Music review: The Eheads reunion: Growing up with the music of the Eraserheads

It’s 1996 and our family is on a road trip in our Toyota Corolla. My father is driving the car and my two sisters ask him to play a cassette tape of a band I’d never heard of before. My mother claims she’s having a migraine because the music is loud. My sisters laugh, insisting that it’s cool, and that she’s just old.

 

It was the Eraserheads' 1994 album "Circus." I was around 10 years old and rock music—OPM rock music—was still nonexistent to me.

 

I cannot remember if I liked what I heard right away, but I was sure of one thing: in the years that followed, I frequently turned to the music of Marcus Adoro, Ely Buendia, Raymund Marasigan, and Buddy Zabala on a number of occasions.

I listened to "Shake Yer Head," in high school (and later, college) when almost everything was cruel. I attempted (but failed) to memorize the album filler “Punk Zappa,” because it was poetry. I chanted “Alapaap” with the other 300 school mates during a cheering competition in high school. I listened to "Overdrive" when Google Maps, Waze, and other traffic apps didn’t exist yet. I watched the band’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Award, which I recorded on VHS.

 

The band shortly became a constant in my life.

 

Eheads reunion

 

I was at the first “one-night only” Eraserheads reunion concert at Fort Bonifacio six years ago. It was the concert that was cut short because Ely reportedly collapsed backstage. It was later reported that he needed to undergo angioplasty.
 

I did not (I still don’t) personally know any of the members, but the incident broke my heart. My sister went as far as hand-delivering a care package from her and some friends while Ely was in the hospital—it contained our only copy of “A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease” by Jonathan Safran Foer, some notes, and artwork.

 

We didn’t expect a reply, and I knew that the possibility of the band reuniting again was slim. 

 

A few months later, however, the second part of the reunion concert happened. Much later, I started reading about overseas concerts.

 

A few months ago, I started hearing rumors that the band was getting back together and were reportedly writing new material. I didn’t believe any of this until I received an invitation from Esquire to the launch of its travel issue, which featured the band’s concert in London.

 

Esquire’s travel Issue

 

The cover story, titled "Looking for Ligaya in London," was written by Esquire editor-in-chief Erwin Romulo. It’s as beautiful as it is heartbreaking—it starts off with a personal story of loss and exhaustion, slowly taking the reader to the Eraserheads’ concert at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, London.

 

At 22 pages, it chronicles the tour and the group’s unconventional dynamic, how having kids changed them, and how they are still friends despite all the bad blood that led to their split in 2001.

 

Everyone at the launch, held on September 4 at the Dusit Thani in Makati, were wondering if the band would perform that night. It’s looked like very few people knew what was going to happen. After performances by Ourselves the Elves and Cheats, the music videos of the Eheads’ two new songs “1995” and “Sabado”—songs that could have easily fit in to the band’s 1995 album Cutterpillow—were played. I thought this was the night’s biggest surprise.

 

Then, Buddy, Ely, Marcus, and Raymund came onstage and started playing.
 

Ely announced that it was Pupil, Sandwich, The Dawn—his, Raymund’s and Buddy’s other bands—playing. They played “Magasin,” “Sembreak,” and “Alapaap,” inviting people to sing with them on stage.

It wasn’t exactly their most perfect performance, but it still conjured up enough memories to make me tear up. These were the same three songs I heard in the car nearly two decades ago; songs that I thought I’d never see performed live again.

 

I heard that the first batch that the magazine (which includes a CD with the two songs) released sold out pretty quickly. I know a number of people who actually had a hard time looking for copies on the first day copies hit the shelves. Needless to say, the country’s “Fab Four” still has it.

 

Reincarnations

 

The inexplicable thing is this: when an Eraserheads song plays, there are equal parts joy and sadness. Every Eraserheads reincarnation carries a generation’s memories of youth and coming of age—of a chorus that became convent girls’ excuse to curse in Filipino with all their might; of outrage over a senator’s proposal to ban a song that allegedly alluded to illegal substances; of watching a noon-time show rebellion by our favorite rock stars who would not sing in synch with the recording.

 

You will feel like dancing and crying. You will remember past and present loves. You will remember seemingly random memories of your family in the car, driving. You will sing along.

 

To me, it’s not about the performance that night. It was the two new songs that reminded me that the Eraserheads—arguably one of the best bands of their generation, and one of the main reasons behind my love for pop and rock and roll—still haven’t lost their brightness. They’re no longer a “band” in a traditional sense, but they’re still around to create anthems that I’m sure people will sing along to for years to come. — VC, GMA News