Made of stone

When someone asked me several years ago which band I would like to see make a comeback, I answered: The Stone Roses. “But only if they can rekindle their 1989 chemistry — maybe now they can give us a proper second album,” I said. I also added, “And on the local front, I know every Pinoy music fan gets a little thrill at the thought of an Eraserheads reunion, but that seems highly unlikely to ever happen.”

The lesson here is: a musical Nostradamus I am not. The Eraserheads had their reunion, and now The Stone Roses are back together, a full 22 years after their heyday. Whether it will be a comeback or a debacle remains to be seen, but the fact that it is happening at all seems, the usual allegations of cashing in aside, like a minor miracle.

1989 was ridiculously full of good music: the Pixies, XTC, Elvis Costello, The Cure’s “Disintegration,” The Blue Nile’s “Hats” — brilliant, life-changing stuff. And then there was The Stone Roses’ self-titled full-length debut, which was also brilliant and life-changing and seems — in the UK, at least — to have defined an era.

In a way, I owe my musical education, such as it is, to the British Council — the old British Council in New Manila, specifically Mang Fred with his stack of under-the-counter issues of Melody Maker. (This is why I was nose-deep in Britpop when most of my friends were whipping their heads back and forth to grunge; I still miss the Maker, with its wonderfully hyperbolic album reviews.)

THE STONE ROSES: This debut album was “Godlike,” according to Melody Maker.

It was thanks to a review of The Stone Roses’ debut that I sought out the cassette (yes, cassette) — I believe the adjective “Godlike” had been used, as well as the exhortation to quit one’s job and spend a week just listening to the damn thing over and over. I didn’t have a job to quit, but I must have cut a few classes while giving my full attention to this guitartastic, rhythawesome, neo-psychelicious masterwork. (Yes, it is so good I have to invent words to describe it.) It made me want to jump around and play air drums and make other people listen to it too.

It’s not like they broke new musical ground, really: it’s just that, for the span of one album and a few singles at least, it seemed they were incapable of writing a bad song. Each track shimmered into the next, each a guitar-pop wonder, sometimes melded with elements of dance and funk, sometimes with a ‘70s-invoking rock guitar solo. They had a drummer who could do anything, a bassist who could more than keep up, a guitarist who painted like Pollock and played like he was on good hallucinogens, and a singer whose vocal limitations were apparent but, for some reason, unimportant in the end.

Even “Turns Into Stone” — a collection of odds and ends, of B-sides and bonus tracks, which came out in 1992 — had some fantastic songs. It wasn’t until their “proper” second album, “Second Coming,” came out that listeners realized the magic was gone. The songs were bloated, joyless and, if not exactly tuneless, not exactly memorable, either. Disintegration, solo careers, and new bands of varying quality inevitably followed.

And now they’ve reformed. There is talk of new songs, and tickets to their concerts in the UK sold out within 14 minutes after they were made available. There may be a world tour. All quite exciting for a long-term fan such as myself.

If you’ve never listened to them, do yourself a favor and go download their first album, “The Stone Roses.” (If possible, try to get the version that also has the tracks Fool’s Gold and Elephant Stone on it.) While my powers of prediction may be faulty, I doubt you will regret it.