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Jonny Greenwood, composer, violist, guitarist, adept of unusual instruments, wrote the musical score of Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood. His work on the film has been called unearthly, beautiful, revelatory, liberating an entire dimension of the film experience from cliche. Greenwood’s score is not eligible for an Academy Award because much of the music, such as the piece called Popcorn Superhet Receiver, was not composed specifically for the film. (This is also why nothing from Sweeney Todd is up for Best Song.)You may know Greenwood as the lead guitarist of Radiohead.

I don’t care for musical theatre, I never saw Miss Saigon, I didn’t like Rent, I wouldn’t go near an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical unless you paid me a chunk of money to plug my ears with (I have big ears), but I love Stephen Sondheim and I approve of Tim Burton’s adaptation of Sweeney Todd. Yeah yeah, they took out the song that introduces then sums up the story, and you can’t beat live theatre at portraying carnage (fountains of blood!) and horror (screams from the audience!), but it works for me. The voices of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter are not powerful enough for the stage, but this is not the theatre, it’s the cinema. Actually, Johnny could front a band doing David Bowie covers, and one might say he’s been in training for the role since Edward Scissorhands. The kid who plays Toby is great, the young lovers are so forgettable even the movie forgets them (we never find out if they get away), and Timothy Spall could play the Beadle in his sleep. Alan Rickman I found almost sympathetic as Judge Turpin. (Finally I can trundle out the Rickman story I’ve been hoarding. A few years ago, Yodel was at Old Swiss Inn in Makati when she heard a very familiar voice at a nearby table. She looked, and it was Alan Rickman. He was with some Pinoys who were talking about the Harry Potter flicks, and Yodel wanted to say, “Truly, Madly, Deeply!”) The former Ali G/Borat Sacha Baron Cohen turns up as Pirelli, in pants so tight they must help him hit the high notes. Sweeney Todd is wonderfully horrible. I can’t think of more beautiful songs about the ugliness of humanity. Don’t bring the children.

Lately I’ve been listening to Stevie Wonder a lot. Original Musiquarium, Songs In The Key Of Life, “Do I Do”. I figured it was nostalgia—plug in memory of Stevie singing “Superstition” on Sesame Street—and a craving for the kind of soulful swingy music that was popular in my childhood. I was kind of glad that “I Just Called To Say I Love You” was judged a case of plagiarism (though I’m mystified as to how it could’ve happened) because I don’t want it in the Stevie discography. (Remember that bit in High Fidelity where a guy asks record store clerk Jack Black if they have that song, and Jack flies into a rage because they don’t carry that kind of crap, and the guy says it’s for his daughter and Jack says, “Oh, is she in a coma?”)

But the “phase” has lasted too long to be a mere phase. The other regulars on my current playlists are that horny little troll-genius Prince, and Led Zeppelin. I’m glad I was a kid in the age of Zeppelin, when guitarists coaxed strange sounds out of their instruments, drummers played like they were beating their drums to death, and vocalists peppered their songs with references to The Lord Of The Rings (which I hadn’t read yet). There’s something I wish I had done in grade school at St. Theresa’s. Sometimes, during homeroom period, there would be impromptu “programs” in which you were called upon to sing, dance, or recite a poem. I always opted for the poem, but I wish I had stood in front of the class (and this is easy to imagine because when I run into my grade school classmates they tell me I look exactly the same, airstrip forehead and all) and started singing, “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold. . .” I probably wouldn’t have managed eight minutes (I still think “And there’s a wino down the road”), but it would’ve been something.

Until recently I had a personal policy against going retro: I would only buy new music, usually indie rock. This policy was rescinded when I finally admitted to myself that while I like a lot of these newer bands, I can do without them. They’re alright, but they’re just. . .alright. Hindi ako makikipagpatayan para sa kanila. I put this down to age, but I’ve wondered if there was some other reason.

Last year, the music critic Sasha Frere-Jones published a controversial piece called A Paler Shade Of White, in which he says indie rock lost its vitality when it stopped borrowing from black music. The piece is clearly calculated to provoke—in the age of political correctness anything that mentions race is sure to stir up trouble—but I found myself agreeing with many of his points. Especially when he says that today’s indie rock is, to put it more viscerally, kulang sa libog. Many indie acts do confuse lassitude and monotony for authenticity and significance.

One of the more interesting responses to the Frere-Jones piece came from Carl Wilson, who noted that “It’s not just race, it’s class.” Enjoy. Discuss. Meanwhile I’m going to annoy my cat Saffy with my rendition of “Immigrant Song”. It really ticks her off.

My last interview with singer-songwriter Ely Buendia was in 1994. I figured that two bands, one coronary, and a digital revolution later, it was time for an update

Jessica: The Julie Taymor movie Across The Universe features the songs of The Beatles. How would you feel about a movie musical featuring the songs of the Eraserheads?

Ely: They should call it Across the University Avenue.

Bald Hairdressers and The Afterlife of Porkchops, in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.

Things I might’ve known before I signed on to manage a rock band, that could’ve helped me stick around longer than four months, or at least feel less useless.

(1) If the band was already famous before you joined them, you’re parsley. You’re there to make it look like they have a manager and therefore cannot be messed with, but you’re not actually going to manage anybody.
(2) If you are a fan and consider it a privilege to breathe the same air as the band, you probably won’t be contradicting them much. Later, when they’re comfortable enough around you to fart in your presence, you will reassess your definition of “a privilege”.
(3) You work for the rockstars; you are not a rockstar.

A hotel room in San Francisco, California, April or May 1997. My roommates have gone off to visit relatives and I am alone and stationary for the first time in weeks. It’s two in the morning and I’m drifting into unconsciousness.

The phone rings.

I ignore it. I need my sleep. I just spent a few hours chasing half the band and two roadies up and down Haight-Asbury. They wanted to be photographed next to the street sign, like The Beatles during the Summer of Love. Then the guys scattered. We arranged to meet at the van in a couple of hours. This simply meant that in two hours I would look for them in every store on the street, prise them away from whatever was holding their attention— using force if necessary—and bodily drag them back to the van. Okay, I’m exaggerating— half the band was very well-behaved—but what’s the point of reminiscing about the experience if you can’t make it sound more dramatic than it really was? I don’t have any stories of cars being driven into swimming pools or TVs being thrown out of closed windows, so hyperbole is all I have.

Two hours later the guys piled into the van with minimal wrangling, which was weird. On the drive back to the hotel the vocalist stared enraptured at the billboards. “They’re breathing,” he whispered in awe. One roadie stretched out in the back seat and cried, “Help me, I need a guide, wala na akong maintindihan!” Apparently some old hippie at Haight had offered to open the doors of perception for the band, you know what I’m saying? The business manager and I had a discussion with the promoter, who wisely said he would lock the new friends of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds into their suite.

The blasted phone won’t stop ringing. I pick up. “This is the front desk. Are you with the band that’s staying in this hotel?”

“Yes, I’m their manager.”

“You better come down here,” the man said. “One of your band members is in the lobby, taking off his clothes and howling.”

I throw on a jacket and dash downstairs in my pajamas. True enough, the guitarist is walking round and round the fountain, keening like an old woman at a wake. How he got out of their locked suite, I have no idea. I call him. He runs away, shrieking. Through the glass doors I see a police car coming. I’m not sure if they’re coming for our half-naked guitarist or for someone else, but I take off after the topless howler. As the flashing lights of the police car draw closer and closer, half the band arrives from dinner with their relatives—rhythm section, good timing—and they chase the guitarist. They catch him and hustle him out through a side door and into the van where no one could hear him scream. Arrest averted.

For the record, I still love the band and listen to their albums. To rip off the ending of one of my favorite books: “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

I just read a short story called Perkus Tooth by Jonathan Lethem in which the title character diagnoses Al Gore and David Byrne as “super high-functioning autistics”. DB has described himself as “borderline Asperger’s”. He’s like those elders from advanced civilizations in old Star Trek episodes, the ones who guard the time-travel portals or decide to spare the human race.

In this piece in Wired, he explains the workings of the music industry from his unique perspective. “I have seen this business from both sides. I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will. It saved my life, and I bet I’m not the only one who can say that. What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. . .”

So Madonna abandons the record company for a concert promoter, and Radiohead not only debuts its new album online but allows buyers to name their price for the download. Do we hear bells tolling the end of the music industry? Or is this the sound of the artists telling the major labels to go screw themselves? DB’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists—and Megastars.

Contest # 2

A copy of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth and Hunter S. Thompson’s Generation of Swine to the first person who identifies the movies in which these songs are sung. (It’s possible that these songs have been used in more than one movie, so you have to guess which movie I mean.)

1. A Lucky Guy by Rickie Lee Jones
2. A Case Of You by Joni Mitchell, performed by the stars
3. A Quick One While He’s Away by The Who
4. Dusty Springfield’s version of Spooky
5. The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows sung by Rhys Ifans
6. Costello and Bacharach’s God Give Me Strength sung by Ileana Douglas (Kristen Vigard)
7. Logical Song by Supertramp
8. The Heart of Saturday Night by Tom Waits
9. Angel of the Morning played during a beating in a pizzeria

11.13am. Both entries got two items wrong. I will confirm that A Lucky Guy was played in Luc Besson’s Subway. Christopher Lambert and Isabelle Adjani in evening clothes in the bowels of the Paris metro. Subway was cheesy and dated even when it first came out, but I liked it.

Rickie Lee Jones I love. She’ll take a song and wind it around your heart like a noose.

14.14pm. Eep, my mistake, it was not Heart of Saturday Night that Tom Waits sang in the movie, it was only my favorite Tom Waits song ever, Please Call Me, Baby. The movie was Keeping The Faith, Edward Norton’s directorial debut. So erase that item, and we have a winner: Yuie. I’ll email you.

The answers: 1. Subway. 2. Truly, Madly, Deeply. 3. Rushmore. 4. Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. 5. Enduring Love. 6. Grace of My Heart. 7. Magnolia. 8. Please Call Me, Baby from Keeping The Faith. 9. Fingers.

To our contest winners: Okay if you get your prizes after the 25th? I just spent the whole day sitting in traffic. The road chaos is not going to ease up till after Xmas.

I saw The Beat That My Heart Skipped and I loved it, then I saw Fingers, the James Toback movie that it was based on, and I loved it too. The remake is excellent, but Fingers has a wild power and fury of its own, and you have to see Harvey Keitel circa 1978, he’s a demon. Then I discovered the blog of concert pianist Jeremy Denk, and he writes about music with such passion and wit that I’m just about ready to take piano lessons, except that I’d probably make a better gangster.

“Both the Tchaikovsky Trio and the Brahms G major Sonata are incredibly moving pieces; they reach for the deepest kinds of emotions (the highest shelves, the purest groves). And yet, despite my best attempts at self-delusion, despite pumping myself up with Russian manly whatever, the Tchaikovsky leaves me cold somewhere inside (except for a few wonderful places), and the Brahms is like a best friend who I can call at 3 in the morning, when I can’t sleep, a friend from whom all you need is the timbre of their voice, a mere sound and cadence which quiets all the false fears of your life and helps you see things as they are. . .”

Went to Cine Europa at Shangri-La last night to catch the two French movies. I’d gone early, expecting a crowd, but there were fewer people than usual—I think the recent event has made people a little leery of malls, or maybe they were all crammed into Megamall for the weekend sale.

You know how many people mentioned the bombing to me today? One. Everyone else went, “That was awful” and changed the topic, cause what the hell are we supposed to do. No one claims responsibility for the blast, so we just assume the usual suspects. There’s a bit from Casablanca that sums up the state of things around here (Hmm that’s two references to that movie in three days). Police captain Louis (Claude Rains) orders Rick’s closed, ostensibly for gambling. “I’m shocked, SHOCKED that there’s gambling on the premises,” he declares, then the croupier hands him a stack of cash and says, “Your winnings, sir.”

I’ve seen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on DVD, and I wanted to view it on the big screen with the lush colors and the big, swoony Michel Legrand music. Turns out they’re projecting from the DVD at the festival, but if you haven’t seen Jacques Demy’s musical, catch it anyway. Umbrellas addresses the basic absurdity of the movie musical—people bursting into song—by having the actors sing all their lines. So Catherine Deneuve and her mom are arguing in song, and the postman interrupts with the mail, and he sings as he hands it over. The mom sums up the movie thus: People only die of love in the movies. In other words, You may feel like love will kill you, but most likely you will go on living.

Next I saw La Mome, the Edith Piaf biopic (US title: La vie en rose) starring Marion Cotillard, who’s brilliant and will likely be Oscar-nominated. I sat with Ronald, Raymond, and the Lav Diaz, who recently won a prize at the Venice festival. Piaf: What a life, pink is the last color I would associate with it. I realized that Piaf’s songs must be played very loud in order to get their full visceral impact. She is not a crooner or a whisperer; she’s in your face, you can smell the wine on her breath.

Afterwards we got to talking about how Piaf’s life was so Extreme Nora Aunor, and how singing icons like Piaf, Judy Garland, and Nora Aunor have histories that rival the most outrageous movie melodramas. Apparently you have to plumb the emotional depths, get battered by life and endure the kind of shit that would kill a lesser mortal. You don’t just sing the pain, YOU HAVE TO BE THE SONG. Hmm, a Nora Aunor biopic produced by Ronald Arguelles, written by Raymond Lee, directed by Lav Diaz—there’s a 15-hour movie.

Then Raymond, Ronald and I ran into Eric Ramos, who’s setting up the local edition of Playboy, and I offered to write for him. That’s when we established definitively that if you’re thinking of potential Playboy covers, don’t ask two gay guys and a girl for suggestions. I don’t think a Temptation Island (Jennifer Cortes! Bambi Arambulo!) 30th anniversary reunion would work in a men’s magazine, although we had some spectacular ideas for Playgirl.

At midnight Raymond and I headed to Martinis Bar and gatecrashed Martin’s birthday party. Alright, I was invited, but gatecrashing sounds more fun. I learned that it’s best to show up late, when everyone is already hilariously drunk. I have to check with legal before I blog the party, but Manny, you gave us a blank cheque, don’t think we’re not going cash it as soon as we figure out how many zeroes.

This is what Greil Marcus wrote in his original Rolling Stone review of Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run. “What is new is the majesty Springsteen and his band have brought to this story. Springsteen’s singing, his words and the band’s music have turned the dreams and failures two generations have dropped along the road into an epic–an epic that began when that car went over the cliff in Rebel Without a Cause. One feels that all it ever meant, all it ever had to say, is on this album, brought forth with a determination one would have thought was burnt out years ago.”

That was written in 1975, and every word of it is still true. Springsteen and the E Street Band are now touring in support of their new album Magic. I have to see The Boss. Now how do you intend to do that in your present circumstances? I have no idea, but I know I am going to catch that tour. Last night I realized that I have Springsteen’s VH1 Storyteller episode on my iPod, and I saw it for the first time. Bruce opens with Devils and Dust, a song about American soldiers in Iraq, he explains how he wrote it, and he’s insightful, passionate, and funny. Then he moves on to Blinded By The Light, his only number one song (in the Manfred Mann version, not his), and it makes me want to listen to the entire Springsteen discography.

The thing about Springsteen is, we’re so used to him being brilliant, we tend to take the work for granted. Oh right, glowing reviews, critics falling at his feet, what else is new. But in our constant search for the Next Big Thing, the cool trends and cheap thrills, we overlook the amazing that is here now. Okay, I sound like those melodramas where the middle-aged guy leaves his middle-aged wife for some younger woman, but there is nothing middle-aged or cliche about The Boss. Springsteen is eternal and essential.