NEW YORK Lately, I’ve been having an identity crisis. I remember flying to the Big Apple every year and dousing my itinerary with a list of Broadway shows for either research or personal entertainment so much so that it becomes nearly impossible for friends to meet up with me for a proper dinner, or even just hang out in a non-Times Square 42nd Street location on a random afternoon. Broadway was my life’s immovable fixture. Friends and family had to work their way around my razzmatazz of an itinerary or not see me at all.
That was me on a succession of annual trips to NYC since 2005. Recently though, I’ve transformed into a go-with-the-flow Joe, lining up at TKTS on the day itself, instead of advance booking my tickets months prior. I’m able to see more of the city from SoHo to Brooklyn and experience what I would otherwise miss out on in dire worship of Patti LuPone and Bernadette Peters. But I’d also find myself a week before my departure for Manila scrambling for time to do what I set off to do in New York– which is to watch Broadway. I haven’t seen as much this trip. But I don’t mind. Maybe my horizons are just expanding.
Coldplay: “Let’s take it back to the start”
It started out as a joke actually this “hipster” thing. I was reading up on Regina’s Young Star article a while back on Mei Bastes of Meiday! Meiday! concert events and found myself in BSide at The Collective that same night, kicking it with the indie music scene while sporting my sole denim vest. I saw Ang Bandang Shirley, OuterHope and their other colleagues perform to the crowd’s amazement. Short story: I bumped into RCXY at the event. And he was like, “Wow, si Toff. Naka denim vest anyare!” I replied jokingly, “Well RC, lam mo naman, kelangang makibagay.” Denim vest in tow, I was head-banging and moshing to music I didn’t know the lyrics to (versus a show tune you can ask me to warble on cue from Anything Goes to The Color Purple). Red Horse and cigarette also intact, I was spellbound by this new musical frontier.
A week later, I was reading Luis Katigbak’s Young Star article on The Strangeness, which was having their EP launch at Route 196 along Katipunan that same night. The “feeling-hipster” I had become, I followed immediately after a theater concert I attended at Teatrino and recalibrated my predilections to the diversified crowd of Route 196. No, I wasn’t wearing my denim vest. But there was a lot of denim going on. And in the intense spirit and musicality that coddled the same atmosphere at the Meiday! concert a week earlier, I was in it to win it.
NO DAY BUT TODAY Oops, I can’t help it
Fast forward to present time, in NYC. Thanks to the 411 from my friend Joe Osmena who had also been in town, I found myself giving up a Broadway time slot one evening and dragging Young Star’s Paolo Lorenzana to catch the “When the Night Falls” concert at Terminal 9. We were about to be served some great music courtesy of Detroit soul singer Mayer Hawthorne and electro wunderkind Thibaut Berland a.k.a. DJ Breakbot. Electronic party duo Chromeo also had a set but theirs proved to be so-so. Ironically, they were the tour’s main act.
Hawthorne’s set straddled the best of his latest How Do You Do LP and his debut album A Strange Arrangement in 2009. Fun, kinetic and the kind of soul that gets you stepping into a time machine of stereophonic funk, his tracks like Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Pleasin’ Nothin and Shiny and New were magic to the ears, making it possible to get lost in a euphoric shuffle and have your libido actually reenergized. DJ Breakbot proved a great opening act for the show, his mastery of beats following in the footsteps of Parisian electronic act Justice. But as soon as the kids started chanting “CHROME-OH-OH-OH” after Hawthorne’s set, it was possibly our cue to leave for some post-gig grub nearby but not before appreciating what appeared to be a homosexual couple dancing to Chromeo in our vicinity. They had first seemed like giddy hipster girls who didn’t have a care in the world; an amazing sight up until the waif-like “girl” with wavy auburn hair was revealed to be a waif-like guy with wavy auburn hair. I admit: the magic of the moment was lost in its normalcy.
Not your ordinary indie band
Bless Joe’s soul. Weeks later, he had been going away to Jersey for the weekend and had tickets to the Architecture in Helsinki gig at Irving Plaza. He ended up peddling them to me and Pao, my NYC hipster buddy. This time, I scrambled days ahead sorting through videos of the band on YouTube and navigating the group’s website and downloading their tracks. At the very least, I wanted to sing along to them, and not be pigeonholed into mouthing “watermelon” for the whole three hours. I was wonderfully surprised by the ease on which they registered on my audio pallet and soon an Architecture in Helsinki playlist would appear on my iTunes.
The Australian indie pop band which included Cameron Bird, Gus Franklin, Jamie Mildren, Sam Perry and Kelli Sutherland had an analog late ‘80s sound that made for awesome listening. Sutherland has a Bonnie Bailey sound that tugs at your heartstrings. We must’ve clapped our hands, jumped up and down, and swayed to the intoxicating pitch-perfect sound of both vocalists who alternated for Contact High, and my other personal favorites Escapee and W.O.W. from the group’s “Moment Bends” album. They even inserted moments-of-genius synchronized choreography here and there that got the crowd going and the theater buff in me activated and thoroughly engaged. Wait, chords, blending and choreography? See? Who says theater and indie can’t mix?