Almost Infamous: Zen and the art of rock n' roll heckling

I could say that I discovered rock music when I was driving a beat-up, orange Beetle on a dusty road and something apocalyptic, something otherworldly unfurled from the ancient car stereo: an aural flutter of wah-wah drenched guitar, mushrooming bass, pummeling drums, and a voice that sang the air electric, crackling about voodoo and slight return.

Cause I’m a voodoo child/Lord knows I’m a voodoo child.

That, of course, was courtesy of Jimi Hendrix who kicked the living daylights out of bubblegum pop characterized by manipulated Monkees music, jingly-jangly teen tearjerkers from the Pacemakers, the Playboys, Herman’s Hermits, Spiral Staircase and all the swinging shit on mainstream radio that would spawn increased sales in vinyls, hair spray, polka-dotted saffron blouses, clogs and skirts with dizzying designs. Hendrix drowned his cream-white Fender Strat with distortion and overdrive, transfigured the blues, turned rock into a hip religion and altered the destiny of one lonely loser driving a Volkswagen after being fired from his job at the Cosmodemonic PR Agency.

Wait...that never happened. I wish it did, though. I may have discovered rock this way. In high school, I nearly overdosed on gin, Gold Eagle beer, Wayne’s World 2 and Carlos Castañeda, and suddenly a blob of light appeared out of nowhere. No, it wasn’t Don Juan; it was Jim Morrison, fat and bearded, straight from the great whiskey bar in the sky. The Lizard King pointed to my brother’s vinyl collection and slurred something inscrutable. Somehow, I understood. I reached out for "The Doors" record and turned on the Technics turntable.

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain/And all the children are insane.

For me, it was a spiritual experience, a distorted one at that, an apocalypse in a ratty apartment in Malabon.

How I wish I first came into contact with rock in a mythy, inspiring, Cameron Crowe-ish sort of way. (Think Pablo Neruda being "found" by Poetry; only in this case, Rock N’ Roll took one look at me, at my ridiculous anachronistic clothes, and found this malcontent to be ripe for the picking.)

Truth be told, I first heard what is regarded as the "devil’s music" at, of all places, Fiesta Carnival in Cubao when I rode on a rusty caterpillar with my aunt and the operator was playing, of all bands, the Scorpions. There was something in the way Klaus Meine was singing at that moment.

Here I am/rock you like a hurricane.

It was like finding a diamond in the horse droppings of the Barry Manilows, Donna Summers or the Bee Gees, which was always harmonizing in our house back in those days. (A fact: I woke up on Sundays with Barry, Robin and Maurice falsettoing across my cranium — Hah, hah, hah, hah, staying aliiiiiveeeaaah!) That was my musical Damascus: I was in a carnival ride when that lightning called rock n’ roll struck me down. It’s not dramatic (what with a tacky Teutonic band playing a key role) but it’s gospel truth.

Thereafter, I discovered Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Cream, Yes, Pink Floyd, the Doors, becoming a convert to the rock n’ roll fold and an outcast in high school during a time when Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and the Culture Club (fronted by a "boy" with inch-thick kabuki makeup) were regarded as gods. How could you discuss Tales from Topographic Oceans or The Dark Side of the Moon with your classmates when they were all harping about George Michael and Andrew Ridgely’s terpsichorean skills? How could you talk about the Led Zep’s The Lord of the Rings references in a roomful of Simon Le Bon and John Taylor wannabes wearing Loose T-shirts, Used pants and glittery Lord Wally gel?

I was so out-of-sync in the ‘80s I was like a smashed, leather-clad Alice Cooper attending a Tupperware party with a bunch of suburban housewives in pink and paisley.

In college (while writing record reviews – terrible ones at that — for UST’s Flame magazine, inspired by professor Ophelia Dimalanta), I made a firm decision to be — ta dah!— a music critic. Someone in the gallery might wisecrack: Why just a scribe and not a fire-breathing, blood-spewing rock star just like Gene Simmons? Well, that was my first dream, but after watching myself in the mirror strumming an el cheapo guitar, dreaming I was Jimmy Page playing his sunburst Les Paul with a violin bow, I realized how pathetic I looked. One must have that lean, hungry, Bonjoviesque look to make the rockstar cut — and I was underweight, snub-nosed, with long, stringy hair, and cursed with an evil, syphilitic, Cheshire Cat smile a la Vincent Price, the anti-rockstar.

(And besides, you can’t be all you can be in this sad republic of ours. We can dream all we want about becoming rock stars, poets or presidents of the freakin’ RP, yet we’ll wind up as beer garden DJs, bureaucratic toadies or salesmen who harass mallrats with pamphlets, brochures and sweet sales talk. "Man is born free," according to Jean Jacques Rousseau, "but everywhere he is in chains" — the chains of economics, the political superstructure, circumstance, reality, fate, destiny and other slimy factors that define our identity.)

I read Rolling Stone, Spin, Circus, Jingle and whatever music mags I could get my hands on. As I took on a caboodle of hack writing jobs, I still dreamt of following the footsteps of Lester Bangs — how the great gonzo journalist snooped around the rock n’ roll Zeitgeist, Lou Reed’s id, the strangeways of free jazz, and how he wrote exploding plastic inevitable prose. I also admired the guys who wrote some really gutsy stuff for Jingle (Juaniyo Arcellana, Eric Gamalinda, Didits Gonzales, Roxlee, Poch Concepcion and Bert Sulat) and the dailies (Eric Caruncho, Lourd De Veyra, Kap Aguila and Allan Hernandez).

I did get to write about rock music, albeit for phony publications. I got a call from the managing editor of a music magazine. I went to their office and got assignments to write two kilometric articles — one about jazz fusion, and the other about Malate — which I did, excitedly. I came back to submit those articles. The office had been turned into an Amway depot. The mag had folded, and I was clueless. Almost the same shit happened with other fly-by-night rags. As for the hack writing work, I got to interview pop music has-beens — the Michael Jackson, the Elvis Presley and the Neil Sedaka of the Philippines. Whoopee.

Eventually, to cut a long and winding story short, I got my wish to write about music. A few days after seeing my byline in a music magazine, I am suddenly reminded of a Loony Tunes episode, the one where Wile E. Coyote (who had been chasing the Roadrunner for an eternity) finally captures his elusive prey. The coyote dazedly gazes at the screen and asks the viewers, "Uhm, what do I do now?"

Yes, what now?

This made me muse about meanings, destinies, significances, synchronicities and all that bull. I wanted to be a music writer all my life, and it turned out that a rock n’ roll heckler’s life is such a drag, not at all the Neverland as seen through the magic of self-delusion. You’re only as good as your last article. You are prophet/seer/sage/savior/friend/comrade to rockstars only during the course of the interview (the same with fake plastic folks from showbiz and the corporate world). After that, you’re back to your insignificant self. You are always backstage or in front of the computer. Your world moves around deadly deadlines, sadistic readers, oligarchic record labels and fellow critics who are as good-natured as Torquemada. You are left grappling with a world that basically doesn’t give a rat’s ass. (Why read at all when you got that damn television to do all your thinking for you?)

A music writer’s life is voluminous with the void. No money for nothing. No chicks for free. No Mark Knopfler perks. No dough left for coffee and nicotine because you’ve spent it all on taxicabs, microcassette tapes and bland burger. No thanks from anyone. No rest from the badgering of the wicked ones you pissed off with your write-up. No glories. No ecstasies. No dice. No future sa pader. Well, no mas.

But wait. This is not the time to quit and do a Roberto Duran just yet. This is not the time to consider another field (like vulcanizing or handicraft). Come to think of it, I wouldn’t trade this profession for the world. You get to rage against Pavlovian record companies as they ram Shakira, Pink, Limp Bizkit, the Sex Bomb Dancers, Britney Spears and a thousand boybands down people’s throats. You get to heckle the bands that put out crass commercial crap. You get to hang out with bands like Wolfgang, Radioactive Sago, etc. You get to write about brilliant old guards like the Stones or Tom Waits as well as brilliant young guns like The Strokes or At The Drive-in. You’re able to make a living from the very thing you love — and that’s the Zen of existence right there.

Besides, I owe it to that kid who was sickened by a caterpillar ride and stung by the Scorpions. One note from "Love at First Sting" or one look at back issues of Creem (particularly with Bangs’ article "Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves: Or How I Slugged It Out With Lou Reed And Stayed Awake") and everything suddenly makes sense again:

This is home. All is well.

Lester Bangs is dead. Long live Lester Bangs.

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For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations, e-mail iganja@hotmail.com