The Indispensables

Maxims about the movement of time in relation to having fun aside, it’s a little hard to believe I’ve written almost a hundred of these music columns for Young STAR, so far — and to celebrate, I’ve left most of the writing of this 99th installment of “Senses Working Overtime” to a bunch of other people!

Not just any people, of course. Writing about music requires more than basic writing skill — ideally, it involves knowledge both broad and specific, an ability to evoke how listening to a keyboard riff or trumpet solo or soaring chorus makes one feel, and a love of music that spills over into fanaticism.

I asked five of my favorite writers-about-music — actually, five of my favorite writers, period — to write about one of their indispensables: the albums that they can’t (or at least would rather not) live without. Here they go:

Sarge Lacuesta on “The Rhythm of the Saints” by Paul Simon

Nothing makes me shudder more than the idea of belting out The Smiths or Jeff Buckley in the middle of a desert island — looking up at the sky through my tears, waiting for the rescue plane. Which is why my indispensable album of choice is Paul Simon’s “The Rhythm of the Saints.” Less popular but more musically complex than “Graceland,” it also features the lyricist at his least heavy-handed and most enigmatic. “A winding river gets wound around the heart / Pull it tighter and tighter ‘till the muddy waters part,” he sings, quietly, over a mix of Latin and African percussion. With over a hundred musicians working with him, among them Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Olodum, the result is an edgeless wash of texture and color, of old sound and future sentiment. “Rhythm of the Saints” is more than 20 years old, but it’s still never the same album when you listen to it, and it still rings true when Paul Simon sings of how “the music suffers, baby — the music business thrives.” Please, world, move on and bring the planes back home.

Mara Coson on “Different Class” by Pulp

I once invented this skit where I made Jarvis Cocker Santa Claus with cut-up sound bites that I found on the net just so I could create a fake conversation with him (you can imagine the fan dynamics). I can’t be blamed for feeling too familiar; Cocker talks under his breath so much I forget it’s a recording and not a friend shoving me tell-alls and straight whiskey. “Different Class” is much like capturing overheard bar stories on tape, where they are forever knotted to the sound of the neglected jukebox, people making their way through the beer-soaked carpet, and the sighing of lonely regulars. I sometimes still think we’ve met.

Erwin Romulo on “Rescue Ladders and Human Barricades” by Various

I’m going to cheat a little bit here and name a series of compilations from Tommy Tanchanco’s legendary Twisted Red Cross label. The three albums were released on cassette under the heading of “Rescue Ladders and Human Barricades,” and feature songs from seminal punk bands such as Dead Ends, Wuds, G.I. & the Idiots, Private Stock, Betrayed, and the Urban Bandits, to name a few. The first one was released in 1984, a year after Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, and the final one in 1986, the year of the first EDSA Revolution. These were vital documents of that era that rendered sonically what the so-called “mosquito press” were chronicling in their pages. I grew up in a very political household. Being a kid at the time I didn’t have a firm grasp of exactly what was going on or a handle on the vital issues of the day, but I had a sense, a feeling that something was coming apart at the seams. It was a very frightening time (my dad was a leader for the opposition against Marcos) but it excited me too. The best and worst of times, indeed. These songs sounded like that, capturing and expressing something inchoate and conflicted rather than something that had been clearly demarcated along political lines. It’s why they still sound vital today and have not dated like old newspaper clippings or ring hollow like the old rally cries and slogans.

Margie Gomez on “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book” by Ella Fitzgerald

I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald long before my ears had a mind of their own. And if there’s one record I’ve kept coming back to, it’s “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book.” These songs kept me company as a scrawny kid mixing my dad’s scotches-on-the-rocks, as an overly romantic teenager, as a jaded 20-something, an inappropriately adventurous 30-something and a somewhat less adventurous 30-something. There’s no song in it that doesn’t fit — from the jaunty You Do Something To Me to the ominous Love for Sale and the wounded Why Can’t You Behave — something for anyone who’s made a career of living for that oh-such-a-hungry-yearning-burning-inside-of-me. So God bless you, Cole Porter, for the worldliness of your words, Ella Fitzgerald for your pitch-perfect elegance and Buddy Bregman for the wit and sweep of your musical arrangements. I look forward to your company for at least another three decades.

Kristine Fonacier on “Reading, Writing & Arithmetic” by The Sundays

I suppose it speaks of my mood that the first thing that comes to mind now is The Sundays’ “Reading, Writing & Arithmetic.” There’s a cutting sadness in Harriet Wheeler’s voice that always gets to me, no matter how cheerful the tune is. And so whenever I want to avoid being sad (not quite the same as being happy, by the way; more like knowing that there is something sad I’m avoiding thinking about), I like thinking that RWA is somewhere out there, holding the sadness so beautifully in my stead, so I can go about my day without having to deal with it. That’s what music is for, right? To help us avoid feelings? ;)