NOTES FROM THE WALL-FLY ALMANAC: THE DZRJ 45TH ANNIVERSARY "SUPERSESSION" REHEARSALS
A GATHERING OF PINOY ROCK STARS: ALDUS SANTOS GIVES A SNEAK PREVIEW ON SUPERSESSION.
by Aldus Santos
Stagehands rush to the aid of the forgetfuls onstage, bringing over music stands where the performers can prop up stray pages of rock libretto. A word or two per verse: that’s all they really need to jumpstart their memory. However, seeing as a lot of the numbers for the show-at-hand are over two decades old, full printouts are more or less de rigueur. The irony of the matter is that you could hear some of the busboys mindlessly—tunelessly—mouthing off the lyrics like clockwork. Underneath their innocent, hushed queries of “Drinks, sir?,” one can tell that the waiters at RJ Bar along Jupiter are (reigning, undefeated) videoke champs in their spare time. One other irony—the more important one, really—is that the people onstage weren’t just random, memory-challenged nobodies; they were, to put it mildly, a whole lot of somebodies: a veritable party of Pinoy Rock’s Who’s Who. They are playing a limited-access “rehearsal show” this night for a select few (friends, family, colleagues, and press), in preparation for the 45th anniversary show of DZRJ dubbed as Supersession.
I was one of the flies on the wall, so to speak. But please, forget I said anything.
Color It Red’s Cookie Chua—prime poster-girl for the alterna-90s, hands down—walks in sporting her signature all-black ensemble, half-panting, and I can only guess she came from a longish walk. “Traffic sa MRT, eh!” she jokes with a friend. She is surveying the people onstage, whom she will join in a brief moment. One of them is Cowboy Santos, lugging a left-handed Les Paul, who is now practically directing the proceedings onstage, showing Greyhoundz bassist Nino Avenido the five- to six-note fretwork for the closing roll of “Nosi Ba Lasi?” Nino relays the roll-scheme to his partner-in-crime for the night, the gorgeous Bea Lao, who also drums for King Antares. As soon as he’s done with Nino, Cowboy turns to Imago’s Aia de Leon to run through some chords for rhythm-keeping. They, along with Anakbayan’s Emee Fortuno and Crowjane’s Nicole Asensio, are (obviously) doing a Sampaguita set. Cowboy knows his mother’s material best, and he’s protecting the arrangements with the flair of a youngish man trapped in a Haight-Ashbury hippie’s body. Only a couple of minutes earlier, they also nailed an almost fanatically consistent rendition of “Bonggahan,” and things are looking good.
Hovering around the buffet are Imago’s Zach Lucero and Sandwich’s Raymund Marasigan, who both throw me warm yet vaguely conspiratorial glances. Marasigan’s neon-green locks, dyed especially for the recently-concluded Eraserheads reunion show, are fading to a dull platinum, and he is sporting a shirt that says “Video.” Chikoy Pura, his faded jeans torn at the knees like it was 1994, is helping himself to the sumptuous dinner. As the mainman for The Jerks settles on a table with his wife, the people playing the Sampaguita set start disassembling, and the floor director calls out, “Chikoy Pura, Joey Manuel!” No sighs from Chikoy, who, with the sternness of a man with a purpose, stares at his almost-dinner, stands up, and says, “Okay, mamaya ko na itutuloy ‘to.” He starts ripping through The Troggs’ “Wild Thing” and The Doors’ “Light My Fire” along with an enviable crew: the inimitable Louie Talan on the low notes, Zach behind the kit, and Kakoi Legaspi on lead-axe detail.
Ramon “RJ” Jacinto, man-in-black host for the night’s private festivities, goes around the room like the self-styled radio sultan that he is (tune in to any of his stations to catch a whiff of his EDSA Revolution-tinged rethinking of the Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing,” called—what else—“Sultan ng Radyo”). DZRJ, the station he helms, started as a teenage backyard project of his, and is now celebrating its 45th year of on-air existence. “To me, radio will always be radio,” he tells me as a quick retort to my query about how radio is faring against emerging platforms for music (the Internet and so on). He adds, “It’s like the theater—movie theaters—nandito pa rin. There will always be a place for radio.” Jacinto is no stranger to staging rock shows of this scope and caliber. Pinoy Woodstock, for instance—the 44-act, 24-hour rock smorgasbord of 1989—is an RJ baby, and it is almost twenty years-old now. “[For Supersession], I thought of concentrating on that phase or period when DZRJ was ‘Rock of Manila.’ So, we’re tracing [our] history in relation to classic rock, plus modern rock now, because we have RJ Underground [Radio],” RJ adds amidst the soloing of Pura and Legaspi, jamming on The Jerks’ classic Dylan Thomas-referencing anthem “Rage.” The man is as nostalgic as he is forward-looking, sharing, “Pinoy rock is very, very much alive. [I remember], when I arrived from exile here [in] 1986, I noticed [rock] was nearly dead. We only had discos and piano bars. Solo artists dominated the scene. [It was then that] I thought the best source of raw material was the campus, where people get together, play together, and sing together.”
Delilah Aguilar, swinging “queen of the underground” to some, doting aunt figure to many, suggests, “Back then, no [other] station was playing rock ‘n’ roll. I remember [people like] Florante would give cassettes of his songs to Howlin’ Dave,” she says, alluding to the late, great Dante David, who was Sid to his Nancy back in the day. Cookie Chua joins Chikoy Pura onstage to lend her pipes on a rendition of Steely Dan’s “Reeling in the Years,” and this prompted Delilah to recall the eventful 90s, when she was working with Junior Jam and the RJ Guitar Center string of stores: “Alaga ko silang lahat, ‘yang sila Cookie,” she says, stringing the Eraserheads, Introvoyz, and Razorback together in the same breath. As the charming woman starts digressing into having seen The Beatles perform in New Delhi once as a child, and how George Harrison was the least cordial of the four (“George didn’t want to sign—nakasimangot!”), someone calls out, “Delilah! Eraserheads [set] na!”
“Raymund, Zach, Nino, Aia!” the roll-call goes. Said people go up onstage, along with RJ himself. Raymund strums the quartet of jangly chords that makes up “Pare Ko,” and the room goes nuts. “I love you, Raymund!” Cookie Chua screams, and I felt like I was in junior-high again, when these guys probably hung out a lot. Delilah walks over to me and says, “I’m so happy that Raymund is singing.” Then it was time for the ‘Heads’ paean to the death of innocence, “Magasin.” The band hiccupped a first time when Raymund realized that the “Guitarman” was playing a half-step in a different key. “Okay, okay, top,” he says, cueing the band without his excitement waning. The band hiccupped a second time when Aia sings the verse a couple of bars early. Still on top of his game, Marasigan cues the band a third time and starts singing in unison with the Imago frontwoman, and it was pure alterna-rock manna after that.
[Note to self: what would I do if I had to tell RJ he just made a mistake? As you can guess by now, this is all turning out to be very surreal.]
Joey “Pepe” Smith walks in, and the room lights up, like he’s an apparition, or, at the very least, like he’s everyone’s favorite uncle who’s dropped his nephews and nieces a surprise visit with random bits of pasalubong. He was characteristically garbed in rock ‘n’ roll leather—jacket and boots—and a white long-sleeved shirt, with the first couple of buttons popped open. Even with his head tilted back to make out the words on the lyric sheets, like how an old-person-wearing-glasses typically does it, Pepe still looks rock ‘n’ roll. “He [Pepe] was really the foundation of Pinoy rock […]. He was the Mick Jagger of the Philippines; he was with The Downbeats,” RJ annotates, and then he, along with Pepe, Cowboy, Zach, Nino, and the insanely awesome Johnny Alegre of Affinity on guitar, proceeds to play a Beatles set. “Don’t Let Me Down,” the B-side to “Get Back,” is up first, and then Abbey Road’s “Come Together,” which had Marasigan promptly joining the superband to sing along. Pepe is clowning around during the “Shoot!”s in the song (you know, the Lennon accents right after each Macca bassline, i.e., “Shoot!”), but he is sounding great.
“Are you ridi, Pipi?” RJ asks in mock-Visayan.
“Yis, Ar-Jee,” Pepe chortles back.
With that, they drop the Juan de la Cruz bomb “Beep Beep,” as well as The Riots classics “Muli” and “Hele-Hele Ka Pa.” At one point, at a lack for a drummer and a percussionist, RJ finds himself making on-the-spot casting calls. “Who can drum for ‘Muli’?” Raymund Marasigan gamely volunteers, “Ako!” “Who can play the conga?” There is a palpable silence, and RJ is forced to coerce someone to do it, asking, “Chikoy?” Pura runs onstage as a manner of replying in the affirmative. With his more-than-able blues-guitar hands, the man really can’t go wrong rhythm-wise. The Jerks aren’t big on samba or bossa, but Chikoy delivered like a freaking bat out of Brazil (hell, yeah). Before RJ knows it, “Hele-Hele” elevates into a frenzied jam, so frenzied that, at one point, the guitar-less Pepe walks off-stage to let the axemen run wild. When he’s called back, he’s pretend-whining, “Eh, ayaw niyo ko pakantahin, eh! Kanina pa kayo gitara nang gitara d’yan; gusto ko na nga lang manood, eh!” Delilah’s words from a while back comes to mind, “Mas matigas pa ang ulo minsan ng matatanda, eh, sa totoo lang!”
When it came time for Sandwich’s current name-checking hit “Betamax” to be performed, it was obvious that Marasigan’s words would find flesh, as some of the idols he enumerates are in the same room tonight: Pepe, Chikoy, et cetera. Regardless of the “Betamax” headcount, however, one realizes that rock is fanhood first, and maybe, if you’re lucky, professional practice second. “It’s such a treat and a privilege to jam with my heroes. My best one yet is drumming for RJ in rehearsals,” Raymund would tell me later.
I’m thinking of getting a second round of sisig from the buffet table, but there’s only maybe two spoonful’s worth left. Pepe Smith is messing around with the limited-edition Supersession guitar maybe two steps away from the food. He’s a big fan of pork and lard (amazing, I know, with that pencil-thin frame).
I love “Ang Himig Natin” to bits, man, but I’m starving.
Supersession is happening on October 25, 2008 at A-Venue Events Hall along Makati Avenue. For information, call 899-3108. Tickets available at all RJ Guitar Center outlets or Ticket Net (911-5555). Go here to read the official release. Photos courtesy of RJ Underground Radio. Acknowledgements go to Mikey, Kris, Nikki, and Carlene.
