Pulp: Ten Years of Ruffling Feathers
Ten years ago, I was just a year turned teenager. I collected basketball cards and spent hours playing Magic: The Gathering games. I was a glow stick-wielding, trance music-listening 14-year-old who cared somewhat about being cool. At about the same time 10 years ago, a very cool magazine made its debut in the Philippines. Incorporating music, models and mayhem, Pulp magazine introduced itself as the very provocative, sometimes objectionable (to parents) music monthly. It was exactly what Filipino readers were looking for. It didn’t have an “18++” tag on it, so any geeky 14-year-old boy could purchase it for the sole purpose of ogling the models in the “Pulp Skin” section. Me included. But I also knew from the start that Pulp was a music magazine, not a porno sheet. I read through the articles and thought, “Wow, brutal! I didn’t know you could write that.” The opinions expressed were raw and ruthlessly straightforward. The scantily-clad ladies in the “Skin” section became the added attraction.
Pulp has never disappointed in showcasing the best in Philippine music. By combining well-written, forthright articles with over-the-top photo shoots, it has succeeded in recreating, cataloging and immortalizing some of OPM’s most iconic artists. The images can be haunting. Who will ever forget the photo of a zombie-fied Pepe Smith wearing a crusty old wedding gown while holding a flaming bouquet? Or the members of Rivermaya, sporting Yakuza tattoos, and eating sushi off a naked girl hoisted up by a trio of midgets? Or of Jamir Garcia, lead vocalist of Slapshock, holding the bloody head of a pig? Even the “no pose, no care” look of the Eraserheads in one Pulp shoot made for an unforgettable image.
You may have missed some Pulp issues over these past 10 years, but fortunately, the extraordinary images find themselves in a book commemorating Pulp’s 10th anniversary. “Panty-dropping, music-making history” touts the cover and you suddenly discern that the cover photo is of a lady’s undergarment. Flip the page over and you are greeted by a large, long, bloody cow tongue. This is unexpected and you laugh at the insinuation. True to form, Pulp shocks the prudes with its startling visual imagery. But of course.
It is precisely because of its visual wit that Pulp’s 10th anniversary book can hold its own alongside the best. The photos in the compilation combine elements of art and entertainment, and the reader will be eager to turn to the next page — to see if the following photo can top the last one. Rock stars make for some of the best pictures. The stories that their photos tell are complicated, compelling and strange.
My only complaint about the book is the scarcity and brevity of text so that the articles don’t even get up to a hundred words. Vernon Go must have had the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” playing in his head the entire time this book was being produced. But he is the mastermind behind Pulp and after 10 years, he still knows what will startle.
Undoubtedly, the book is effective in stimulating certain memories. While going through it, I laughingly remembered past, testosterone-fueled expeditions to buy the issue of Pulp that featured Ruru Kiram, Anna Jebb, and Avi Siwa. Seeing photos of Karl Roy and Kapatid made me rummage through old CDs for P.O.T. and Kapatid albums that were signed by the artists. I popped these into the player, turned the volume up and went back to the past.
And then, I remember one issue that printed reader’s letters from an exclusive Catholic girls’ school. That certainly made for very entertaining reading. The teacher required that students write to the magazine to tell the folks at Pulp to stop printing photos of scantily-clad women, and to stop using so much blood in their pictorials. I believe the teacher even referred to Pulp as “demonic.” Funny.
The lesson of Pulp is that counterculture is important. People need be shaken up and removed from comfort zones. Creativity thrives if no boundaries are set. Cheers to Pulp! May you ruffle feathers, blow minds and shock people out of their pants for a hundred years.
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E-mail me at enricomiguelsubido@yahoo.com.
