The hallowed and the hollow

The Be-Bop Obituary

If Herman Melville’s Ishmael is lured by the sea whenever he feels that damp, drizzly November in his soul, a landlubber like me feels the urge to put on a Billie Holiday record ("Lady in Satin," the album where Lady Day exposes her elegantly wasted soul; or maybe that one with the great Johnny Hodges) or just write — write about old loves, write about ancient hurts, write about the past that revisits like trippy LSD flashbacks, write about the future that diminishes and swells everyday, write about the present, write about time, write about death, write about dead friends and relatives, write about dead musicians, write about the certainty of joining them on that street between the void and the long and winding hereafter.

Don’t worry, this is not "A list of the greatest dead rockers of all time" or "A tribute to late great rockstars" or something as stupid. Not something laborious, encyclopedic and terribly boring. This article is more of a be-bop obituary, a way of paying respect to artists who have altered my (our) very existence — long-gone people that have made me (us) come to grips with the cosmic puppet show called life.

To John Lennon who was martyred in 1980. I remember it well: How my mother, aunts and I were living in this cramped apartment in Blumentritt, with no television, with money too elusive for us at that time, suffering a landlord who was the compendium of all the Bella Flores characters in all the Sampaguita flicks, and all that made our private hell tolerable was an apple green transistor radio and Beatles songs. Let it be. Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. Jai guru deva, om/Nothing’s gonna change my world. Come to think of it, Lennon never really went away, that’s the mark of the great ones. A week ago, I listened to his "Imagine" disc and there was the sagely John commenting on the ragged state of the world today, twenty two years after he was gunned down.

To Jimi, Janis and Jim. There is nothing more to add to the elegies offered to Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, only this: Without them, we’d still be listening to elevator music and never realize what we’re missing — the sweet oblivion of kissing the sky, moving over and breaking on through to the other side.

To Jaco Pastorius who’s mind was torn and frayed by drugs and murdered just outside a jazz club. Jaco’s fretless bass spoke so eloquently in songs by Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny, Weather Report and in his own recordings that bridge the soundscapes of Charles Mingus and Charlie Parker with Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley. Jaco gave us three views of a secret in every remark he made.

To Kurt Cobain who blew his brains out in ‘94, doing a Neil Young, burning out instead of fading away. He saved rock n’ roll from all those hedonistic, poodle-haired, shallow glam rockers; gave the music back to the disenchanted and disaffected punks; played rock that was so electric, so alive, so earnest, so rebellious and so... so... oh well, whatever, nevermind.

To Andy Wood who wrote Mother Love Bone’s Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns, a song which builds dramatically, epically. Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron got together with Wood’s former bandmates in Mother Love Bone, Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, (plus Mike McCready and a then unknown Eddie Vedder) and created the excellent tribute album "Temple of the Dog." No better elegy than Cornell’s Say Hello To Heaven. I never wanted to write these words down for you/With the pages of phrases of things we’ll never do.

To Frank Zappa who proved that one need not be so damn serious to be so damn profound. Some avant-garde artist — with loose screws inside his head, a little bit batty perhaps but undoubtingly brilliant — ought to write Frank Zappa’s Memorial Barbecue the way Zappa did for another genius, Eric Dolphy.

To John Bonham and his bombastic drums.

To Layne Staley who wrote songs that are depressing and uplifting at the same time. I listened to Down in a Hole, Angry Chair, Rooster and Would when I heard the news the Alice in Chains singer had an overdose.

To Jeff Buckley who wrote elegiac folk ditties.

To Karen Carpenter who made us cringe when we first heard her sappy songs from the Seventies but who made us realize how stupid we were to dismiss her when we heard those same songs performed by hip acts such as Sonic Youth, Red Kross and Matthew Sweet. No better anthem for doomed stalkers than Superstar.

To Cliff Burton who made trash metal more musical.

To the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd who died in a plane crash. It’s ironic that the group’s most famous song, Freebird, was written for southern rocker Duane Allman who died in a motorcycle accident. If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?

To Stevie Ray Vaughan who made music from the blues we all feel.

To Freddie Mercury for Bohemian Rhapsody.

To George Harrison who taught us that rock music and spirituality don’t necessarily make strange bedfellows.

To all the late great artists I fail to mention.

I think Bob Dylan said it best when he sang, "Lay down your weary tune, lay down/Lay down the song you strum/And rest yourself ‘neath the strength of strings/No voice can hope to hum..."

To borrow a line from Allen Ginsberg, thank you dearly departed musicians for letting us taste your tongues in our ears.

The Nosferatu Top Ten List

Music can be a terrifying thing. Just try listening to Black Sabbath’s Electric Funeral or Hand of Doom off the "Paranoid" album or John Coltrane’s Om — a very disorienting, fiery, free jazz track that takes up one whole album; it's a 30-minute aural shocker. One time, I played those discs and unnerved my mother no end. She asked me if I had become a Satanist, joined a cult or just went bananas and lost it completely.

My friend Piso listens to death metal CDs and I’d say that, in terms of music and sleeves, those albums are truly frightening, but not as frightening as, say, David Hasselhoff’s duet with Regine Velasquez, loop-the-looped Aqua songs or Barbra Streisand doing a tearjerker with Celine Dion. Those are dreadful sonic "muthas" that would make Ozzy Osbourne or John Coltrane sound like easy-listening Mel Torme in comparison. What’s more horrifying is that they are legion. Here, on-the-fly, is my list of frightening musical experiences (or incidents tangential to music). You could say that the following go well with Halloween and All Souls’ Day.

1.) Waking up to Michael Learns to Rock at five every goddamn morning courtesy of my panadero neighbors. I’m trying to sleep off this huge hangover — bigger than myself, actually — and through the walls seep 25 Minutes. A fate worse than 25 minutes in a concentration camp oven.

2.) Ghostwriting for a society columnist and the boss’ secretary loves singing along to her Sha La La La La tape. I’m running out of glowing adjectives, kiss-ass prose and exclamation points and I hear my officemate clap along with the "My- heart-goes-sha-la-la-la-la" chorus. Aaargh!

3.) Playing You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling in a doomed band back in college called Vertical Smiles to an audience of metalheads at UST. The pelted coins still hurt. It’s a great thing I got booted out from that band for "artistic differences." Jeezuz Christ! But I never ever learn. More recently, I played with a drummer who had the delusion he’s the reincarnation of John Bonham and we warbled through a VST&Co tune. (Sure, I'm no Jaco but at least I could count.) I even got up onstage with the "drummer of doom" at Freedom Bar and it was an anomaly; since what Vanessa Del Bianco is to singing is what the dude is to playing percussion. Winding up as guitarist/bassist for two shitty bands me think God must be a bogeyman.

4.) Hanging out on Sundays with my girlfriend who insists we watch A.S.A.P. and S.O.P. To this day, I still can’t figure out who’s the more tolerable crooner, Carlos Agassi or Dingdong Dantes? Who has the more evil voice box? It's hard to tell.

5.) Getting negative feedback from readers. A dude named "Flood" (e-mail: burnikshrapnel@yahoo.com) wrote PULP to lament the "pseudo-intellectual" and "narcissistic" articles of certain writers including myself. He pointed out my feature on Cheese last December, saying that instead of sharing something new about the band I ended up writing about myself. The frightening thing is, Flood was right. Maybe those of us who write about music should think of "music" and "writing" as outside of ourselves, go back to the basics of writing features in the third person, and trash the impressions, insights and epiphanies that we glean from talking to, hanging out with and observing rockstars. In short, castrate ourselves, disappear from the text, and behave like those who write brochures. In that case, I’ll leave the writing to geniuses like Flood.

6.) Being compelled by our religion teacher in high school to sing an "inspirational" song. Since Stairway to Heaven was not allowed, I ended up singing Kordero ng Diyos in front of the whole freakin’ class and immortalized myself as the undisputed champion of losers at the sophomore division.

7.) Getting a Flock of Seagulls hairdo in high school, which I thought was cool at that time.

8.) Getting a Randy Santiago haircut in college, which... er, you know the rest.

9.) Enduring a blasted former co-writer and his knack for playing Limp Bizkit and Crazy Town CDs at inconsiderate, neurotic, kulang-sa-pansin volumes while headbanging, which would make Fred Durst and Kid Rock proud. Aaaah...

10.) Hearing myself gripe about everything every single day of my life. All these rantings make my ears ache. If I could just take a darn vacation from myself for a while...

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