from "Rock & Rhythm" (Vol. 4, # 69 / 1993) - [view clipping]

Part II:  Essay

"How We Spent Our Summer Vacation Recording Budget"

Actually, we didn't. Someone else did the spending. Recording started July (?) 1992 and ended April (?) 1993. Working album titles: "Lutong Bahay", "Pekaloid", "The Klasik Kapums Konsert Kookout", and "Eraserheads Greatest Hits Vol. 5" or something like dat. There were two recording studios, Hell and Heaven. Hell: Ac and Ad. Brownouts, floods, rain, wait ancient equipment, No DAT, Ed Formoso, master recording machine kept slowing down and breaking up.
Heaven: JR Recording. Groovy engineer, Mr. Willie (the screen) Munji. Freedom! Experimentation. Everything we wanted. Good food, sound, equipment (d-drums! effects! sofa!) Below is an RN'R exclusive:

Easy Ka Lang
BUDDY - The third song to be recorded, this was a disco for me. Disco siya na hindi. Masaya sana, pero wala sa gusto ko yung nangyari. Pero okay lang naman ang lumabas sa tape. All in all masaya pag tinugtog live.
MARCUS - Ronnie on boards. Thanks, red-eyed. Touch the sun. Hagibis. Disco. Black is Black riff.
RAYMUND - Disco experiment. 70's bass groove. Ska drums. VST & Co. back-up vocals. Piano on A minor pababa.
ELY - Boyfriends and VST parody. Sugar Pie Honeybunch bass line. Four f**king rhythm guitars and two leads. One enormous bass. One crazy drumkit.

Maling Akala
RAYMUND - Can't do decent reggae groove so I switched to hip-hop. Experimented with drum fills na hindi aral. Lyrics came up because of need. Few takes. No money for horn section so I put melodica lines and double tracked it.
ELY - The only song with two versions: first one had marimba by Buddy but was scratched because it was off-beat. Cost us lots of money. This version we recorded live (sabay-sabay kaming tumugtog). Guitars are not loud enough. It's not about sex! Ang dami ng takes mo sa lead, Marcus!
BUDDY - Nice fusion of music. I like it the most over the rest in terms of music, playing instruments and what-not.
MARCUS - Ely, hoy! Gising! Marimba under lead guitars tinanggal, pinalitan ng torotot ni Raymund. Maraming individual takes na nauwi sa live Hip-hop Reggae. Sex.

Pare Ko (both versions)
MARCUS - Tang-**a! Bu**t. Leche. Pinoy. Four years. UP. Dorm. Gin.
BUDDY - Boring. After four (three?) years, finally! We're all so sick and tired of it.
ELY - The mother (father? tito?) of all our pop songs, this one should be given an honorable burial. I like the POP-U version better (especially the vocals). Walanghiya talaga. I hate the mixing.
RAYMUND - We thought we could do it in 30 minutes; it actually took us four months. Somebody erased drum tracks halfway so I had to take it again. Problems with mixing. We wanted it to be more raw. Studio politics with producer, engineers, and techs. F***!

Shake Yer Head
RAYMUND - Guitar players Ely and Buddy. Major headache. didn't do anything but tambourine and clapped with Marc. Slept a lot. Nang-asar. Check out fading vocals by Ely (joke) The Bass. Back-up vocals pretended to be black kids w/ gigantic afros.
BUDDY - This song is my favorite.
ELY - Buddy's favorite because he played acoustic rhythm as well as a bass with phaser. My fingers hurt from five hours of trying to do decent acoustic lead. Andaming sabit. Marcus asan ka ba nun? Cost us a lot of money.
MARCUS - Boy George tune. Zzzzzzz. Buddy on guitars. Nice bass lines. Back-up vocals featuring Ona. Me on claps.

Ganjazz
MARCUS - Jazz version of Hony-Toinks Granny.
RAYMUND - Cosmic. One take. No mistakes! Sana meron pa 'tong piano solo pero tinamad nang kumuha ng grand piano.
BUDDY - The best tune in our recording history. Also the most fun. (This means that most of the time, the recording sessions suck)
ELY - Magic one take vocals by Jojo Bacasmas. Hindi na namin kayang tugtugin 'to. Maski naka-gang. The best album filler I've heard.

Toyang
ELY - Smooth recording sa JR. Bravo, Mang Willie! E ano kung baduy? Kaya ba ni RJ 'to? Idiotic, but some idiots are smarter and richer than others.
RAYMUND - Actually an anti-pop statement against the people who said we couldn't do a decent pop song. We showed them that any idiot can make one with a catchy beat and nonsense lyrics. When Ely says "go, Marc!" sa adlib, me and Ely were actually playing the lead guitar, Marc played lead sa end part.
BUDDY - Music-wise, it was so and so. But fun.
MARCUS - Probinsiya. Simple. Reggae, Rock Rock and Roll. Natalna? Nadonya? Favorite lead. Inosente. Distortions Galore. Munji "the screen" on boards. Bacasmas backing up. Vic Valenciano watching. Good food sa taas. Jojo - "ganda rito, overlooking Baguio."

Ligaya
MARCUS - Bass drum right speaker, bass guitar left. Wah-wah. Harmonize! RJ. Pop. Andaming rhythm guitar. Nasa booth si Ed kasama si Cathy Yao. May interview mamaya. Order ng kape, burger. First song na ni-rekord. Photo sessions.
BUDDY - Six or seven takes ba ako, Mang Boy?
ELY - Over-produced by you-know-who-how. Ang chammy talaga ng kantang 'to, no? Can You dig the chords? Buddy's bass lines?
RAYMUND - F***, I can't do a decent 16-beat after we banned 16 beats and heavy metal harmonics and major seventh chords way back in 1990. I had to actually count in my head during the take. We didn't have money for a horn section so we decided to do it with a voice arrangement which we did in a million takes because we can't sing like choirboys. The drumskit kept f***ing up. to change the skins (Nabutas)

Tindahan
RAYMUND - It's party on the snare. We put some ethnic instruments on the 3rd verse if you listen real close. Live and recorded samples, Marcus did tambourines.
ELY - Shameless Beatles parody right down to the claps and sound effects.
BUDDY - A long time coming, but this version wasn't as great as the one we did in POP-U.
MARCUS - Ang kulit ni Mang Boy. May baril. Ethnic percussions. Andaming instrumentong ipinatong na hindi marinig. Bad trip na kami by this time sa engineer dahil ayaw iangat ang level ng instruments. Waahh!

Honky Toinks Granny
MARCUS - Sick country. Country version ng Ganjazz.
ELY - Another great album filler. Go, Marc!
BUDDY - Awright Marcus!
RAYMUND - Smooth take.

Shirley
RAYMUND - All the parts were made as simple as possible. Shoulda been more noise. I did the piano part coz Buddy was busy and pissed. We were all inside the booth while Ely was singing which explains the voices in the background.
ELY - One take. I told everybody to play as if they didn't know how to play. Which wasn't hard to do. Engineer could fathom the noise. This one we recorded and mixed without BMG's knowing. We were over budget by then.
BUDDY - I was out half of the time.
MARCUS - Pwede ring Carol, o Josephine. Spaghetti-o. Take one magic. Blah-blah-blah. Spontaneous lahat. Energy. Feedback. Ayaw pa ring itaas ang level ng gitara. Dapat parang may eroplano. Wow, airplane, meron ako, Kwentong UP. First love ni Raymund.

Beektor Adam
MARCUS - Actually six takes.
RAYMUND - Sampled in Candelaria 1991 garage jam tracks. Read Joseph Wambaugh's "Delta Star".

Combo On The Run
RAYMUND - Funk attempt. Everybody played electric guitar. Fun, fun. All about Cebu trip gig. Skuss O. Samples. Backsmashing. Written by Ely and me, bored in Molave Dorm.
BUDDY - I could never really get the F - G part down pat.
MARCUS - Cebu. Barko. The Monks. Ledgerline. Introvoys. Nagkasakit ako. Four Tuseran/day. Good food. Lotsa yosi. First time naming nakakita ng mga Cebuana. Showdown. Experimented with panning, back-masking, sampling, whammy bar. Everyone played lead. Our signature song. Skuss. Wild. Funk. Hagggggrenptqrmnt!
ELY - Supposed to be the opening track on the tape but it made a damn good finale. I think.

And that's how we spent our summer vacation recording budget. In case you wanna know.

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