Look what the mambo rat dragged in

Eto na! Ulit… Radioactive Sago Project is an anomaly. Think Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention gatecrashing an episode of American Idol and performing What’s the Ugliest Part of your Body? — with David Hasselhoff in the audience. That is how incongruous Lourd De Veyra and the rest of the Sago collective are to the current music scene characterized by revivalists (ilang versions ba ng Waiting in Vain ang kailangan ng mundo?), bossa-nova divas (malapit na siguro nila gawing bossa nova ang Enter Sandman or Butse Kik) and bands that try to sell you everything from ring tones to all-terrain vehicles to political candidates (which, come to think of it, could also be considered all-terrain vehicles).

An ironic endorsement: Buti na lang may markang demonyo pa at Radioactive Sago. How can anyone not dig a band that is original, experimental, bold, ballsy and blessed with a sick, twisted sense of Pinoy humor? The band recently released its third album titled "T****namo Andaming Nagugutom Sa Mundo Fashionista Ka Pa Rin." If you told that to Lourd a couple of years back when the Sago boys were paying their dues by playing at dives such as Oracafe, he would have thought you were jiving or high on something.

A digression: I remember watching a Sago gig at Oracafe where the musicians onstage outnumbered the people in the audience. Present were writers Danton Remoto and Jessica Zafra. Folk singer and UP professor Susan Fernandez got up to jam and was introduced by Lourd as the composer of War Pigs. The remaining three to five people got up and left, according to Lourd, "after realizing they wouldn’t be hearing Dancing Queen for that night." But the rest enjoyed Sago’s covers of So What and a smattering of John Zorn and Black Sabbath, as well as pure, original gulaman music that hadn’t found a label brave enough to release it.

And now here comes album number three, which I feel is Sago’s most mature opus to date. Everything on "Andaming Nagugutom Sa Mundo" is brilliantly irreverent — from Louie Cordero’s sleeve art to Sago’s musical mélange (mambo, Afro-beat, avant-garde, jazz, noise) to Lourd’s observations on Filipino pap (not pop) culture.

I asked the master Sago-man Lourd De Veyra how different was the approach in recording "Andaming Nagugutom Sa Mundo" as compared to its predecessors, the self-titled album and "Urban Gulaman."

"Mas kaunti ang daldal ngayon," De Veyra dismisses. "Repetition deployed as a strategy to evoke your inner morons like Ocho Ocho and Boom Tarat-tarat." He also explains they were more open, more experimental when they arranged the songs on the new album. "Intentional na iwanan ’yung mga dumi at sabit. Mas maingay pa."

Sago fanatics will notice that there are flourishes of vocal harmonies on "Andaming Nagugutom Sa Mundo," something not associated with a band famously fronted by a self-confessed non-singer. "(On the new album, there are) atrocious attempts at singing on my part," De Veyra says.

(No worries, Lourd. We’d rather listen to your spoken-word meditations on existential issues such as Alak, Sugal, Kape, Babae, Kabaong than those empty, cold and dead clichés sung cutely by, say, the singers in pogi-rock bands.)

The first track George Estregan Groove Explosion arrives with much bombast, a wah-wah pedal from hell (courtesy of Junji Lerma), and visions of Tony Ferrer as "Agent X-44" fighting crime in a snazzy white suit with almirol that is evidently dirt-repellant. Yes, says De Veyra, the track is a soundtrack to an imaginary action flick from the late ’70s. Or, in the case of Francis De Veyra (Lourd’s brother and Sago’s excellent bassist), it is "a porno film unreeling in the eternal Betamax machine of Francis’ mind."

Wasak na Wasak starts off with much merriment ("Roll out the barrel!") and then morphs into what could only be described as "elegant noise." De Veyra describes the evocative guitar break as something stolen from Alice in Chains’ Them Bones. Bert Sulat screams like a banshee on this tune. "May video na ’to, ’dre. Si R.A. Rivera ang nag-direct — Mang Kepweng meets Lino Brocka." You could check it out on YouTube.

Basagan ng Mukha has a guitar riff that insinuates itself into your brain. It was inspired by the Manny Pacquiao-Ronald Gan Ledesma movie, which "was seen by absolutely no one." De Veyra adds, "It has that Bosyo-Anakbayan feel to it."

What would happen if you put "Bitches Brew"-era funk, the Twisted Red Cross label, and funnyman Vincent Dafalong in an aural blender? Well, uh, not a bloody shake. You’d get Bisikleta, according to De Veyra. "The lyrics were inspired by the sight of the President doing aerobics exercises on morning television — in pink tights, to a Britney Spears tune," he quips.

In that particular track, Lourd asks, "Bakit walang nagbabago sa aking panahon?" before trash metal thunder rips through the listeners’ ears. This could be as big as that cosmic cigarette song Astro.

Alak, Sugal, Kape, Babae, Kabaong was inspired by Afro-beat king Fela Kuti, and is in remembrance of The Godfathers’ Birth, School, Work, Death. "’Yung epilogue ay resulta ng pakikinig ng ‘Pet Sounds’ by Beach Boys at mga doo-wop," De Veyra says. If you listen closely you could hear a triangle. No joke.

The hilarious Superhatdog features Lourd’s girlfriend Marj, who does a Jacklyn Jose narration about "katangahan, kasakiman at peke na Maling" and experts who discovered "Superhatdog." (Only the innocent would think this song is about hybrid sausages. Get it?) Dig the celestial keyboards on this track, shades of Herbie’s Headhunters. With science fiction guitar to boot.

About Raul Aragon=Ricky Torre, De Veyra explains: "Titled in honor of my good friend, who explained to me why Raul Aragon is one of the most criminally underrated actors of the ’70s. According to Ricky, Aragon was cast in a Brocka drama where, in one wordless scene, the actor was instructed: ‘Kunwari, demonyo ka.’ The results, says my friend, were astonishing."

Nasusunog ang Maynila has that tricky fourths-based progression and weird metric structures. "Ito ang ’yong syudad/Ito ang ’yong sementeryo," Lourd raps in Sago’s very own London’s Burning. Foodtrip (Bahay Kubo on amphetamines) was performed by Sago at Victoria Park in Hong Kong during the 2005 WTO Ministerial Meeting as Korean activists were dispersed by cops. Sago even "covered" Jose Lacaba’s irreverent "For Adults Only (Lahat ng Hindi Ko Kailangan Malaman, Natutunan Ko sa mga Pelikulang For Adults Only)." P*ta sa galling.

Lourd explains Mambo Rat cryptically: "Rodent hangs out at a Cuban bar in his all-white sharkskin suits, drinks a lot of malt liquor and mojitos, likes underage girls, and, on one drunken night, crawls straight into the cat’s mouth." That’s exactly how listeners will experience Mambo Rat.

The Sago leader reveals they were listening to (aside from the greatest hits of Bazil Valdez and the Scorpions) Fela Kuti, Jim O’ Rourke, Field Music, Deerhoof, Lighting Bolt, Broken Social Scene, Dave Douglas and David Axelrod when they were recording "Andaming Nagugutom Sa Mundo." He adds, "Hinasa din naming ang mga boses sa paiminsan-minsang dalaw sa videoke/kambingan haus sa kanto ng Anonas Road."

As to comments (mind included) that Radioactive Sago has gotten angrier, more political, De Veyra says: "Disagree. It’s all superficial, all poseur-ism merely compensating for our tragic lack of commercially aesthetic appeal. Saya ko nga ngayon eh. Punta ka sa bagong bahay namin — kulay dilaw. Tweety Bird yellow. Celebration of life."

But despite its anomalous music, Radioactive Sago Project has managed to infiltrate a safe, staid OPM scene. The boys of Sago still manage to bring a lot of irreverence to rock n’ roll, unlike other bands that churn out tunes destined to be downloaded as ring tones — not change your freaking life. Shouldn’t rock music be as life-changing as, say, Kerouac’s On The Road?

"Ang weird ng Pinoy audience, ’no?" says Lourd. "Nung huli kaming tumugtog sa UP fair nakatanga lang ’yung mga tao. Yung iba umupo muna at bumili ng barbecue at softdrinks. Tumayo na lang ulit at bumalik sa mosh pit nung sumalang na ’yung 6Cycle at Sponge Cola."

I disagree. I think Sago has earned its spot in the Pinoy Rock pantheon even if, according to De Veyra, the rock people don’t think Sago is rock enough, the jazz people think Sago is too noisy and unskilled and the tragically ignorant think Sago’s brand of "ska" is quite dull.

"Steady lang kami, parang si Izza Ignacio, ‘Hindi pa sikat, laos na.’ ’Yung tipong nasa gitna lang lagi, naka-plateau lang. Masaya pa rin kahit papano because we still get to play the stuff we enjoy. That’s why nobody’s quitting his day job yet. Tsamba lang ’yung Baboy at Astro, and anything else after that is a miracle," De Veyra concludes.

If all else fails, Lourd De Veyra offers two words: bossa nova.

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