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Tapsirockin' Sunday


Rockjock DYLAN, host of NU107's Tapsirock

Every Sunday afternoon, I usually tune in to NU107 before the family leaves the house and get to listen to Tapsirock, a show devoted to Pinoy rock. Dylan usually invites people from the bands or from the music industry, like the owners of Club Dredd and music journalists. Every now and again, when she gets guests that we've met during the hey-day of Alamat, I'd text in and say hello.

So, it was quite a surprise when I got a text from Dylan inviting me to be a guest in her show.

Last Sunday, I went to the station and bring a book full of CDs and comic books.

Comic book geek that I am, I based my entire playlist on comic book characters and comic book creators.

We started the show with The Jerks' "Rage". Many years ago, I wrote a comic book script about a future Manila that was still under Martial Law. The entire story had no dialog expect for the lyrics of The Jerks song. I gave that script to one of the guys. He got as far as making characters designs, but he got swallowed up by the great need of paying bills, so we have yet to see a single page for that story. Maybe next year will be our lucky year. Oh, almost forgot, another trivia about this song is that the band played it in the 1995 NU Rock Awards, which was held at Limits. If you happened to be there and noticed the funky, comic booky art on-stage and on the walls, those were done by Arnold Arre and Bow Guerrero. That was Alamat's first "marvel team-up" with NU, all thanks to Marcelline Santos and Camille Portugal.

Color It Red's "Upside Down" was the next song we played.
Like I told Dylan, if ever Batch72 would have an animated series, I'd pick this song to be the show's theme song. And in fear of stating the obvious, Cooky Chua did, partly, inspire the character of Kupcake. Interesting to note that, we actually created Batch72 without ever seeing Color It Red live. We were already listening to their album "Hand-Painted Sky" at that time. We were also able to get a VHS tape of one of their performances, thanks to Mona Nieva who worked in RJTV back then.

Narda's "Lipad"
From one flying character to another, "Lipad" was supposed to be the theme song of Mango Comics' MARS REVALO'S DARNA. They never did release that soundtrack, but Narda put that song in their "Formica" album and I think it rocks.

Marty McFly's "Kill Your Boyfriend"
How are comic books related to this band / song?
Aside from the fact that Leinil Francis Yu is the singer / song writer of this band, the title of the song is based on a Grant Morrison comic book.

Barbie's Cradle "The Dance".
Of course, I had to play this. Way back in 1998, when poetry readings suddenly became the "in" thing, I attended one that was held at Mars (disco), of all places. I read one my so-called poems and just so that I won't sound like a fool, I read a couple of panels from Gerry's WASTED. I said, since some of the bands tonight covered some songs, I'll "cover" a poem as well. One of the bands that played night was Barbie's band. After the readings, I found the perfect excuse to introduce myself to Barbie. I gave her a copy of WASTED. Legend has it, Barbie read the entire WASTED that very night and the next morning, she grabbed her guitar and "The Dance" came pouring out of her.

(I think it was around this time a brown-out hit NU's transmitter in Antipolo and we were off the air for a couple of minutes.)

So, when we did get back on air, it was only appropriate to talk about Brown-out. I asked Dylan to play the Punk Zappa filler from the Eraserheads' "Circus" album. The hyper-active-ranting-character was another source of inspiration for Brown-out. He was originally based on one of Arnold's classmate from college. Whenever I wrote Brown-out, I'd imagine he was like Punk Zappa, Chito Miranda of Parokya ni Edgar, and my annoying classmate from grade school. And that's how Brown-out was born.

Rivermaya's "Makaaasa Ka"
This was written by Russell Molina, one of the Creative Directors in Harrison Communications. It was written as a tribute to the Philipines' "bagong bayani"-- the OFWs. So, I guess, it still had something to do with superheroes.

P.O.T.'s "F.Y.B.", which stands for "Fuck You Bitch".
First time we heard this song was at 70s Bistro and it felt like it was something Wang would write. So, it could be like a theme for Wang.

Imago's "Anino", the remixed version.
I played this because... it was a fast song and we were getting sleepy. Again, it's something I'd include in my imaginary Batch72 soundtrack.

We ended the show with the Eraserhead's "Maskara". Ely Buendia made the music video of the song about some faceless killer/creature. Arnold Arre did the storyboard of that music video (and that's your comic book connection for that song). When Brandie and I first heard the song, we thought it would make for a great song for the opening credits of a movie / TV show about a superhero. Oh well...

And that was it.

My two hours of fame on-air.

It was fun, like the times we'd be emergency guests on Jessica Zafra's radio show.

My big DOH!-moment: through-out the show, people texted in and asked where they could buy copies of Batch72. I kept telling them to go to Comic Quest, Megamall. I later realized that there are no more copies of B72 in Comic Quest. Have to fix that little problem soon.

Anyway, you can tune in to Tapsirock on NU107, every Sunday, from 4pm to 6pm.
Tell Dylan I sent you.

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