Day Of Reckoning

The list of musical artists I would like to see before I die is quite long. John Mayer is at the top, of course, but that box has (thankfully) already been checked, along with Oasis, Snow Patrol, Maroon 5, Gin Blossoms, Japandroids, Norah Jones, Vertical Horizon, Smashing Pumpkins, Jason Mraz, Stars, Phoenix, Aerosmith, Kings Of Convenience, The Drums, Alt-J, Haim, Gotye, and many others.

Acts still on my wish list: Damien Rice, Arctic Monkeys, The Perishers, Coldplay, Athlete, Goo Goo Dolls, Sarah Mclachlan, Collective Soul, Sting, U2, Dave Matthews Band, Pete Yorn, Foo Fighters, and, again, many others.

Then there’s Howie Day.

Howie working the delay pedals at a show

Image from Wikipedia: Credit: Justin Pugh

I’m finding it difficult to start writing about Day because the thoughts are coming faster than I can type. I’ve been a fan of his since 2002; I remember because that was the year I also discovered Mayer’s music. It was around that time that the age of the modern singer-songwriter was burgeoning; after Mayer there was a whole slew of artists that rose out of the woodwork with the same schtick—Jason Mraz, Pete Yorn, Matt Nathanson, Ari Hest, Matt Wertz, Josh Kelley, Tyler Hilton, Marc Broussard, et. al.

Out of all these names, it was Howie Day’s music I gravitated to the most (next to Mayer’s, of course). His debut album Australia was never released locally so it was pretty hard to come by (remember this was before the age of lightning-fast torrent downloads and Spotify). I asked someone to buy the CD for me from the US. I liked it immediately after one listen—it was raw and honest, somber but uplifting. It was the kind of record I put on after a long day at work, with the lights turned down and maybe a glass of wine in one hand (kidding, I couldn’t afford wine back then; I was probably guzzling a Pepsi).

The music was good, but what really reeled me in about Day was his live shows. YouTube hadn’t been invented yet, so what was available were bootlegged VCD copies of his performances. I managed to get my hands on one of those shows. To say I was blown away would be an understatement; Day introduced me to the magic of performing with samples and effects pedals. Basically he would record one guitar or vocal track and play over it with another, all by himself, onstage. At one point, it was like an entire band was playing, and the whole thing was nothing short of mesmerizing.

Here's Howie performing "Bunnies" from the Madrigals EP Bonus DVD

Day never became a household name, until 2003, when he released his second album (as well as his major label debut), Stop All The World Now, which contained undoubtedly his biggest hit (and the one song most people associate him with), “Collide."  I remember running over to the record store the day it was released (yes kids, we went to the record store to buy our music back then). Here’s a snippet of my “review” that I posted on a message board dedicated to Day:

I've been listening to it since I got it and one thing I can safely say: Howie's come a long way since his debut album “Australia.” It takes some getting used to hearing him backed by a full band and even a string orchestra on some tracks, but considering this is Howie's major label debut (Australia was independently produced), I'm happy to say that this album only magnifies what I've come to love about Howie's music: mainly his introspective and heartfelt songwriting and incredibly expressive vocals. 

Although I have to say that I much prefer the rawness and stripped-down appeal of his work in Australia, I don't think he's lost any of the passion and intensity evident in that album in Stop All... It's still there, although a bit “glossed over” by all the production work. And nowhere is this more pronounced than in the reworked version of “She Says.” You'll get the idea once you compare the version here and the one in Australia. After a couple of spins, my favorite tracks are “Collide” (probably the closest thing to a proper love song as we're gonna get from the always somber Mr. Day) and the trippy “Sunday Morning Song.” 

All in all, I think Stop All... is a satisfying sophomore outing from Day. Nga pala, the CD also comes with a VCD, kind of like a behind-the-scenes, “making-of” type. It's pretty cool, since I don’t think we've ever really gotten to know Day, not as much as Mayer or even Mraz.

Fast forward to today. Howie has since released one other full-length album (Sound The Alarm), and a live album (Live From…). I have all of his albums on CD (except Sound The Alarm, which I plan to get, if it's still available). I even have the rare Madrigals EP, which I got in Singapore in 2005. When news broke that he was coming to Manila, it was the most thrilled I got since, well, since I found out Mayer was coming. I got so excited I was inspired to write this long-ass post, which nobody but the most hardcore of fans will probably bother to read. Nope, doesn’t take much to make me happy. Just send me an amazingly talented singer-songwriter to play live onstage and my year is pretty much made.

Howie Day Live in Manila happens on September 11, 2014, thanks to Pinoytuner.com. Check out their website for updates on venue and ticket prices

Love Story

A+K

There are times when I fancy myself a hardened cynic who rolls his eyes at anything too adorable or blatantly virtuous. And there are other times when all that cynicism vanishes and I’m nothing more than a wide-eyed innocent, weeping at a fastfood commercial that hits just a little too close to home.

Today I’m feeling closer to the latter.

I’ve said before that I think it’s a beautiful thing when friends find love. It’s even more amazing if they find it in each other. This is the story of two of my friends, who did find love. And I’m happy I had a tiny part in making it happen.

(They may find it embarrassing that I’m writing about them, so I will call the guy A and the girl K. I know, it’s not much of a secret if you know me and my friends, but for everyone else, I guess you’ll just have to guess).

I never thought A and I would hit it off as friends. We like the same music, but that was pretty much it. He likes sports, especially basketball, and, well, I don’t. There wasn’t anything else that I could consider common ground, but I guess a shared fondness for singer-songwriters and their ilk is enough to base a friendship on because, over 10 years later, he’s one of my closest friends. I don’t think there’s enough drama in my life that would qualify as an after-school special, but in those instances when there was just the barest hint of spectacle that might qualify as drama, he’s always been there, and I appreciate him for it.

K, on the other hand, I met through common friends. She used to go out with a colleague who died. I can’t forget a conversation we had on the last night of the guy’s wake, when I told her I had a dream that the guy hugged me to say goodbye, and she gave me a hug, too. I think that’s when I knew we’d be friends. We haven’t hung out as often as I’d like to, but we’ve always been on each other’s periphery, seeing each other during the occasional barkada get-together. And she’s been witness to the mighty highs and depressing lows of my previous and current, actual and pseudo-relationships, always dispensing critical advice and basically just being there as a human sounding-off board.

I can’t remember exactly when they met the first time, or when I first realized the potential of an A-and-K pairing, but what I do remember is that when it hit me, I knew it made sense, like Coke and hopia, red wine and steak, or Friday nights and two pizzas (the Joey special, natch). When I thought about the two of them, I could hear the turbines turning and I knew something would click. He’s the quintessential good guy, a bit clueless sometimes, but always with the best intentions. Think Archie of the comic book series, only with dark hair and a Honda Civic (oh excuse me a new Ford Escape na pala) instead of a red jalopy. She’s a Betty-and-Veronica hybrid, full of life, perpetually smiling, but with just enough of a mean streak so you don’t even think about taking advantage of her kindness. Physically, it was an almost even match (I’d give her the slight edge, though, sorry A), but mostly I thought her free spirit, childlike wonder and intense passion would work well against his generally laidback demeanor, openness and incredible generosity. Besides, they came from the same school, and cheered for the same collegiate basketball team, so really, it was a no-brainer.

But it was not to be. Well, not immediately anyway. That initial night-out to go see the gig of a favorite local troubadour went well, from what I remember, but for some reason, nothing materialized. Like a science experiment that needed time to mature, the relationship wasn’t instantaneous. Those cheesy lyrics from that cheesy Melee song come to mind: “All of our friends/ Saw from the start/ But why didn’t we believe it, too?”

Melee's "Built To Last" 

It took five years since they first met for something to happen. I am not exactly privy to the details; K tells me that she just woke up one day thinking about A, in THAT way. Perhaps there is no specific answer; love moves in mysterious ways and all that drivel. But that initial tiptoeing finally progressed into something concrete. Something real. We all used to go out as friends, casual, easy, but now, the two of them were side-by-side, arms around each other, fingers interlocked. They think we don’t notice: the whispers, the loving looks they give one another, but we do, and while our friends (including me), give them a hard time, with constant jokes and eye-rolling, I hope they know we couldn’t be happier for them. Me especially.

It’s so easy to be cynical about love. But the truth is that almost everyone is looking for it. We may raise our eyebrows or stick our nose up at the latest romantic comedy on the big screen, or scoff and say “Eeww!” when we see couples holding hands or kissing in public, but really, whether we care to admit it or not, I think that’s coming from a place of envy and resentment. We want that, too. A and K have it, and if anything, their story reinforces the belief, that maybe, hopefully, it could happen to us, too.  

(Pumping some much needed blood back to this space after six whole years. Because...why not? And the first piece I am uploading is this, my interview with Neil Gaiman, which originally came out in the February 2008 issue of MANUAL magazine. Reading it now, I still think it's pretty good, even if I do say so myself). 

Me and Neil (Hey it was 2008!)

Neil and Pray

In which a cynical young realist meets and is transformed by the master wordsmith

By Paul John Caña

Neil: I liked being as famous as I was about six years ago. If I needed to talk to anybody, they would return my phone calls. And I was famous enough that if I was going to be interviewed…the editor of the magazine wouldn’t have heard of me, but there would be one journalist, quite possibly over in the gardening section or something who would go, ‘Oh my god! Neil Gaiman! He’s my favorite writer! Oh my God! I have to do this!’ And it would be fun.

In a sea of wide-eyed, book-wielding freaks, excuse me, fans, who converged at Fully Booked in Bonifacio High Street that Sunday afternoon in November, there was at least one person who couldn’t relate to all the fanfare. I knew why they were there, and was familiar with the subject of all that adulation, but I could not in all honesty consider myself a full-fledged fan, especially since I’ve only read a couple of his works. So being surrounded by hundreds of eager ‘Gaimanians’ hoping to score that much-coveted autograph, or something more precious like a snapshot on their mobile phones, was a little surreal. I felt like I was in a rock concert. Then again, I should have realized that I probably was, only the arena was a bookstore, the music was set in print, and the rock star was a middle-aged, black-clad Englishman who answers to the name of Neil Gaiman.

Neil: To be honest, I would much rather be a writer worshipped like a rock star than a rock star being worshipped like a writer.

In the pantheon of contemporary literary gods, perhaps no one is more venerated and adored than Mr. Neil Richard Gaiman. Well not in these parts at least. The Sandman scribe was in town for the second time in as many years, and the battalion of bookworms that descended on Subic for the Philippine Advertising Congress, where he was the special guest, and for the awarding of the Second Philippine Graphic Fiction Awards in Bonifacio High Street was sizeable, to say the least. In fact, the only audience big enough to rival such a colossal show of devotion and adoration for a writer here in Manila was the one that gathered in July 2005. And whaddya know, they came together because of Neil, too.

Neil: It is impossible to complain about [being famous] when the most beautiful young ladies come up to you and ask if you’d mind if they pressed very close while having their photos taken. You cannot in all conscience complain about this.

From being worshipped exclusively by comics and fantasy aficionados, Neil has recently crossed over into more mainstream territory via the big screen adaptation of one of his more famous works, “Stardust,” and for co-writing the script for the epic adventure “Beowulf.” When I meet him in the offices of Fully Booked big boss Jaime Daez, he is warm and relaxed, quite different from the stressed and harassed Neil I met two years ago (when I stood in line for more than three hours to help out a couple of friends get their books signed, but that’s another story). Neil himself has acknowledged the disparity in his increasing level of fame over the years. “I think post-Beowulf and Stardust, I now seem to have broken some weird threshold, where people who haven’t read my work think they know what I do, which is a really odd place to be. In the past, people like Stephen King would live there. If you haven’t read a Stephen King book, you would think you know what Stephen King books are like. You could go, ‘yeah, he writes that sort of horror stuff, and John Grisham he writes that sort of legal-y stuff. With me, I’m now in that weird place where people go, oh yeah, Neil Gaiman, he’s something to do with fantasy. And I’m happy enough with that.”

Neil: Any scary thing that smokes a cigar is cool in my book. Anything with a horse’s head is cool in my book. And anything that splits itself in half is cool in my book. And I love the weirdness…I love the idea of long, snaky tongues sneaking, climbing up, going through things and going off to suck fetuses. It’s all really cool.

Only 47 years old (a mere adolescent in literary greatness standards) Gaiman has already amassed an extraordinary collection of novels, short stories and comics that has influenced and inspired an entire generation of readers. No other living fantasy writer in English, with the possible exception of fellow Brit JK Rowling, can claim to have such a considerable and rabid fan base all over the world. But ask him what he thinks it is exactly in his work that resonates so well with people and even he doesn’t have a clue. “The truth is, I don’t get to know what it is that makes it work in one culture and not work in others. It seems to depend partly on national temperament, and partly on the quality of the translation.” Indeed, Gaiman relates how he is “big” in the United States and his native England, as well as in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines, but is stumped why his work never really took off in a place like Germany. “I don’t know [if] it’s the German temperament,” he says. “In Italy, I’m a bestselling author. It obviously works for Italians, and I go, maybe I’m getting great translations in Italy and rubbish translations in Germany. Or maybe it’s just the way these things work, I don’t know.”

Gaiman also sounds off on rigid academics who pick at his work, attempting to dissect his processes and find significance and meaning in them. “Honestly, I don’t think it’s my job to worry about or even think about why I necessarily go and put a piece of fiction together in some way. Mostly what I worry about is try and do something completely new and different from the last thing I did. And then, all the academics come and they line it up and they explain that whatever you just did is exactly the same as everything else you already did.”

Neil: Way back in the beginning, people would come up to me and they say, ‘You write really, really good women, what is your secret for writing really good women?’ And I say, my secret is that I’ve figured they’re human beings. And I’ve never actually worried much about trying to write good women. I just worry about trying to write good human beings. And letting it go from there. I don’t know whether that’s much of a secret, but as a writer, I’d recommend it to anybody.

While Filipinos have put him on a pedestal as something of a literary icon, Gaiman has thrown that respect and adoration right back at us. From his growing up years when he was influenced by legendary Filipino comics artists like Nestor Redondo, Alfredo Alcala and Alex Niño, to the burgeoning talent he has discovered via Fully Booked’s Graphic Fiction Awards (which incidentally was his idea and which he funds out of his own pocket), Gaiman has been very vocal about his high regard for local writers and illustrators. “I think the competition for me came from wanting to say that look, you guys are really good and there’s absolutely nothing from stopping you from going out into the world and being world-class writers, doing science fiction, fantasy and horror.” So impressed is Gaiman with the quality of the entries in this year’s competition that he actually believes they can get published anywhere in the world. “And what’s great about them is they…have a uniquely Filipino attitude, slant, texture and taste. All of the short fiction particularly doesn’t read like anybody’s trying to be like anybody else.”

Neil: I actually don’t believe in writer’s block. I think it’s something that writers say to impress people. Writer’s block implies that the gods, who are normally kind to you, have lost patience with you and are being mean, so you are screwed, and now you’re just gonna have to wait, until they lift the writer’s block and allow you to drive on.

There is something strangely comforting about meeting a man brimming with so much imagination and creativity and finding out he is as human and real as the next guy. Then again, a person who can conjure up beings named Dream and Death, who can relocate modern-day superheroes into the 17^th century and assemble virtually all of the gods of history into one fantastic narrative, and who can imagine a world of falling stars in human form and next-door neighbors with creepy button eyes can’t be all human. Surely, some magic must be at work in the mind of this dreamweaver, some enchantment hidden under the folds of his ebon sleeves. Time will tell what else Neil Gaiman will offer up to his followers next, but for sure, at least one more person has been hopelessly put under his intoxicating spell.