November 2007 Archives

IT'S coming and it's out to get all Fender-loving guitar players, hahahaha (laughs like The Count). Now would you love to have a guitar that tunes itself? I would. I think Gibson has read my and the rest of the axe-toting crowd's mind when it comes to making a guitar. With this new rig, you can quickly switch to alternate tunings with a flick of a button/knob. Woah! Excellent! Wanna play like Slash, just whip out the guitar and let the guitar tune itself. Or Jimmy Page in Led Zep's Kashmir? Or perhaps be like Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix who often play in the E flat tuning (sounds warmer). It really takes a lot of time to detune those strings, hoping you're in tune. If you don't believe me, watch this video to see it live in action. Gibson has also created several interesting videos of the robot guitar. The "Psycho" version is just hilarious. An instructional video is also on YouTube: < Here's what its inventor had to say:

Which famous musicians are already using your system? Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins, he loves it. Matt Bellamy from Muse put it in his guitars. Uli Jon Roth, former guitar player of the Scorpions, says he actually can't live without it anymore. Steve Vai couldn't believe it unless he saw it, and once he saw it it was still very hard for him to believe. He's telling everybody about how great it is. Steve Lukather really loves it. I showed it to Pete Townshend, and he wants to get to know more about it. That's just the start of it.

Now, wouldn't you love to have one as a holiday gift.

By Lawrence Casiraya INQUIRER.net THIS video made me relive my faith in the power of the T-shirt. Remember the days of rave when DJs wore T-shirts with cool designs? And you thought only punk-rockers can wear one with either Metallica (Beavis), Ramones (assuming the wearer actually listens to the band) or that signature Rolling Stones tongue-wag. Truth is, tees look great on DJs with enough club-swinging cred like Gaspard Auge and Xavier de Rosnay, the French duo behind Justice. French DJs, eh? Remember 90s-era Daft Punk (dudes with equally cool names Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter) or the more lounge-y yet swingin' Air? Gig theatrics aside (one lugs around a giant cross, the other wears astro-man helmets), Justice sounds more like Daft Punk, with heavy, guitar-churning beats. Not so much present in this song. (Is this their answer to DP's "Around the World"?). Nonetheless, consider Justice served.

By Erwin Oliva INQUIRER.net DURING the day, C. Palanca Street in Makati City is grey. Located in the the country's Central Business District, the street is dotted with high-rise office buildings and condos. But you'll also find bars and cozy restaurants in between office buildings. Of course, you won't miss the "jollijeeps" parked strategically in street corners. At lunch time, you'll find yuppies in semi-formal office getup, standing next to each other, enjoying a cheap meal. It's fastfood on wheels, some describe the jollijeeps. But as the sun sets, you'll find the same yuppies in their disheveled office dress gradually filling up the street's now famous bars and restaurants. Here you'll find joints like 6 Underground featuring famous and indie Pinoy bands. I remember watching Orange and Lemons in another bar called Gweilos, just next to 6 Underground. Gweilos is where I first witnessed upcoming Pinoy band and Baguio-based Spaceflowers play their "danceable" tunes, and where I interviewed an all-girl band called Wake Up Your Seatmate. A stone's throw away, you'll find the defunct 6 Underground, which was literally located in the basement of the Glass Tower building in C. Palanca Street. I was nice to hear that after 6 Underground closed, a live album is scheduled to come out soon, PhilMusic. com says. The live CD includes recordings of live performances of various local artists at 6 Underground. Excerpt:

"Take me down, Six Undergriound..." For what seemed like a Camelot-like brief shining moment, the basement of the Glass Tower in C. Planca Street in Makati relived its glory days as a music haven for folks looking for something off the beaten path. Through the decades the venue had been many things -- the jazz joint Cafe Alvarado in the 80s, the legendary rock dive Kalye in the 90's, and a bewildering array of ersatz Irish pubs. Named after a tune by trip-hop band Sneaker Pimps, it was revived in 2005 as 6 Underground, a venue that sought to relive the glory of the Kalye days, while combining the bar/club concept with a full fledged recording studio that ended up documenting a number of fine live performances for posterity.

To this day, C. Palanca remains a haven for people who want to listen to a lot of undiscovered local artists/bands.

CHECK out this video interview that INQUIRER.net multimedia reporter Erika Tapalla did for iVDO on Yahoo! Erika talked to Urbandub band members (L-R) Gabby Alipe, Lalay Lim, John Dinopol and John Mendoza. Video taken at the EMI office at Universal Tower on Nov. 22. For more info on Urbandub, visit their official site.

By Erwin Oliva INQUIRER.net I RECENTLY got this e-mail message that says Odysseylive.net is live. Labeled as a "social music network." So I went to check it out. First impressions: Odysseylive.net seems to have covered all bases. It has streaming music, featured blogs, news about gigs, and classified ads. For artists (or those who want to be a rock star), you can register and upload some of your music. You can also invite friends to join this social music network. It was also quite easy to set up a profile. The service is still in "super beta." I am not sure what that means. But I did notice some bugs as I went in to check out the service. You don't have to register though to listen to the streaming music of featured Pinoy artists on the homepage. What's interesting here is that you can also upload up to 10 megabytes of data (photos, music, etc.) to your own profile. Personally, I don't think that's enough. But this is still the super beta version, hehe. As I went in to check some of the streaming music available, I found this interesting collection of Filipino bands compiled in an album called Bandtrip2. You can listen to at least 12 of the songs in the album. I thought, "What if you want to download the music you're listening to?" Hmmm. Currently, you can only listen to the music available online but there are no indications if the music is for sale or available for download. Here's another discovery: Beach Head with their chillout (with a mix of hip hop) song called "Freestyle." According to the group's profile, "Beach Head is a project band that writes, records and shoots video's during the songs composition. " A quick check reveals that Beach Head is apparently a side project of Urbandub's Gabbie Alipe together with the Kerplunk boys. Beach Head also has a nice video available on YouTube.

By Erwin Oliva INQUIRER.net I THOUGHT it was about a little fish that got lost... er, oh, that was Nemo! Okay, this has been "bugging" me since I heard a teenage kid say to hairstylist, "I want an emo haircut." What is an emo haircut? And why are kids today going gaga over anything that's emo? For starters, emo, as shown by the need for disambiguation in Wikipedia, is a topic that leads to other topics. So that means, emo can mean different things to people, as this blog attests. I understand emo as I understood the headbanging rockers in the 80s, the grunge movement in the 90s, and well, the hippies in the 60s and 70s. But again, these are terms that are often used loosely (read: abused). This article, however, reveals that the term emo emerged, well, back in the 80s. Excerpt:

The term "Emo" is not derived from the word "emotional" as I was falsely led to believe before delving into further investigation. In fact, it is derived from the word "Emotive". Emotive, noun: tending to arouse emotion. This is a key piece of jargon when trying to understand the most confusing Emo world. The "Emotive Hardcore" music genre began to flourish in the late 80s, led by bands such as the likes of Rites of Spring. The term Emo was, believe it or not, a somewhat derogatory term used to put down fans of the new wave "Emotive Hardcore" bands. But, after a huge boom from the genre over the last decade and a bit, the term has been stolen by "stupid little boys who cry and wear eyeliner," as Jack, 15, so eloquently puts it. Now many teens who have never even heard of the word emotive or listened to real Emo music, claim "Emo" as their own. Because of this apparent label theft, ironically, emotion, namely anger, has been aroused amongst non and anti-emo teens.

One thing evident here is that emo is a relatively new term used by today's teens to express themselves in music or in fashion. Back in the 80s, we called it punk, new wave, or whatnot. Or something else. This article also explains it further. Ian MacKaye who happens to be the "Grandfather of Punk" was reportedly the person who coined the term "emo." Some people don't agree. You can find more useful stuff about emo here. And more definitions of Emo from the Urban Dictionary. Now, back to reality...

By Lawrence Casiraya INQUIRER.net BOOKSALE rats may have found this already (and you must know it’s rare for magazines there to actually include promo CDs). The Spin Magazine July 2007 ish comes with a Smashing Pumpkins tribute CD courtesy of Myspace. Contemporary emo/alternative bands pay homage to some of Billy Corgan’s hit songs -- The New Amsterdams, The Bravery, Panic! At The Disco, Ben Kweller, etc. It does have some gems in it -- Panic! plays quite a gut-wrenching cover of "Tonight, Tonight" and an R&B-ish take on "1979." As a long-time SP fan, hearing the songs harks me back to my college dorm days, when everyone was head-banging to grunge staples Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains while I was commiserating with Billy’s endless whining. Steal this magazine for P130. If you’re not satisfied with the CD, then you at least get to read about Amy Winehouse. Her music (think 60s soul-jazz… Supremes!) is worth checking out, if you haven’t heard her yet.

By Erika Tapalla INQUIRER.net UPDATE: Editor's note: Added photo from Philippine Daily Inquirer I'M not much of a Beyonce fan, or an avid R&B/pop listener for that matter, so when I was asked to cover the concert, I was completely nonchalant about it. Upon discovering we were seated miles away from the actual platform and being nearsighted, I was so convinced my buttocks would just be warming up the uncomfortable plastic seat since I'd just be sitting there partly listening and mostly SMS-ing. Plus, the horrendous opening act by a local character named "Picasso" made me cringe as he rapped about God knows what, cause all I understood were "uhs," "yeahs," and the rest of whatever he said were so brilliantly slurred that when he said: "This is my last song," I actually heard people cheer. Minutes later, I saw the screen light up and standing in the middle of the stage, dressed in a tiny sparkly silver dress was the same figure we have come to recognize as Beyonce. She looked mighty fine and remarkably hot, and the moment she bellowed that she was there to entertain, the crowd screamed and jumped from their seats, which by then, they were already standing on. But that's them. INQUIRER.net reporter Alex Villafania, Strategic Edge account executive Rica Oquias and I ditched our seats and migrated closer to the screen in high hopes of at least getting a peek of Beyonce. Standing in the middle of the open field, only seconds into her hit single, "Crazy in Love," I lost regard for anything whatsoever and quickly joined the euphoria that contaminated every human being within the vicinity. She was utterly phenomenal and massively mesmerizing with her bodacious physique -- which by the way was insanely fit as no fat jiggled when she rocked her signature body thumps, commonly and locally known as the "ocho ocho." Singing approximately 15 songs including a fiery old school medley of songs she sung with Destiny's Child, Beyonce only left the stage for about six costume changes only to come back to further intoxicate the crowd with the no-lip-synching-pure-singing-and-dancing Beyonce Experience. In the times she was backstage slipping onto her super sultry outfits, her all-female band, and dancers grazed the stage with stupefying solos that touched upon a quarter of the spectrum of performing arts: breaking beats with the drummer, a classical remix of the "Flight of the Bumblebee" by her pianist, a pop-R&B improvisation by her other pianist, a sexy jazz piece by her saxophonist, a rock jam with her bassist; not to mention modern ballet, contemporary jazz, and back-breaking hip-hop dance numbers. I abused my vocal chords with excessive yelling by the time she sung her finale, "Irreplaceable," but I have no regrets being caught up and participating in the Beyonce Experience. The best part is, anyone of any age, any gender, and of any music genre fan, will definitely admire and appreciate for her heartfelt passion for entertaining, and her performance for its captivating variety. From an apathetic person, I am now a fan "ready for her jelly." Editor's note: Photo courtesy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

By Associated Press LOS ANGELES, California--The Eagles beat Britney Spears for the top spot on the Billboard 200 Top Albums chart this week. The band's new album "Long Road Out of Eden" debuted at No. 1 on the chart by selling 711,000 copies during its first week of release, Billboard.com reported Tuesday. Spears' album "Blackout" sold 290,000 copies. The Eagles' first album in 28 years landed on top after Billboard revised a policy which considers albums sales even when they're only sold exclusively by one retailer. Billboard changed its policy after Wal-Mart, which had exclusive rights to sell the Eagles album in its stores and on its website, agreed to release its sales numbers, Geoff Mayfield, Billboard's director of charts said.