Moving On

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/522661/aquino-ph-ready-to-face-supertyphoon-yolanda

One of the biggest reasons why we level criticisms against government is because many of its key personalities are deeply entrenched in a culture of invincibility, of impunity. These personalities are almost always able to avoid accountability because the system is flawed, its mechanisms and resources are open to manipulation, and “voices of reason” out there can always be counted upon to shield them – either deliberately or unwittingly –from criticism.

But the problem with calling an end to criticisms that some quarters are quick to dismiss as utterly malicious and negative during these times is that those calling for said end are often also the type who will ask everyone to just “move on” after situations begin to normalize. The bahala na crowd, the tanggapin na lang natin kasi clique, and the wala na tayong magagawa diyan cabal are all cut from the same proverbial cloth as the let’s move on na lang-ers – and that cloth is fear.

What’s in a name?

The UP College of Business Administration has been officially renamed as the Cesar Emilio Aguinaldo Virata School of Business. There’s some debate going on about the legality of this move, but I don’t wish to add more fuel to the fire by unleashing my own barrage of academically-disguised expletives. Instead, I’ll defer to the wisdom of the administration and just propose that the following suggestions be considered in support of the current initiative:

• The Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III School of Neoliberal Economics;
• The Ferdinand Edralin Marcos College of Martial Law;
• The Vicente Castelo Sotto III Creative Writing Center;
• The Liwayway Gawgaw Tapia College of Education;
• The Manuel “Lito” Lapid College of Superhuman Kinetics;
• The UP MAROONONGS (to replace MAROONS; pampataas ng confidence levels, esp for the basketball team);
• The Gloria Macapagal Arroyo National College of Public Administreyshen and Governance;
• The Wilfredo Buendia Revillame College of Mass Hysterical Communications;
• The Lucio Tan School of Contractual Labor and Industrial Relations;
• The Henry Sy, Sr. University Shopping Center (pushing for “Mart“);
• The Sixto Serrano Brillantes, Jr. Financial Assistance Program (To be known as the Sixto-FAP) with Brackets 60, 30, and 10;
• The Imelda Romualdez Marcos Sunken Garden of Truth, Goodness, and All Things Beautiful;and
• The Zobel de Ayala Public-Private-Partnership University of the Philippines

For those about to throw rocks, we salute you. \m/@@\m/

You tell us to shut it, to give them a chance

Play these “different” tunes (for the same same-old dance)

You tell us to stop with the flood of bad vibes

As it gives such discomfort to comfortable lives

 

You ask we move on, but with blind supplication

That balm you would have us apply for redemption

But the silence you ask for is a silence too loud

As it cuts through the din, as its nature resounds

 

Days from today, when you slink from the shame

Of the things you let go, of the shit that remains

We’ll still be around, different voices, the same

Will you tell us to stop, do it over again?

 

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The thing about silence is that it has only made it easier for the system to feed us the same garbage over and over again. If you really want the complaining to stop, break the cycle and join forces with those who would also have the same.

Make some noise. \m/@@\m/

Stickitodamaneosis \m/@@\m/

“Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” – Bertolt Brecht

Some say he won’t win because he doesn’t have the numbers needed to get him a seat in the senate; that his effort to secure votes from north to south (and beyond) have failed because he was unable to secure the massive funding needed to conduct an effective nationwide campaign.

Others say he doesn’t deserve to win because he’ll just be a useless voice in the senate; that he will only be a minority within the minority; that the smart thing to do would be to vote for someone else who would have a better chance at making a more significant impact as a senator.

Then, there are also those who keep telling us that he shouldn’t be allowed to win because he’s a rabble-rousing, godless communist; that a vote for him would be a vote against the very democracy that the Filipino people have fought so hard to win back from the Marcos dictatorship and have fought even harder to preserve to this very day.

Amidst all the quaint demagoguery, Teddy Casiño has done a stellar job of defending himself and sharing his vision for the country in all of the forums, talk shows and various interviews he’s participated in throughout the entire campaign period. His track record, his intellect, his wit, his sincerity and his eloquence have more than adequately debunked all claims on why he shouldn’t and why he doesn’t deserve to win. As it stands, the only assertion left to refute with finality is the one that claims he can’t win the numbers game. The following, however, indicate otherwise:

Barangay Datu’s Para Kay Teddy Casiño!

Wala nang kinabukasan sa mga lumang pangalan! Teddy Casiño sa Senado 2013!

Oks, pampabuhay ulit ng blog kong di na natutukan. (More to follow, hopefully soon, waha.) At para lang sa mga rumor-monger diyan, the band supports Teddy’s candidacy unconditionally (although balak naming humingi ng libreng t-shirts) at sinusuportahan namin siya kasi dapat lang.

Kilalanin siya at alamin ng mabuti kung bakit HINDI PWEDENG WALA SIYA SA SENADO: http://myteddycasino.com/

Wapakhz! \m/@@\m/

Hmm, wala nga ang Datu’s Tribe sa Tanduay Rockfest. (Bakit wala ang Datu’s Tribe Sa Tanduay Rockfest Part 2)

To everyone who waited, my apologies for the delayed posting. My brain was already on torture overdrive, distilling 20 years worth of thoughts, experiences, and insights on the music industry, and it really took time to decide on how to finally treat the issue at hand without resorting to producing a litany of sins I’d love the music industry to answer for.

This piece, I address, above all others, to my fellow established musicians in the local rock music scene. Most of us have gone way past that enigmatic “dead at 27” mark, so I think it’s about time we started thinking about the future. Not ours – the music’s.

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Like so many others in the scene, I’d like nothing more than to just simply make music, have fun, and deliver the shit out of my bowels at every engagement. But the fact is that I’m forced to deal with the business side of things by default and this necessitates my having to arm myself with as much knowledge of the industry’s inner workings as I can just so my crew and I don’t end up getting victimized.

Since the 90s, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to talk to fellow artists about their thoughts on the music scene and one thing I’ve learned through these interactions is that everybody is privy to some kind of industry bullshit or sob story in one form or another. Whether it’s about greedy label execs, fly-by-night organizers, lopsided contracts, under-the-table agreements, payola and other kickback schemes, or even opportunistic poseurs within our own ranks, these rants have essentially remained the same since I first entered the fray more than 15 years ago.

So, I guess the question is not so much about what’s happening anymore (again, since everyone seems privy to all kinds of dirty info) but rather, HOW the hell they keep on happening and WHY in Pepe fuckin’ Smith’s name haven’t we been able to fix these problems in spite of the fact that WE, the MUSIC ARTISTS, are central to all the wheelings and dealings that take place inside the music industry?

Bakit wala ang Datu’s Tribe sa Tanduay Rockfest?!?

Towards the end of July, I received a text message from (itago na lang natin sa pangalang) Jonas Jejemonias asking me if Datu’s Tribe would be interested in playing 2 songs for a gig on October 15, 2010 at the Mall of Asia. Jejemonias told me that he was organizing the event and that it was going to be a major reunion concert for “old school” 90s bands. Aside from telling me that the talent fee was going to be 15k, no other details were provided.

I was all gung-ho, of course, and decided to give conditional approval for the event in spite of the bare info given. Since the occasions that still provided opportunities for bands of my generation to get together already come rare and far between these days, the chance to participate in one exclusively organized for us “old school” 90s bands was too good to pass up. An element of blind faith was also involved as I knew Jonas Jejemonias to be the manager of another “old school” contemporary we’ve had the pleasure to play with back in the 90s and also even on a number of other occasions (some fairly recent) since we came back into the scene in 2005.

Now, ever since our last manager left us in virtual limbo late last year, I asked Cindy (my wife) to handle booking negotiations for the band. She’s always been very meticulous in her professional dealings and we’ve been quite satisfied ever since at the level of professional savvy she’s always brought to the negotiating table on our behalf.

So when she told me a couple of days later that something didn’t feel right with Jonas Jejemonias’s proposal, red flags started popping up. Apparently, Cindy had been informed that the talent fee would be dropping to 10k, with Jejemonias citing budget constraints and other difficulties as reasons for the drop. My wife naturally took back the conditional approval and reasoned (rightly so) that a new approval now had to be secured from the band before anything can be finalized.

Rakistang Aktibista (A Reprise)

(NOTE: This is a truncated version of a much earlier post that was, in part, a rejoinder to arguments posted on a musicians’ forum. This version only contains the 2nd half of the article and I’m reposting this as a prelude to an article in the works. This future article is inspired by a grossly scheming 3rd party’s botched attempt to have Datu’s Tribe perform at the Tanduay Rockfest this coming October. Wait for the juicy stuff, kiddies. Sandali na lang. \m/@@\m/)

Si Spiderman na ang nagsabi: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Not everyone has what it takes to be a true artist, and that’s why a true artist’s talents are uniquely double-edged gifts. A true artist possesses the means to inspire people through creation; in the musician’s case, through music and lyrics. But a true artist lacking in direction will instead have the dangerous ability to reinforce escapist mentality, submissiveness, and conformity. For those of us who won’t be fortunate or resolute enough to go beyond the 15-minute fame mark, the talent may early retire to a quaint, perhaps even painful corner of memory. But for those who’ll persevere and perhaps even break into the scene with a vengeance, talent suddenly takes on a more enormous significance.

Art for art’s sake is a luxury that our counterparts in developed countries enjoy, sometimes to the point of absurdity. In our country, this just isn’t the case. If you’ve ever given a thought as to why most musicians who pursue their craft outside the mainstream tend to struggle and/or starve, you should know what I’m talking about. But despite this reality, the sorry state of affairs is precisely why we should push on and continue evolving as artists, as musicians.

OCAMPO Ye Faithful

Nothing can be more disheartening to a nation that has been promised revolutionary changes since 1986 than to have those promises broken – and every so often at that for the last two decades.

After the Marcos era, we’ve had a disappointingly (though not quite unexpectedly) lackluster line-up of would-be-saviors whose words either hardly ever translated into meaningful changes or just surreptitiously materialized in the form of half-baked, compromise-peppered gestures aimed at pleasing whatever major vested interest happened to be present at the time of consummation.

We’ve also resorted to casting our lot with showbiz celebrities in the oft mistaken notion that their altruistic silver screen personas would translate into incorruptible heroism in the real world. Unfortunately, nobody ever seems to be able to convince those making the career move that scripts in the political arena are fiercely formulaic and that producers and directors are even more cutthroat (some literally) than those found in showbiz. It doesn’t help either that most politicians are actually better at acting than actual actors themselves, so it’s been largely hit and miss with this option.

But then, once in a while, somebody does surface to shatter conventional molds in order to provide real alternatives to the status quo. Case in point: Satur Ocampo.

2010 Slogans