Songs for Our Generation

Damn. This thing brought back some memories. Talk about getting old.

Yesterday, I picked up the new Eraserheads album. Actually, this was more of a best-of compilation-- entitled Anthology-- and for a two-cd effort priced at 240 bucks (or less than US$4), it was pretty cheap.

I always thought that this band (composed of Ely Buendia on lead vocals and rhythm guitars, Raymund Marasigan on drums, Buddy Zabala on bass and Marcus Adoro on lead guitars) had the finger on the pulse of the youth generation at that time. Coming together in 1989, the E-Heads burst into the music scene in 1993 and ushered in a new age for Filipino music. I remember recording companies went into a feeding frenzy signing up one band after another in the wake of the E-Heads' mania.

Myself, I was on my first year in college at UP at that time and I remember a friend, Jing, always raving about how good this band was. So I bought myself a copy of their first album, ultraelectromagneticpop, and found myself a good background soundtrack as I tried to adapt to the UP collegial life after years of studying in an exclusive school.

Anyway, I digress. This album's a nice trip down memory lane with Ely's untrained yet sardonic voice singing honestly about trying to impress his crush with his new shirt (Ligaya) or lamenting about his troubles to his friend (the ever-popular Pare ko). Likewise, you can hear the E-Heads maturing and improving as they moved from their pop-ish and catchy first album to experiment with different sounds in their succeeding albums. These range from the hallucinatory (Overdrive and Alapaap, which was banned in Quezon City due to its drug overtones) to the heartfelt (Huwag mo nang itanong and Ang Huling El Bimbo).

All in all, the album contains 33 select songs from the band's eight albums and more than 10 years in existence. Of course, as everyone knows, founding member, main songwriter and lead singer Ely Buendia left the band in mid-March in 2002. The three remaining original band players decided to continue on, featuring a female lead singer, Kris Gorra-Dancel of the band, Fatal Posporos (which, as everyone knows, was also Donna Tumacder's band-- I think).

Ah well...

If you're like me, a post-EDSA uprising brat, you know what I mean when I say that the E-Heads was born during a better time. Of more optimistic days when four guys hanging out in college could form a band to get chicks and find success at the next end of the rainbow by singing plaintively about the troubles and tribulations of their generation.