Taking my second chance with Apo

On a recent blogpost in the web magazine pulse.ph, a writer I admire brought into consciousness (once again) the question, "Why do remakes, anyway?" Of course, she’s talking about the recent craze in the local Philippine pop scene wherein songs are rehashed & given new arrangements by today’s industry band-lings. The Eraserheads and Apo Hiking Society, two legendary Filipino acts, have a discography which spanned wide enough to each merit a tribute album. Like writer Joelle Jacinto (jarringly) observed, nowadays, revivals are given heavy airtime -- both on the local radio and noontime TV shows. As a result they’re played most everywhere -- on the jeepney, fx and the gig circuit. Everybody must have, at the very least, one revival song playing over and over again on their heads.


Some bias and a cover trauma
Let me admit that I’m really no Apo fan to begin with. Growing up, I (unfairly) dismissed the trio of Buboy, Danny & Jim as being too folksy for my taste (they were for older people, not me) and too visible, being that they were hosts of the then Sunday noontime variety show "Sa Linggo nAPO Sila”. Yeah, tell me about it: I’m being unkind because I know now you can’t dismiss a band just because they’re popular and could actually make a living out of being a band. But of course those 2 reasons are too trivial to even matter now. There simply just isn’t any valid excuse for my awful dismissal of this seminal Filipino trio.

But then again, those trivial reasons would quantify why, in the first place, it became more bearable for me to listen to revivals of songs by Apo compared to revivals of songs by the Eraserheads, which I can’t bear listening too because they always leave me feeling irritated, sad, & frustrated. I reason: the Eraserheads are not even a decade old yet; the songs are still good enough to be heard in their original form; why the f*cking allow some l*werlifeform to touch sacred ground?! You can’t really blame me because prior to the tribute album, I was able to catch – live- an MTV Awards show where certain popular acoustic singers (P.S. and J.B.) did murderous covers of "Ligaya", "Toyang”- their squeaky falsettos touching songs that were preciouspreciousprecious to me. And I don’t think, to this day, I’ve ever recovered from the trauma of that night. Of course, it may be that I’m just being OA and selfish. I’m being a little girl who’s refusing to share her precious life-changing paperbacks to a younger audience. (A younger audience, that tragically, has members believing that there’s no ultraelectromagneticpop, only an ultraelectromagneticjam.)

So with much more open ears, I welcomed the tribute album for Apo. In response to Joelle, yes, remakes actually share the songs & a piece of the band legacy to younger people & even to the not quite young who stubbornly denied themselves the chance to experience the music when they could have in its original context. Tribute albums, to some extent, do breathe life anew to past songs and past bands.

So with the "Kami nAPO Muna" tribute album which I found nice enough, I sought about wanting to hear the originals, to see how the new ones would compare.

Kamikazee’s Doobi
I’m no big fan of the song "Narda" and so it follows that I’d say I’m no big fan of Kamikazee. BUT (that’s an all caps B**), I didn’t find the remake "DoBiDo" revolting. I even said, upon seeing the video showing the group having an obvious good time, that the song suited them- it was pop-chaotic and illogical in a good way, because, hey, the song was meant to be illogical, chaotic, and just fun right?

Or so I thought.

You could say that the album piqued my Apo Hiking curiosity. I’ve been listening to old Apo stuff. Quite
predictably, I’d taken a liking to songs like "Ewan", "Panalangin", "Blue Jeans", etc. But by golly, the original "DoBiDo" was the most surprising of ‘em all.

Yes, yes, I’ve been an Apo bigot. Because the original rendition of the song was far from comic. Far from chaotic, and certainly far from being illogical. I’d call it affecting, emotional, and genius. It actually sounds like a folklore being sung. The melody is rhythmic with a haunting quality to it. Blew me away. And it really validates the question: indeed, why do we need remakes again?

Answer: Probably to make bigots like me offer a blogpost of repentance.

Take the time to listen to some good ol’ Apo, folks. :)