Bimbo” reverberated from the speakers.The band came back to do a three-song encore composed of “Ligaya,” “Sembreak,” and “Toyang.”

            Moral of the story: never downplay small things, however annoying they can be. Guys that are noisemakers  can reverberate through history as musical icons.