'Head of the class

It’s a lesson in resilience that Ely Buendia has become an involuntary instructor of. That even if life can grab you by the heart and wrench the hell out of it, you can still grab that guitar by its neck and rage against the severity of stage lights; put on a show for a 20-plus-thousand turn-up of fans who haven’t fully learned to deal with the ghost of your former band’s past. The night of the Eraserheads’ reunion concert in August, there were a lot of reasons the man didn’t have to face the music. But for Ely Buendia, sometimes the music is enough reason to, anyway.

An nth blow to Ely’s heart may have cut the E-heads’ reunion gig short, but it could never stop a man with rock running through his veins. Tonight, Buendia has agreed to meet me at a Delifrance in SM’s Mall of Asia, across the concert grounds upon which Pupil, the band Buendia’s fronted the past three years, is one act among many set to perform at MTV’s Music Summit. On the same night, right after playing several picks from their two albums, Ely and co-members Yan Yuzon (guitars), Dok Sergio (bass), and Wendell Garcia (drums) will fly out to Dubai for the Rakrakan Fest sponsored by ABS-CBN’s Filipino Channel.

It’s been but three months since he underwent his fourth angioplasty, yet with three hours to call time and before a couple thousand people, Buendia will mount the stage yet again. “Actually, I had to go to a clinic before this. Pinilit ako ni Diane (Ventura) eh: ‘We’re not going to Dubai unless you have a check-up’,” he says of his manager-partner’s prerequisite even if the shows Pupil played at Route 196 the week before and a Sony Ericsson performance last night proved Ely was back on the frontman frontlines. “It’s that important for peace of mind. Kasi the last time I did not heed my doctor’s advice—well, you know what happened. So now I’m super careful.”

For a group as hallowed as the Eraserheads, its followers can be militant with their expectations of the sometime band’s second coming—especially since a set’s worth of songs remain unsung from a night that’s still left the band’s saga unraveling. Ely’s premature exit due to his cardiac condition was shrouded by the usual myth that’s always cloaked the Eraserheads, but despite all the speculation, he’s always understood the obligation that came with the band that soared too high for its own good. “Ngayon, I’m pretty much at peace with that already. May reservations lang naman ako about E-heads subject matter during the time I was putting up a new band, trying to forge a new career and going the opposite direction. All the [E-heads talk] wasn’t helping me at all ‘cause everyone kept focusing on that,” he explains. “Syempre now that I’ve established myself in a new band with a new perspective about music, all that is welcome. It was always welcome, pero at that point, hindi pa masyado.”    

The Muse, The Maestro & The Miseducation

During that period when many were still devoted to erasing the time since Ely’s departure and rewinding to the E-heads glory days, people needed to get a hit off of the drama behind the music. Buendia was always exalted as a tragic hero, especially with Diane Ventura as the seeming femme fatale leading the frontman. People were adamant at drawing conclusions from a scorn-tainted song lyric or two, especially with Ventura tagged as the Yoko Ono to Ely’s John Lennon. “People have totally identified with the songs.I didn’t really put much thought into those songs. To take them seriously is just...weird. They think that I was writing to them, which is funny because...which is why I never really appreciated the fandom part of the E-heads because all of those songs were done frivolously,” he says of what fans have used to fan their own flames of Buendia’s woman-caused woes. “So the fact that people blame Diane or put more meaning to everything that has happened is something I really wanna...I can’t really deal with it. I don’t know how to deal with it. I just wanna stay far away from it. It was okay three or five years after, pero nung nagbuo right after the reunion concert, parang bumalik nanaman. It got weird again and I kinda regret it but I kinda know that I needed to do that—I mean, the concert—just to...”

To shut everyone up, I ask.

“Yun, exactly. Para matahimik na sila. Apparently, it’s not working. It’s crazy.” 

Rapt Pupil

Despite the constant comparison between the guitar-glaring tunes Pupil grinded out and the pop rock reverie of the Eraserheads, Ely and his new set of comrades continued to persevere with their sound and their fury. “Let’s just say that the E-heads is about escaping reality and Pupil is about accepting reality,” Ely says, snickering. “I don’t know, the four of us in the band are the type of musicians who can’t write anything unless it’s kind of dark and uh, sad.”

From the band’s 2005 debut Beautiful Machines (also the title track Buendia co-wrote with Ventura) and last year’s follow-up Wild Life, the material has upheld Pupil’s self-described “dark, loud, and romantic” nature. Songs have covered the grimy breadth of hopelessly optimistic love amid the distress that surrounds it, with Ely as its morose tale-spinner, head drooping and voice quavering.

With the dusky shades (eyeliner included) of the band’s chosen garb—neckties, button-downs, and all—to accompany its music, Pupil’s gotten its own share of disciples. Supplying a few tracks—animated vids included—for Japanimation channel Animax, it’s almost as if Buendia and the boys consciously sought new ears for a relatively new sound. “Well, E-heads people don’t like us anyway, so why bother? They don’t wanna know about us, don’t wanna hear us, don’t wanna have anything to do with us ‘cause they feel nga that they still want to see the Eraserheads make an album someday and Pupil is stopping that from happening,” Ely admits. “Pero hindi naman conscious [that we called for a new audience]. We just put our music out there and see what happens, diba? I’ve outgrown the things I’ve done before. You don’t really wanna sound sloppy anymore, you don’t really wanna sound poppy anymore, you don’t really wanna sound retro anymore...you’ve done that, you’ve been there, so I’m really into modern rock right now. And I’m really glad that young people like it, obviously ‘cause they have no preconceptions, no expectations...[some of them] don’t even know who the E-heads were, which is fine with me...”           

‘Course, snagging five awards—for Music Video (Monobloc), Album (Wild Life), Drummer, Producer (Pupil & Jerome Velasco), and Artist of the Year—at this year’s NU Rock Awards is enough proof of Pupil’s overall audience power. “We really worked hard and we think we deserve [those awards],” Buendia says, his grin widening. “That was a glorious night for the band and its fans. Ano ba tawag doon—parang na-cement ang status mo? What’s the word for it?”

I give several stray suggestions to a contemplative Ely before he silently accepts his loss for words and continues, “This time, we were given credit and now we can probably concentrate on making music that matters to us. We just wanna make, if possible, a better album, better than the two—yun yung target ko.”

A Wild Life’s Lesson Plan

Perhaps the illumination of Pupil, with members from bands like the Teeth (Sergio) and Barbie’s Cradle (Garcia) and, well, the Eraserheads, comes from its ability to keep “one foot in the past and both eyes dead set on the future.” Like Raimund Marasigan mentioned in an interview following that epic reunion gig, the E-heads was “one big lesson”—especially for the man who’s had to learn the hardest from it. “Basically, you learn to appreciate your job, the songwriting process, and your co-members, which is what you totally take for granted whenyou’re successful and everyone’s behaving like rock stars” says Buendia of what his praised ‘n’ prickly stretch with the E-heads has influenced him with in dealing with Pupil. “We were all dorm mates and classmates in the Eraserheads. We learned what we could from that band and after that, we graduated and now we’re really doing what we wanted to do.”

Apart from the evolved dynamic of shared creativity between Ely and his fellow pupils, learning new things has also been part of the plan. Trading mic for camera after being offered a short film spot by Cinemanila’s Tikoy Aguiluz, Buendia recently wrote, directed, and screened Waiting Shed alongside Markus Adoro’s short indie, Artist is In. It's a guerilla filmmaking project with no dialogue, shot in one night, and starring Ventura as a nurse sitting in a waiting shed just “waiting for something to happen.”

That’s open to a lot of interpretation, I say. “That’s the great thing about it,” Buendia says; a statement that could serve as a firm f-you to all the people who have anything to say about the woman—or all the things he does beyond the music. Sure, his promise to take up Eraserhead vocalist duties for one more night still stands, but it’s about time the different tune Ely’s been playing for quite some time—louder now, for people to hear—is recognized. ‘Cause that’s what all this is about, anyway—not a band so far gone in its own fables, not the so-called doomed relationship he’s cultivated, not the time he gets to spend with his son Eon and sister Lally.

The sound of Eon and Lally laughing as they share a meal at the table next to ours is enough of a cue for me to pack up and give him a little more leisure before his trip. It’s a curious sight, after I’ve shaken Ely’s hand and shoot one last glance at the man—a Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards visor on his head, bright red shirt, and oversized kiddie watch on his wrist replacing the dismal duds he usually dons onstage—and a look of bewilderment is etched across his face. A couple of minutes later, I receive a call from Ely and realize why.

“Vindicated,” Ely says laughing. “Yun ang hinahanap kong word kanina. Vindicated.”

* * *

The Puma 60th birthday bash happens every Friday this month at the Embassy Superclub. It started yesterday and continues all Fridays of December.