Walk like an Eraserhead

Remember the Walkman?

That pioneering compact music player made Sony rich through the late ‘80s and ‘90s, even if its design — built to accommodate the cassette tape and then the CD — is not so compact by today’s standards. In fact, Sony seemed to take a snooze through the early ’00s as the MP3 player market took off.

But the Walkman never really disappeared, Sony will have you know. It’s been relaunched in recent years, most interestingly in a Sony Ericsson mobile phone version called the W902 Walkman.

Cell phones, too, have changed radically in recent years, as has our attachment to our own downloaded, catalogued personal world. It’s strange: technology assures that we are always on the cusp of every experience, yet it seems like all we end up doing with that multi-sensory access is catalogue every event for future reference. Onto Facebook or YouTube it immediately goes, but what was it like to actually be there? Personal experience is so fleeting.

Thanks to Sony Ericsson and Sony BMG, now you’ll get a personal souvenir of one of the most historical reunions in Pinoy music. For those who didn’t get to attend the Aug. 30 concert, technology comes to the rescue — no, not in shaky, out-of-tune videos or badly recorded phone bootlegs, but in a pristine, Sony-approved document of the mother of all reunions.

The cool thing is that Sony Ericsson is giving away the Eraserheads’ “The Reunion Concert” CD to those who buy the W902 Walkman up until Dec. 31. It’s a short-term exclusive, since the CD isn’t being released to the public by Sony BMG until after Oct. 31. So if you’re one of those dudes who’s just aching to crank up your personal E-Heads reunion playlist and cause envy among fellow mobile users in your midst, the expiration period for this type of gloating is fast approaching.

The CD is well-produced, capturing all 15 tracks of the aborted but memorable concert. And until there’s a DVD release with backstage extras, it’s the next best thing to being there.

But there are other solid reasons to check out the W902 besides the free E-Heads souvenir, which you can load into the phone and listen to through high-quality HPM-77 rubber-tipped earbuds. The Walkman, as mentioned, didn’t die but has been retooled for modern tastes — specifically into a slick new phone, where young people tend to spend most of their finger-twiddling time these days. The W902 has a nice gun-grip texture, so it won’t slip out of your fingers easily, and there are other clever tricks: you can adjust volume levels or shuffle tracks by shaking the phone in various directions with your wrist.

Of course, the two-part headphone setup is a bit cumbersome, but it’s something mobile users have grown used to with their phone MP3 players. (And loading photos from the phone onto your computer or music onto the W902 is a bit restricted: the included software is PC only, so Mac users have to go suck an egg, or find someone nice with a PC.

But the phone has charms aplenty. There’s a “handsfree” function on that unwieldy headphone jack, which pauses the music to let you know when a call is coming through on the phone. How considerate.

And the thing reportedly holds 8,000 songs — music to many people’s ears.

Plus, as mentioned, buy one now and you get an advanced preview of the souvenir of the year — right between the ears. The tracks on the CD run from the opening countdown intro of Alapaap all the way to the poignant, Bowie-esque Light Years, the number that ends the show. The sound is excellent, though a little more bass would suit these ears better.

You get Ely Buendia’s stage patter (“Thank you…and good night!” after finishing the first song; “Daming tao dito…” when he realized what a massive crowd had trooped out to the Fort Bonifacio field). What’s nicely captured is how polished these songs have become, despite the “breakup” and quickie rehearsal period. This is a band that has come light years from playing at Club Dredd and ‘70s Bistro with barely an effects pedal between them. (I joked with Jazz Nicolas, who played keyboards during the concert, that he was like Billy Preston during the Beatles’ “Let It Be” sessions — keeping the musicianship high and everyone on their best behavior.)

It’s actually touching to hear the crowd sing along during Fruitcake, With A Smile and Shake Your Head — songs many in the crowd had only had a chance to listen to on CD, due to the E-Heads’ hiatus. Those new fans never got a chance to hear how rough the band could be on an uninspired night. The Heads were like the Pinoy Replacements: not necessarily drunk onstage like the ‘Mats, but sloppy when and if they felt like it. Here, though, you get to hear professional, tight comping from Buddy Zabala, Marcus Adoro and Raymund Marasigan — and dig the electric piano tones of Jazz on With A Smile. For the first time, you can hear Buddy’s Beatle-esque harmonies clearly on Fruitcake and Huwag Mo Itanong. And hearing the set back in its entirety, there’s an uncanny feeling of reliving history, augmented by the realization that you are listening to, not just a reunion concert, but a farewell show as well. This is captured in the perfunctory opening and closing production on the CD: the sound fades in during the countdown, then fades away as the audience draws a collective breath on the last notes of Light Years. Then it’s lights out, show over, for who knows how long. See how technology messes with our perception of reality?

Worth mentioning also with the W902 are some of the multimedia features that add to the experiential shift going on among users. This Sony Ericsson mobile allows you to upload and download videos almost instantly with a dedicated YouTube connection. The audio system has music analysis software called SensMe that picks playlists based on the listener’s designated “mood.” And its photo features are pretty rad. Instead of the basic and familiar “effects” to alter your phone-cam shots (such as Sepia, B/W, Solarize), this one adds Painting, Colored Glass and Cartoon for cool textural finishes. (Cartoon is my favorite, transforming your pics instantly into Rotoscoped reality, à la Richard Linklater’s Waking Life.)

The phone’s PhotoDJ option has a gallery of kitschy-clever effects. Why stick to plain shots when you can reset brightness, contrast and color balance, add Clip Art (an arrow through the head of your subject, or a bling dollar-sign necklace), wrap a custom “frame” around your photo (choose from guitars, disco lights, Vegas neon or mahjong tiles).

And the X-Pict Story feature lets you group your shots and play them in slideshows with mood-specific music and editing (choose from Silent, Sad, Romantic, Happy and Energy). With VideoDJ, you can also string together movie-quality clips, photos, text and background music to edit your own videos. Then you can blog or upload them instantly through Video Blogging or YouTube.

Hmm. Now, why didn’t I have this video phone while I was watching the Eraserheads?