Yes, I'm still on a frickin EHeads high. I've plugged my CDs, looped my iPod and subscribed to Google Alerts to email me if anything comes up in the news with the keywords "Eraserheads", "Eraserheads reunion" and the names of each of the band members. I've kept tabs on each new News update on Ely's health. I've used every applicable YouTube searchword to get to watch videos of the concert itself. I've seen the concert in so many audience viewpoints that I can probably estimate each videographer's ticket by triangulating their location with respect to the stage ("Aba mukhang VIP sya, katabi nya yung scaffolding" "Etong isa nag video na lang ng screen.. malamang nasa labas na sya ng venue"). Why do I still trawl the web? Why am I looping through my playlists? In an attempt to understand the uncontrollable urge to plug, play and repeat the experience, I'm going to write it all down.
Why are their songs and the band itself so appealing? Fans came out from nowhere, crashing Ticketworld servers within ten hours of the tickets being available online. National Bookstore's Ticketworld booth started printing off tickets within minutes of opening. All of this attention, this clamor, for an open-field concert that had no advertising, no marketing campaign, no posters or details within 48 hours of the event happening. Merchandise was not sold, yet people walked around in homemade silkscreened t-shirts being sold off a van (rather surreptitiously) in the parking lot. By the time I got to buy my own shirt, they had five pieces left. When I left the van, someone attempted to buy the shirt off a seller's back ("Medium ka diba? Bigyan kita ng P350 para sa shirt mo kahit may pawis!") It was just five o'clock then, and the gates opened at three. The concert wouldn't begin till three hours later. The night before the event, videos of the soundcheck were posted on YouTube. Awed comments were left by viewers. For lack of traditional marketing support, this would've been a disaster of epic proportions. It would've been a colossal embarrassment for each of the four members of the Eraserheads, since each of them are now successful in their own individual bands.
Instead what happened was that the venue was full to the brim. People were still lining up for tickets an hour and a half into the show (little did anyone know that by the second hour - the intermission - the concert would be cut painfully short). Others who couldn't afford to get tickets stayed outside the venue to hear the music: songs that brought them back to memories of college, high school, lyrics that they could completely relate to. People who came early sat quietly with friends in little newspaper islands, reminiscing when they first heard of the Eraserheads, betting on which songs they'd put in the set list. Amateur photographers were on the ready with their SLRs and camera-phones. The enterprising were selling binoculars to the Patrons too far from the stage to see the faces of the band. It was a good crowd - normally the working class kind, of all shapes and sizes. These are the faceless multitude who worked in corporate offices, taking MRTs and shuttles, college-graduates. This crowd size is normally expected of a big-name foreign act. A venue this size for local musicians is justified only if there were music festivals for lots of different groups (like the Fete, for example). This is just for one local band, no front acts. Where is this silent fervor coming from?
So, back to the question - what makes them (the songs, the band, the members of the band) so appealing to such a broad range of people?
It's so sing-able. Which of their songs have you NOT sang or heard in a videoke bar at least once? Ang Huling El Bimbo, Magasin, Pare Ko are worth playing for the tipsy and somewhat broken-hearted. Ely Buendia's distinctive voice singing makes it all so easy to raise our own voices in song. Their songs (whether it's their pop ones or the more edgier ones in later albums) are so catchy and the lyrics fit into the melody just right.
It's nostalgic. The lyrics evoke a time when things were simpler, easier. They made easy references to Filipino pop culture ("I ain't no stupid fighter, I go for flower power", "bad trip talaga tong Meralco bakit brownout pa rin dito?", "Damit mo'y gawa ni Sotto", "Ilang tansan pa ba ang iipunin o giliw ko?"). They wrote the right songs for the general teen and early-twenties generation of the nineties. Basic catchy love songs were mixed with clever catch phrases of the time like, "noong nagsama tayo ay kanan ang ginamit mo, ngunit biglang natorete: ikaw pala ay kaliwete" could be read as the guy being cuckolded.
It's coming of age. Aside from the songs being specific to the late nineties-early 2000, the lyrics themselves speak to adolescence and youth. The songs talk about the awkwardness of being in college ("sana ay may pasok na, at least meron na kong baon"), having friends ("minsan tayo ay naging tunay na magkaibigan"), courtship ("aasahang iibigin ka - sa tanghali, sa gabi at umaga"). They sang about wala-lang stuff: about trying to avoid awkward conversations ("hwag mo nang itanong sa akin, di ko rin naman sasabihin"), sharing Christmas pastry ("take a bite, it's alright"), driving ("gusto kong matutong mag drive kahit na wala akong kotse"), or just being tired ("mahal kita, pero miss na miss na miss ko na ang aking kama"). They had songs on social commentary like Kailan, Huling El Bimbo and Hey Jay. It's rites of passage that a lot of people go through, or experience vicariously through their friends.
It's the hope that they may-or-may-not be back together. The band and the music touched a chord in a lot of people's lives (for me at least). The concert's success showed that the four of them still have it, that elusive x-factor that makes a regular garage band a massive hit. They were so good in the past and so fantastic this time around that one cannot help but imagine: why not do this again?
It's because none of them are has-beens. The normal sad story of successful groups is that a few years after they disband, a lot of them instantly become forgotten. They become fragile shells of what they used to be, and re-living the glory days of old. Some go solo, others start working in the background, production, etc. It's not the case here. When the group officially disbanded, each member has become successful in the limelight in his own way. While Marcus perfected surfing in La Union, the remaining three in Manila formed their own bands and carved their own niche. None of them are has-beens, each are respected for their own individual body of work that's completely separate from what they were as Eraserheads.
It's because the breakup was so mysterious. None of them talk about the specifics. They should all work for Cigarette Smoking Man (no pun intended) for keeping the lid shut on the real story/ies behind their controversial disbandment. No fisfights ensued, maybe some yelling. Definitely no trash talk in the public. What is left is an elephant in the room that no one dares to mention. All that is left is that it's uncomfortable to deal with, which is why it's such a big deal that the reunion was even possible.
It's because they were the First. I read once that one of the reasons why they 'broke up' was to allow other bands to shine. I didn't know any other band when they were becoming popular - I was just in high school. I can definitely say that listening to them piqued my interest in the genre and other local artists. In my mind, they were my entry point to Rivermaya, Teeth, Hungry Young Poets, The Dawn, Parokya Ni Edgar.
It's because (us) the fans are now can-afford. We used to be scrawny teenagers flipping through songhits trying to play guitars for fun. Or college seniors about to leave school to start work for the first time. Fast forward that ten-fifteen years and you have the young middle-income workforce. It's no wonder that the website crashed due to traffic influx: the fans are buying using their credit cards. The switch from 'free' to 'paid' tickets was moved so seamlessly and accepted so smoothly by ticket buyers that I didn't hear too many complaints about the General Admission ticket starting out at P800. Those who listened to the Eraserheads have some flexibility in their disposable income. I could see it in the crowd: early twenties to late-thirties, well mannered, neatly dressed Filipinos. This is your corporate workforce. If the concert were held on a weekday there would have been an incremental hit on business productivity that day for people skipping out of the office early.
It's because they have all moved on. There is no eagerness to re-form the group, to 'bring back the old days'. By all intents and purposes, the Eraserheads were a stage in each of the band member's lives. It was a phase they all went through together. Now that they've gone through that phase and lived, albeit with battle scars, they moved on to tackle different things.
It's because the songs are just so fucking great. It's not just the lyrics, it's the conglomeration of all the sound they put in there to create the music. The music that spoke like the soundtrack to a generation. 'Nuff said.
It was more than just watching the band play again - although just seeing them all on stage again literally gave me goosebumps. I don't think a local band has generated this much participation from the audience before. Crowd estimates were anywhere between twenty to sixty thousand - this probably depends on whether or not you counted the masses outside the venue who couldn't get tickets but trooped to the Fort nonetheless to experience the music and still be part of history.
I wish the concert finished with all thirty songs in the lineup. That would've been an incredibly fantastic concert. I wish Ely wasn't so sick. I wish I heard Ang Huling El Bimbo or Minsan played by the band, and Superproxy sung with Francis M. I wish I heard the first fifteen songs again. Would it be strange though that I don't wish for the band to re-form as the Eraserheads? I can feel that the EHeads only exist when the music plays. In recent interviews, Raymund, Buddy and Marcus confirms this: they're not a talkative band, they just play. The chemistry is in the music, it's when the music plays. Once the silence takes over, people go back to their respective corners. As a fan, I can accept that. The music is beyond any one of them, beyond the four guys who comprise the band. It's just that, when all four of them come together to play, it's a great experience.
So, with all this talk of a Part 2 when Ely's better, what do I think? I hope that the "part 2" if it ever becomes part of the discussion again, that Ely is completely well enough to fully participate. That all four of them, after the head rush of seeing sixty thousand loving fans, get over any interpersonal hangups to play the music again regardless. I hope they don't rush it. I'm happy with hearing fifteen songs. That's fifteen songs I never thought I'd hear the four of them play live again. I thought I'd only get to hear their songs on my iPod, not onstage.
Hi, I'm Kit, and I'm a fan of the Eraserheads. Thank you for reading my attempt at self psychoanalysis. :)
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