Fragmented Musings

sunday samba

2006-06-18T06:16:00.000-07:00

now playing -- cafe bossa by sitti

some good ol' fashioned bossa nova on a sunday night should be a nationwide ordinance. seriously.

got myself a copy of sitti's Cafe Bossa; found it to be occasionally brilliant debut with audible flaws. Her accent seems to vary on random tracks and arrangements on covers such as "tatooed on my mind" and michael franks' "lady wants to know" sound mundane and uninspired. in contrast, sitti's take on several brazilian standards are a clinic of fluid, linguistic weaving as she yo-yo's from portuguese to english to tagalog without breaking a sweat. listening to her version of the legendary stan getz/astrud gilberto collabo "the girl from ipanema" finds sitti in a comfort zone, sounding like a confident, seasoned vet. "samba song", "one note samba" and "wave" round out the standards' highlights.

though the album and the singer's flaws are hard to ignore, it has enough exuberance to carry the duds on the cd. Cafe Bossa is a welcome break from the burdgeoning local rock scene, a fit for weary minds on stoney sundays.

the world's greatest drummer

2006-04-27T01:20:00.000-07:00

i was 11 during the time guns 'n' roses were at their peak popularity wise, the time when the seminal double disc rocker Use Your Illusion I and II hit record stores. i remember wearing out the tapes in my walkman riding the hour long schoolbus trip to my school kelapa gading, north jakarta. my family and i lived in pondok indah at the time, which was all the way down south of jakarta, so bus rides were the perfect opportunity for me to listen to the tapes i had bought at pondok indah mall for about 9,000 Rupiah (numbers are misleading; the amount mentioned was roughly equivalent to about 60 pesos at the time). it was difficult suppressing my growing urge to mosh while i sat quietly at the back of the bus like the african-americans pre-Rosa Parks as i watched cars, millions of bajais and occassional election rallies pass me by. anyone whoever listened to that record will always remember spandex-clad axl rose and company rocking joints such as "yesterday," "civil war" and "live and let die". my friend even lent me the laser disc of the band's concert in japan i always used to marvel at drummer matt sorum. with a gajillion music blocks in my cranium yet to be filled, i believed that he was the world's greatest drummer.

i always thought it was his bandana that gave him superhero drumming abilities ...

fifteen years later, as i am presently listening to a wayne shorter album he recorded in 1964 (when i was about NEGATIVE sixteen years old), i laugh at my previous choice of the baddest man with the drum sticks. i laugh because had i known that elvin jones had existed previously, any debate concerning drumming supremacy would've been the shortest discourse in the history of recorded arguments. part of the incomparable coltrane quartet in the 1960s (along with jimmy garrison and mccoy tyner), he was hailed by life magazine as the "world's greatest rhythmic drummer." he appeared in over 500 jazz albums over the next three decades and has sessioned with fellow jazz legends sonny rollins, ron carter and freddie hubbard among others. though this wayne shorter features extended conventional sax solos by the session leader, jones explodes on the drums, waltzing his way a la Love Supreme on some tracks, intense, offkey and cymbal-driven on the others. his drums made all his songs (to borrow a hipster term) "jump." it's a combination of boundless musical energy, sheer intensity and joy so gratifying that even jones himself is occasionally left in awe of his own abilities.

mr. jones, jazz drummer extraordinaire

elvin jones died of a heart failure on may 18, 2004. he was 76. matt sorum is still actively playing, part of the g'n'r-stp reincarnation, velvet revolver. fifteen years ago, i worshipped the ground that matt sorum walked on. today, that honor goes to elvin jones. fifteen years from now, i have a feeling that resurrecting such a debate would just be another form of baseless procrastination.

what's the f****n' point?

2006-01-30T10:08:00.000-08:00

now playing -- where fortune smiles by john mclaughlin

new year's resolutions
are mindless absolutions
that fizzle like rainbow fireworks
permeating the nebulous
haze of gray

after all the unfiltered noise
the hollering in the streets
after the last light switch
turned off unceremonious

the lunar calendar
increases in number
the fireworks are left to rot
another 364 days
sleeping in anticipation
of similar resolutions
unfulfilled --

on the road

2005-12-02T20:02:00.000-08:00

now playing -- "driving (acoustic mix)" by everything but the girl

" ... the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

- jack kerouac

all i really want

2005-11-28T00:02:00.000-08:00

now playing -- blue by joni mitchell

i wanted to scream, i really did. my stomach had been churning splendidly in anticipation of what treasure i would be uncovering today. i hadn't bought a single record in almost eight months, and i knew that my next trip to bangkal would make up for countless times of broken promises when i had planned to go digging because i had been financially challenged for the majority of the year.

located in lacuna street, the inside of the house that had previously been a disaster of a place was now neat and polished as it has been transformed into a modest art gallery. the scattered crates that had stored hundreds of lps, the shabby, torn couches that encircled a 29 inch tv were all gone; the only things that remained were a single glass table and what looked like a newly upholstered sofa directly facing the assembly line of paintings that were on display on the dirty white walls that were no longer bare. the only records left were stored in a wooden, shelf-like compartement below where the turntable and amplifier resided on the left side of the uneven room. on estimate, there were only about a hundred records there. i was optimistic, nevertheless, and began flipping through one vinyl after another. what i found was fairly remarkable.

revolver, beatles. abbey road, beatles. let it be, beatles. bird parker on verve. another bird on verve, volume 2. brubeck live in concert with gerry mulligan. 'ol blue eyes, sinatra. after a couple of rather mediocre records, i had found my first treasure: blue, joni mitchell. my eyes glowed in excitement the same way innocent male adolescents did the first time they saw a woman other than their mothers in the flesh. i held my breath and tried to maintain a poker face as i felt that showing any form of emotion would only give more leverage to the owner to jack up the prices to unreasonable proportions. that wasn't it; my next discovery completely floored me. meditations, john coltrane.

(coltrane records in this country are something of a rarity. the only ones i've seen have been ridiculously overpriced, the cheapest one was his ascension lp which was being sold over at makati cinema square for 500 pesos, and it was defective. a friend of mine saw a blue train record, brand new, over at montage in greenbelt. price? approx. 3,000 bucks.)

i grabbed my wallet and checked how much money i brought. exactly 600 pesos. i slowly gathered myself and clutched both records on my left arm and approached the owner. magkano po? after minutes of explaining me how rare these records were in this country and what seemed like infinite seconds of further deliberation, the owner, a soft-spoken man probably in his late thirties and sporting thin, dark-rimmed glasses, slowly looked up and said in tagalog: normally, i'd sell both of these for 500, but i'll give them to you for 400 pesos. my poker face almost disintegrated that very instant, but i managed to stay calm. sold! as soon as the transaction had been finalized, i imagined myself tap-dancing my way back to the car, a la mary freaking poppins, but ultimately decided against it and drove away from the outskirts of makati and back to pasig where i devoted the rest of the trip debating on what record to play first.

Jing

2005-11-15T01:10:00.000-08:00

– under street bulbs flickering and oppressive
where the glow of the crooked crescent moon
was comforting as the cool November wind –
I met Jing in New Manila
inside a bordello under a building
dank deteriorating and aged.

She came at the snap of a
pony-tailed man’s capitalist fingers
(bearer of a mouth quicker than Western gunslingers)
and sat me down
on a raggedy patched leather couch
among blurry-eyed, middle-aged men
in torn shirts and wandering rubber sandals.

she inched closer after every word uttered,
her qualified hands stroking my left leg
as she spoke, unperturbed
by alcoholic slurs reverberating
from tin can beats
and contrived noontime television jingles.

she departed Davao
eager and enthusiastic, focused
on reversing family doom impending,
unaware of lurking shadows
and deep water puddles
that promulgated city streets.

her eyes were strained
yet her voice remained unruffled,
indifferent to the frequent retailing of
her twenty year-old body
to anonymous sex fiends
looking for a meaningless charge.

(my hand –

which had, for the duration of time,
caressing her whirling crossed legs –

retreated as her skin
once velvety as
ancient chinese silk
turned prickly
as the crown of Christ
at Golgotha)

she beamed approving
of our solemn but brief bantering
before lumbering towards an improvised stage
to mimic choreographed gyrations
with languid strumpets in parallel predicaments.
the whistling and woo-hooing,
the condescending howling
escalating with every movement;

I remained heavenly sedated
by each cancerous cigarette puff
as my frozen soul exhaled
every single notion of delightful malice
that had encapsulated me New Manila beforehand
were nothing but repugnant and infuriating ignorance
unacceptable for memory banks
of men who have toyed with their spirit
cantankerous for 25 fucking years.

(dis)connect the dots

2005-10-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

now playing -- "jazz at the cove" by the sound providers, "leaving the past" by immortal technique

... spent the majority of the past couple of nights reading kafka's the trial and listening to music. i listened to coltrane's meditations album and finally felt rewarded after the fourth go. the connecting tracks 3 and 4 ("love/consequences") perfectly ingrains images of a relationship's gradual progression, the emotional peaks and valleys, 17 minutes mixing complex serenity with atonal dissonance. the man was out of his goddamn mind.

... man, that "ever after" song is really starting to get on my fucking nerves. whenever i hear that crap, i seriously contemplate having my ears cut and just have them sold as some kind of local souvenir or something. locally, hale and sponge cola also have me pining for mankind/mick foley disfigurations.

... remember the fab five? jalen, ray, chris, juwan and jimmy, michigan basketball circa '92-'93? scoop jackson talked of how they revolutionalized the game over at page 2 over at ESPN recently.

rizal overload

2005-10-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

now playing -- "night in tunisia" by charlie parker and dizzy gillespie

in renato constantino's article, "veneration without understanding," rizal is viewed in an unusual manner, as one who not only should be revered, but also an individual who shouldn't be idolized without proper knowledge of the context of the man and his times. for someone who deemed the idea of a revolution to be "absurd" and "savage", it is ironic that rizal has spawned a cult following and that many view him as the symbol of our struggle for independence. because his death has been glorified to mythical status, people often use this as justification to his "national hero" status when in truth, he was an american sponsored hero. furthermore, his novels, letters and other works were a reflection of his middle-class, ilustrado background. constantino also adds that rizal wasn't a separatist but a reformer; his ideals merely gave root to the very thing he opposed: affirmative action.
therefore, worship of rizal (or any other hero, for that matter) is frowned upon by constantino because there is no value looking at rizal's life uncritically and unhistorically; it is, as the author writes, "form without content." by blindly venerating rizal, he is unfairly thrust into any political discussion as if everything he wrote provided some sort of solution to our nation's dilemmas past and present.
the author argues that not all his ideals may be applicable to present day issues precisely because the problems during rizal's time may not coincide with current issues plaguing the country. rizal as a hero is inarguable; rizal as a source for all our country's solutions should be carefully reconsidered. his glorification only taints the achievements of other prominent filipino history players, one who did carry on with the revolution.

on the flipside...

"towards a radical rizal" author f. quibuyen tries to devalue constantino and agoncillo's claims that rizal was merely a reformist, a man who ultimately wished for our country to officially become a province of spain. the author notes that as early as 1887, rizal's letters to his old friend blumentritt are evidence that rizal no longer believed in ghandi-like passive resistance as the gateway to our freedom (not independence). antonio luna's letter to rizal (dated 1890) also confirms their common separatist agenda. whereas agoncillo condemns rizal for not being anti-spain or antifriar, quibuyen insists that his letters may have been miscontrued for he believed that rizal seeked independence. the only thing that needed refining was their actual "method of achieving nationhood."
another source of discussion by quibuyen is the hacienda calamba incident, which chronicled the eventual eviction of hundreds of families (including rizal's family) for refusing to adhere to the dominican friars' monetary demands. subsequent letters to blumentritt illustrated rizal's sympathy towards "poor peasants" who were unceremoniously dislodged from their homes and livelihood.
finally, rizal's break with marcelo h. del pilar's "conservative ideas" further concretizes quibuyen's claims of a radicalized rizal. this, combined with the hacienda calamba incident left rizal angry and distraught and yearning to return to manila as he calls the reformist agenda in madrid no longer useful, but "a waste of time." quibuyen believed that rizal was as much a revolutionary as andres bonifacio, apolinario mabini, and the rest of the katipuneros.

beat it

2005-09-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

now playing - "the more you ignore me, the closer i get" by morrissey and "boys don't cry" (acoustic) by the cure

marvin gaye was a chronic masturbator. amongst other things. it's hard to view songs such as "pride and joy", "sexual healing" and "you're all i need to get by" the same way we all used to. simply put, the dude was a fucking weirdo. nevertheless, he's still the greatest.

poetry and jazz in 216

2005-09-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

(yesterday afternoon, a small group of students gathered in a classroom and externalized thoughts and opinions through poetry. the 35 minute session had each person read their piece accompanied by relaxing sounds of cool, 1950s jazz. below is my contribution.)

Magazine Rumblings and Southern City Nightmares

I dreamed of traveling to New Orleans
not only for the drunk, topless girls,
dancing uninhibited in the festive streets
with their weary necks hording rainbow beads and pearls
resting on bouncing college breasts
fiddling with their gold pierced navels
exhaling sighs of nicotine breaths,
I dreamed of traveling to New Orleans
to visit the spirit of Negro hollers
work songs and cries of street vendors lamenting the blues,
I longed for jazz chatter with old Creoles
speaking of fervent horns and swingin’ big bands
for discussions under the scorching Louisiana summer sun
where beach water dews descended from my awestruck mug
as the common folk spoke of Dixieland.

instead
I saw bent electric posts and lonely street signs
pointing to a single bloated corpse of a man,
his body turned over his stomach
floating beside empty plastic bottles
and torn styrofoam cups
swimming adrift the filthy floodwaters
on what was once the Elysian fields,
a shirtless, gray haired looter with his beat bushy beard
sitting on a cotton draped hospitable bed,
arms stretched and left knee wrapped in white
as a Nile of blood dripped south against time’s constraint
amidst a vibrant mural backdrop
depicting its aesthetic past,
a chrysler sedan bludgeoned by heavenly bricks
descending from fragmented buildings
held in place by fragile bamboo sticks
as Griffen Eleby clutches his conservative narrow black pants
seeking sociable solace,
a man hunched forward
scratching his roofless blonde hair
squatting, contemplating Katrina
while grieving for his dislodged sofas and two legged tables.
for five days you ignored ominous warnings
and sat in your leather-skinned barcolounger
milking beggar’s banquets for oil
conspiring with wealthy Arabian blood liners for cash
as wide-eyed bombers feasted themselves on blameless souls,
burying your guilt in hasty replica memorials
commemorating a catastrophe overlooked,
I sit in this pebbled staircase
taking a swig of this bitter yet addicting rum
as cigarette smoke spreads unremitting
in the confines of crowded space,
I mourned for the death of your people
and wept for the demise of jazz.

the cry of jazz

2005-09-07T23:18:00.000-07:00

now playing -- the futuristic sounds of sun ra by sun ra & his arkestra

watched a documentary the other day called the cry of jazz. this 35 minute black and white film released in 1959 connects the blacks' eternal struggle for racial equality against its white oppressors with the history of jazz music. the film argues that the negroes are the only true pioneers of this american art form and lost its soul as whites increasingly attempted to play and compose their own form of jazz.

for the blacks, jazz is melodic improvisation based on glorified experiences in their life of suffering. but since the whites are a rung higher in the american social ladder, jazz music was being restrained by more structured and looping rhythms more identified with the whites.
to reiterate this argument, at one point in the film, director edward o. bland suddenly switches the music score from sun ra and his arkestra's dynamic playing to a smoothed out, safer form of jazz. the clear distinction speaks for itself.

considering the time the documentary was finished, it is extremely prophetic in a sense that its arguments prophesied many events that occured during the turbulent sixties, politically and musically speaking: the civil-rights movement, black panther pride and the explorations of freer forms of jazz by ornette coleman, eric dolphy john coltrane, just to name a few.

the cry of jazz is an excellent primer for folks looking to get acquainted with jazz, and a must-see for enthusiasts of the art form.

-- some fantabulous quotables from the movie --

jazz is the musical expression of the triumph of the negro spirit ...

... the negro, as man or jazz man, must be constantly created, for that is how he remains free. otherwise, the dehumanizing portrait america has drawn of him will triumph ...

... through melodic improvisation and the ever present contradiction in rhythm, the negro makes an art form that insists on the deification of the present and which among other things, is an unconscious holding action until he is also master of his future. melodic improvisation and rhythmic conflict are the joyful freeing and present-oriented aspects of jazz, while form and the changes are the suffering, restraining and futureless aspect of jazz ...

... negro life, then, as created through jazz, is a contradiction of the worship of the present, freedom and joy, and realization of the futureless future, restraint and suffering which the american way of life has bestowed upon the negro ...

... the cry of joy and suffering in jazz is then based on the ever present contradiction between freedom and restraint. the feeling of freedom is based on the negro's view on what life in america should be, while the feeling of restraint is based on the actual inhuman situation in which the negro finds himself ...

... jazz is dead ... because the negro needs more room to tell his story ... the jazz body is dead but the spirit of jazz is alive ... the body is dead because inherently the material of jazz does not allow for further growth ...

rainy days and mondays

2005-08-22T21:38:00.000-07:00

now playing -- ok computer by radiohead

... my computer science teacher has this strange affinity for the word 'basically.' in a fifty minute lecture delivered today, he said it a grand total of 36 times. so that's once in a little over a minute and a half. this class is an absolute snoozefest. basically ...

... saw the video of coldplay's 'fix you' as i was channel surfing earlier this evening. i wasn't too fond of the song when i first heard it. the video kind of changed this perception though. watching chris martin run to the stage as the song enters its climax and hearing the large crowd sing along to martin's faint chorus whispers as the song nears its conclusion were the highlights. my secret desire of wanting to be a rock star had never been been more exposed ...

vespertine

2005-08-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

now playing -- "tourist" by athlete, "lilith" by plaid (feat. bjork)

i used to be a big bjork hater. i remember the first time i saw the video for "army of me" i wanted to throw the tv off the balcony. her unusual voice and seemingly constipated delivery was too much for my virgin ears. that was back in high school, where i was undergoing my hip-hop phase, so i pretty much disregarded anything that didn't have rapping or harmonious singing.

the first time i ever gave bjork a chance was about four years ago, when my friend had asked me for a copy of one of her albums, homogenic. i had also heard that missy elliot and timbaland had given this album mad props, so I decided to feed my curiousity and listened to it. it wasn't love at first listen, let me tell ya. far from it. but surpisingly, her voice wasn't as annoying as it had been back in high school, her delivery passionate, no longer constipated.

over time, i started searching and downloading her other albums. my admiration for bjork continued to grow. then came vespertine. this album was an absolute killer, brilliant in every musical sense: sweeping, intelligent, progressive. of course, it took a couple of listens, but I soon found myself immersed in the enchanting music and poetic lyricism. vespertine truly is one of the most emotionally satisfying albums I have ever heard.

i guess i hated her so much before because i didn't really understand her. Funny how perceptions change over time.

drugs are bad, mmm-kay?

2005-08-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

now playing -- Dance of the Infidel by Me'Shell Ndegeocello --

"All the moralistic, pompous trumpeting from the police agencies and the politicians that it's immoral to allow people to have drugs has nothing to do with their real reasons: they're addicts to their political power. Their behavior is totally irresponsible, immoral, and unconstitutional. It's a hoax at the expense of people's suffering, and it's a hoax that perpetuates crime in the streets."
-Allen Ginsburg (click here to read the complete article)

the first time my mother found my filmcase full of pot, i was asked to immediately empty all of its contents and listen to her lecture about the dangers of smoking marijuana. i was then continuously bombarded, interrogated like an Iraqi war prisoner: when did you start smoking? why did you start smoking? where did you get it? who got you started in this? and so forth. i never really got to answer all those questions because she continued putting together words as fast as scatman john. although being on the receiving end of a you-should-know-better lecture isn't exactly included on my list of life's greatest joys, i understood my mother's anger and frustration. in health class, we are given all these fucking pamphlets saying how weed is bad, that it only further poisons our already contaminated society. curriculums are, of course, issued and approved by CHED, which is, coincidentally, a government organization. hmmm. we all know how trustworthy our government is right?

i think that the 'illegal' tag placed on controlled substances such as marijuana should be taken off because ironically, it will only produce more addicts. people are intrigued by the notion of breaking the law because they've spent their whole lives trying to adhere to these rules. there's that sense of adrenaline rush when we get away with trouble. we are drawn to things that are forbidden; if God had never mentioned to adam that eating the apple from the tree was prohibited, he probably wouldn't have given a shit about it in the first place.

God gave us manna, the bread of life, but he also left us some marijuana. do whatever you want with it.

the beginning is the end is the beginning

2005-08-07T00:03:00.000-07:00

now playing -- "sabbatical with options" by prefuse 73 (feat. aesop rock), "swan lake" by blackalicious --

it's been over a year since i last wrote in one of these things. i've been trying to figure out exactly why i just left my old blog for dead. i had better things to do; i was lazy; i needed to concentrate on school; hell, i just wanted to get high, man. while there is some validity to these excuses, the real reason that i stopped was because i was never really content with what i wrote. i thought a lot of them were idiotic. my writing didn't really give justice to the title i had given the site (innervisions). while i believed that my entries were heartfelt and authentic, the perfectionist in me became increasingly discontented with each entry. i lost confidence and motivation. if my blog wasn't going to be visually appealing, the least i could do was make it textually stimulating right? well, innervisions contained neither of the two. in retrospect, i realized that i was writing, not for myself, but for the people who read my entries. i was overly conscious of what i was writing to the point where i would prevent my thoughts from ever reaching the computer because i didn't think they mattered all that much. censoring freedom of speech is understandable in certain circumstances, sure, but restraining thoughts is downright inconceivable. it's like installing dozens of imaginary dividers into your stream of consciousness.

just as all things eventually must come to an end, opportunities for new beginnings arise. goodbye innervisions, hello fragmented musings.