For a band like Bamboo however, it’s not only fitting but also quite essential. Their collective CV is certainly impressive: it includes two founding members of an era-defining Pinoy rock act, a journeyman guitarist whose long list of credits seems to cover almost every conceivable area of popular music, and one of the country’s most respected young drummers.
Formerly of Rivermaya, both Nathan Azarcon and Bamboo Mañalac know what it was like to be stars – the long and frayed edge of it.
"It was just so quick, a daze," says Mañalac who with a roll of his eyes recounts how fast songs were written, recorded and released that platinum record sales and crowds served to wallpaper their memories a blinding white, burning the details and leaving the room empty. Azarcon is likewise bewildered. The grueling schedule his former band adhered to during their peak in the 1990s soured the enthusiasm and creative drive and he left after Rivermaya’s critically lauded 2000 album "Free," their second without Mañalac who opted out after the band’s tour of America.
Both Ira Cruz and Vic Mercado played in popular show band Passage before the chore of trying to play note-perfect renditions of tunes that made all the yuppies scream became too tiring. Resisting the temptation to ask them if they ever played the annoying (I’m) Horny, I instead ask them about the decision to quit a steady paying gig. "It became tedious, like work," Cruz reflects, to which Mercado acquiesces. The band though proved to be very popular and a favorite club act, capable of drawing huge crowds (that came not only to hear them play but to see the sharp-featured musician play his fluid guitar-lines). However, it seems it wasn’t enough.
Now that the start is finished: Let’s begin at the end.
The last track on Bamboo’s debut "As the Music Plays," Noypi opens with all the ceremony and reverence that’s usually reserved for the National Anthem and indeed in these times it could serve as such. The tone is set with Azarcon’s bassline forging ahead (no other Filipino bassist in pop music today hits fifths this apt and resonant) while the rest enter with a whisper, a promise and an oath. It harks back to, well, a song from a past Rivermaya album, namely Himala – not surprisingly a career best for both Azarcon and Mañalac in their previous group.
That song starts with celestial plucking as if by some rogue cherub, as if to introduce another rerun of a familiar passion-play; immaculately timed, Azarcon’s bass promptly announces the arrival of the devil while Mañalac’s sings with the anguish of a prophet with one last match and no burning bush. The trick is repeated here but it doesn’t come across as redundant.
When the chorus of "Hoy! Pinoy ako!" kicks in, it is genuinely inspiring. Even at a time when pundits might thumb their noses at the band’s blatant flag-waving, the song’s power is undiminished.
(The persistent cynics knock the naiveté of the track’s lyrics, preferring the more eloquent Noel Cabangon and Gary Granada. Admittedly those two artists are more poetic in their discourse and their reputations are indeed deserved. It seems though that Bamboo isn’t aspiring to be poets but would rather stick to being musicians instead.)
Elsewhere on the album, the band plays to their strengths. Whether displaying their musicianship on the dizzying aural tapestry of Mr. Clay or the melancholic thrum of Masaya, the oscillating moods only points to a maturity ripened by experience. It is no wonder that the predominant feel of the album is groove-heavy blues.
Songs like As the Music Plays the Band and These Days showcase a tight rhythm section, tasteful and restrained fretwork and – the biggest revelation – a more soulful but understated performance from Mañalac. (It is worth noting that the voice that sang Awit ng Kabataan a decade earlier now emerges as his own man, although the imp of old does manage an appearance on a few tracks.) This is real Pinoy blues – not the kind brokered by midnight transactions at the crossroads but rather the one that has felt the ungodly heat arising from the asphalt after a monsoon rain or tasted the pagan delights of gin bulag.
(The middle is always a good place to take you towards the end.)
In the center of the white canvas are four handprints, each one presumably from each member of the band. Inked in crimson, they signify a blood compact between the members of Bamboo – a bond that can easily be discerned on every song on the album. It also signifies that its members have come full circle and that place is a familiar one, its circumference made smooth by the passage of the years.
This really is no end: the succession of smoke-filled bars, outdoor concerts where morons pelt you with plastic water bottles, or just drunken jams with friends are endless. This is only borne out of the fact that for Bamboo, these places are familiar. And though none of the members are particularly religious, they can only thank a higher power for that.