FROM JEPROX TO JOLOGS:
AN EQUITABLE EXAMINATION OF THE
EVOLUTION OF MY ROCK N' ROLL

"I wanna rock n' roll all night..."
KISS

And so did I. So did I. But that was a long, long time ago, starting from the days of the big hair and the bell-bottoms, ending in the days of the big hair and the bell-bottoms, a complete cycle, a full generation of fashion, a complete revolution of evolution. Those were the props, the complements, to the real issue of the post: rock n'roll.

There are two things I possess that are direct legacies from people around me: my love for books and my love for music. The latter bears telling.

When I was a kiddo, I was surrounded by a group of men probably 10 to 15 years my senior, the barometers of society, the dictators of fashion and the imperialists of music. They were kings of the streets and I was their protege, their prince. Together, the boombox was our scepter and the tapes were our crowns. If I recalled them thoroughly and analyzed the good things they contributed to society, I would probably be hardpressed to find one, but if I looked at myself closely and searched their one contribution to my being, there will be no second guessing - they were responsible for rockin' my mind n' rollin' my heart, and providing me with the foundation to cherish music as a melody from above. They were the evangelists of our place and it was their philosophy that musical salvation is at hand through a gradual osmosis of rock n' roll.

Bing, a real case of bling-bling, gave me a vintage Pink Floyd album called Meddle and asked me to listen attentively to its few songs while looking at the album cover and challenged me to state the concept of the songs and the object of the album cover. It took me a few hours to learn the songs. It took me more than that to find out that the picture on the cover was a close up of a human ear.

I had Peter Frampton's first album, Frampton's Camel, long before I read the classic novel Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder, and I was indebted to Nyol for lending me the former more than I was to my high school teacher who asked me to read the latter.

Noli introduced me to the biggest icon of Philippine rock music scene: The Jingle Magazine, and made me come into intellectual contact with my biggest heroes of the time, the writers Eric Gamalinda and Juaniyo Arcellana. I was wet between the ears, beyond Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World, but knowing by heart Arcellana's record review of John Lennon's solo album, I knew I was okay with the world. (I have a great memory, so let me try this one. In that review, Arcellana talked not only about Lennon's song Woman, he also made a little parody while listening to the record: he was enjoying his corned beef with lots of onions.)

Then came punk rock and a little reggae and I was still on the scene, my scene with guys Bling-Bling et. al. Nina and her Red Balloons made me pop and fly, the Police was truly arresting, Devo was great, divah?. Classical rock made a classical entry: Kansas' Dust In The Wind was whoozzing the wind like dust, that violin solo, shit; Styx was so uh-okay, you felt like going to music war with only sticks and stones; Steely Dan's Haitian Divorce was the greatest thing after Ricki Don't Lose That Number, oh man I love that song! And from Otom, avant-garde himself, who taught me to adore avant-garde music by way of Emerson Lake and Palmer's great album Pictures From An Exhibition. And finally, hoy Fredue, long before your Moby and his electronica, there was this French genius Jean Michael Jarre and his jazz electronica, this acquaintance through the benevolence of the great Nyol, not so great really because he pronounced the Frenchman's name sans Francaise, Dyan Mykel Dyare, dyahe!

And I could go on and on, so I'll stop here and say... Ahhh rock music, the decibels, the rhythms, the poundings, the hummings, in your face, in your ass, I will always have goose bumps whenever I hear Led Zep's Kashmir or R.E.M.'s Losing My Religion even if, despite my hallowed memories of good ole' Bling-Bling and Nyol and Otom and Nilo, I have graduated to a more serene sense of hearing and would rather spend the fireplace to the sound of Maurice Gendron's cello rendition of Camille Saint-Saens' The Swan from Carnival of the Animals.

After all, in these dispassionately uncertain times, classical music, through their passion and certainty and timelessness, discreetly became My Own Private Idaho.