Tag Archives: Sugarfree

The noise is overwhelming. SaGuijo isn’t made for long conversations with friends, not even when you’re all outside sitting at the farthest table from the entrance, having drinks and cigarettes. The truth is you’ve been here since dinnertime when it was empty and bright. You almost forgot it was the place of noise and crowds and youth, the one you hadn’t gone to in a while.

It had been a long day and, both emotionally and literally, food was what you needed. You also wanted to get eating out of the way while it was quiet enough to have a meal. The bagoong rice, salpicao and tokwa’t baboy, and ice-cold San Mig Lite seemed about right. Except that it was already noisy in your head, the kind of noise that apparently can’t be erased by a filled stomach. You came from the Maximum Security Compound of Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa, and after two years met an old friend—one who’s been there for almost a decade, the one for whom freedom is such a remote possibility, you cannot even see it.

The NGO Rock Ed was reason for that visit to Bilibid. Every Wednesday of every week, a bunch of prisoners expect Gang Badoy to arrive and teach them some creative writing.

the rest is up at pulse.ph!

si kuya at kanta

this is up at Metakritiko where i’ve been alive in times that this blog isn’t. trying to link ’em all together obviously.

medyo hirap lang sa dating sariling namamayagpag sa blog na ito, na sa kasalukuyan (at dapat pala) ay (parating!) rine-revise. so in the meantime, eto ang isang sariling enjoy sa pagsusulat tungkol sa kulturang popular, lahat pinapatulan, lahat may posibilidad ng subersyon/pag-aklas/pagbabago, gaano man kaliit.

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Mix Tape 1: Ode to Sibling-hood

When I was a kid, my liking for the local was judged as baduy by my Kuya who took to liking everything not Pinoy. We fought over the remote control on Sundays when I couldn’t get enough of GMA Supershow, and he wanted the rerun of any other foreign show or movie on Channel 9. I watched That’s Entertainment, day in day out, to Kuya’s raised eyebrows. Yes, the talentless lived there, and they were “watermelon singing!” Kuya said, exasperated. That is, they didn’t know the words to the songs they pre-recorded and so they just keet repeating the word “watermelon.”

And here, the songs that I love(d) from the height of baduy Origina Pilipino Music (OPM) in the mid-80s to early 90s, all of which I’ve got memorized like a know how to ride a bike, to Kuya’s distress/disgust/despair, of course.

Side A: The Baduy Collection

  1. I Love You Boy, Timmy Cruz
  2. Points of View, Pops Fernandez and Joey Albert
  3. I Remember the Boy, Joey Albert
  4. Mr. Kupido, Rachel Alejandro
  5. Kapag Tumibok ang Puso, Donna Cruz
  6. Mr. Dreamboy Sheryl Cruz
  7. I Like You, Geneva Cruz

Ituloy ang pagbabasa todits.

on Sugarfree Live*

The collaboration between a rock band and an orchestra isn’t new. But an OPM band that does it well, a collaboration that reinvents the band’s songs, and a band that survives through a live concert with a full-piece orchestra? That’s something else in these shores. In Sugarfree Live! Sugarfree and the Manila Symphony Orchestra as conducted by Chino David proves all of these as possible, and becomes a testament to how concerts and CDs like these can be done well. (more…)