eraserheads collector: 2013

Sunday, November 24, 2013

compilations - pure gold, a collection of bmg's biggest hits

Song: With A Smile

Catalog Number: MRMC/CD 103

Record Label: Musiko Records / BMG Records (Pilipinas) Inc.

From the Album: Circus - MRMC/CD 050

Year: 1994

Artist: Eraserheads

Composer: Ely Buendia

Song: Ang Huling El Bimbo

Catalog Number: MRMC/CD 103

Record Label: Musiko Records / BMG Records (Pilipinas) Inc.

From the Album: Cutterpillow - MRMC/CD 080

Year: 1995

Artist: Eraserheads

Composer: Ely Buendia

compilations - best opm collection vol 6

Song: Ang Huling El Bimbo

Compilation Album: Best OPM Collection Vol 6

Catalog Number: MRMC/CD 101

Record Label: Musiko Records / BMG Records (Pilipinas) Inc.

From the Album: Cutterpillow - MRMC/CD 080

Year: 1995

Artist: Eraserheads

Composer: Ely Buendia

Monday, August 5, 2013

article - free press magazine - Last El Bimbo in Pasay (final set concert)

Article: Last El Bimbo in Pasay

Magazine: Philippines Free Press

Year: March 21, 2009

Volume: No.

Catalog:

Writer: Bert B. Sulat Jr

Updated 12-Jan-2020

Last El Bimbo in Pasay

Their valedictory concert reaffirms the pervasive influence of the Eraserheads on their generation and beyond By Bert B. Sulat Jr.

THE Eraserheads' second, purportedly last gig together, generically billed as "The Final Set," finally unfolded on March 7 at the sprawling "concert grounds" of the SM Mall of Asia. Unlike the earlier, meant-to-be final "Reunion Concert" at The Fort on August 30 last year, which was cut short after the 15^th song when lead singer-guitarist Ely Buendia was rushed to the hospital as he struggled with chest pains, this latest last get-together reached its anticipated conclusion without a hitch. Also, unlike the August gig, teeming though it was with some 20,000 attendees, "The Final Set" saw a mammoth crowd that must have amounted to at least 50,000.

This final reunion was mounted largely to please the collective craving of the Eraserheads' fan base-which spans practically the whole archipelago and age groups ranging from emerging teens to 30- to 40-somethings. Yet, for a reunion concert that follows the quartet's now seven-year breakup (and varying successes with their newer, separate bands), besides serving as a solid closure to the prematurely concluded show in August, "The Final Set" did not necessarily find the band of Buendia, lead guitarist Marcus Adoro, bassist Buddy Zabala and drummer Raimund Marasigan (multi-instrumentalist Jazz Nicolas of Itchyworms was also again onboard) mindlessly giving in to the greatest-hits predilection of the general public. Sure, the band played a good amount of its classics, from "Pare Ko" to "Alapaap," "Ligaya," "Kailan" and the immortal “Ang Huling El Bimbo." The group, however, likewise indulged itself in some of its other, fairly lesser known tunes, such as "Slo Mo," "Wishing Wells," "Back2Me," "Poorman's Grave" and "Trip to Jerusalem" - tracks that do have their admirers if they are not as massively embraced as the hits. Heck, by the evening's literal end, the band-and the fans who stayed put-still had its own way, reemerging for an unplanned second encore just as thousands had already exited the grounds.

In all, the Eraserheads played 28 songs that night without any obvious pattern (chronological or such) other than the usual upbeat-to-downbeat-to-lively pacing typical of any concert. Neither did the band succumb to any show-off gimmicks that other, more pandering acts would have been prone to. But there were close-to-exceptions to the E-heads norm: Marasigan moved about like a giddy rocker when he assumed the lead-vox duties (as Nicolas took over the drum set) midway through the first main set. Then the normally reticent Adoro gamely sang lead for a "reggaefied" take on "Huwag Mo Nang Itanong," and Buendia invited the enthusiastic audience to sing-in-the-blanks on some tunes, torched his old piano during the instrumental conclusion of “El Bimbo" and went down to the front-row crowd to let ecstatic viewers sing lines of "Toyang" straight to the mike.

(There was also a brief tribute to the pioneering musician Francis Magalona, 44, who lost the "happy battle" with leukemia the day before “The Final Set.” The E-heads sang and played the chorus to FrancisM’s “Kaleidoscope World,” while the overhead big screens presented a montage of The Man's music videos. This would serve as a prelude to that night's performance of the E-heads' "Superproxy," the recording of which featured Magalona doing an extensive, closing rap. What a night! Buendia did the rap verses on FrancisM's behalf.)

In many ways, "The Final Set" was a historic event-encapsulating the band's milieu and its eclectic spirit. Essentially a pop act, the Eraserheads incorporated a variety of music styles, anyway, even a variety of pop-culture and real-life references. This was evidenced early on by its major-label debut Ultraelectromagneticpop! (the title itself a play on the hallucination-inspired weapon unleashed by Japan's Voltes V) and its tracks that cribbed melodies and words from The Four Tops' "I can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)," Nat King Cole's "Too Young" and Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs.” In "The Final Set," interjections that quoted a remake of Eric Clapton’s "I Shot the Sheriff" and lyrics to Van Halen’s “Jump” were cases in point. But the band members complemented this "reflective" reflex with their ability to channel universal- or at least national-sentiments and experiences, which everybody in their college phase has undergone or are still reeling from. All this wrapped in ultracatchymelodiouspop. One can therefore conclude, as the fans probably surmised, that the Eraserheads were a natural consequence of the cut-and-paste, knowledge-overloaded, technology-saturated realm of Generation Why Bother.

That innumerable E-heads followers stuck with the band throughout its Nineties heyday down to the early 2000s, and have pretty much kept an ear on each band member via their respective post-Heads preoccupations, also points to the fact that the Eraserheads had managed to supply, rather consistently, its ardent following with a unique, high-inducing kind of E: emotional emancipation. Not only did the band inspire countless others to form their own sonic outfits and spill out their own juvenile hearts and minds via simple chord patterns and I-can-do-what they-do chutzpah (with varying, often dismaying results), the E-beads likewise affirmed what was going on in our lives as well. To wit: Even if the heartbreaking narrative of “Ang Huling El Bimbo" may never have happened to the rest of us, we could certainly identify with the life's-like-that bitter sweetness of its lyrical sprawl. Even if we may have never ended up behind bars, the poignant longing and black humor evoked by "Kailan" is something we must have experienced ourselves at some point. And whether or not we can drive, or have been all around the Philippines, anyone of us must have had some sort of frustrated aspiration that "Overdrive" wittily encapsulated. More often than not, practically every E-heads tune-or at least its every album had such an affecting ring that made the loyal listener feel genuinely alive.

It was great while it lasted and, as in school, graduation day had come to the College of Eraserheads soon enough, relatively abrupt as it might have been in the case of the Most Successful Foursome in Pinoy Pop. I suppose that, even without the unfavorable circumstances that had led to its disbandment- whatever they were-the band still would have wanted out; just as any of us can be students only for so long before wanting to conquer the proverbial real world, Buendia, Adoro, Zabala and Marasigan must have felt that they had taken their enterprise to its proper outcome and wanted to get out of the E-heads box to harness their respective potential in other directions.

While the band members have affirmed that they will never record again (their last album was 2001's double-disc Carbon Stereoxide) nor even play together as the Eraserheads again, it is probably still premature to bid the band farewell. For one thing, their songs are perpetually our songs, as evidenced by both tangible ownership of their various albums and, moreover, by the way their recordings have been embraced- from the karaoke level all the way to anthemic status, as "The Final Set" got to underscore. For another, these four men-boys are still playing, albeit in disparate bands that, while not necessarily capturing the E-heads magic, are worth rooting for nonetheless. And, let's face it: a decade or so from now, when they will have been in their fifties, the band members-and most of us-just might want to assess the ensuing years and wonder if, say, the national condition remains in such a pathetic state that we could not help but heartily, verbally unearth that best-loved line of “Pare ko”: “Di ba…Tang ina”*