I started listening to NU107 when I was in college because of a girl. I found out that NU was her favorite radio station, so I thought if I tuned in as well, I’d have something to talk about with her. “Hey! That Midnight Countdown! That so rocks, yeah?” Did it work? Well, let’s just say I freaked her out and she didn’t talk to me for an entire sem.
But I kept listening to NU anyway. It’s always Station #6 in my preprogrammed settings.
It was 1993, I was trying to find parking in that patch of dirt that was considered the university car park when I heard these lyrics on NU: “Ilang isaw pa ba ang kakainin, o giliw ko? Ilang tanzan pa ba ang iipunin, o giliw ko? Gagawin ko ang lahat pati ang thesis mo!” Me and my blockmates were in the middle of preparing for our thesis and as far as we were concerned, that was the impossible task that needed to be done that year. When I got to the barkada tambayan I was raving about this song from a band I’ve never heard of, a song about a guy willing to do a girl’s thesis just prove his love for her. We all agree that was an insane thing to do.
1995. We heard that the NU107 Rock Awards was happening at the Music Museum, so we drove there in my Nissan Maxima. As it turned out, you needed an invite to get in. So, we just stayed in the Greenhills car park, cranked up the volume to 11, listened to the bands play and the awards being handed out and pretended we were part of it all.
Strangely enough, because of Alamat Comics, we became part of the Rock Awards the following year. We had started sending copies of our comic books to NU107 and struck an exchange deal with them to plug our books on-air in return for ad space in all the titles we were going to publish. (Yeah, we thought we were going to release monthly Alamat titles back then.) So, when the next Rock Awards came up, Marceline Santos and Camille Portugal (who were in charge of NU107’s Ad&Promo) called us up to design the stage of the event. Which is why, if you any of you have pictures from that particular Rock Awards, you’ll see characters from Batch72 as part of the stage design.
I remember that we were given production passes that night, which we flashed around and said, “Backstage Pass! Backstage Pass!” –doing our really awful imitation of Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey.
Ever after that Rock Awards, we continued to do projects with Marceline and Camille.
Camille always found a way to include Alamat in various NU events. We were even able to launch Batch72 during an NU Pocket Concert at Robinsons Galleria, which featured Color It Red.
With Marcelline, we staged events in Club Dredd that combined poetry readings, comic book launches, and illegal screenings of X-Files episodes videotaped and shipped from the States.
Talking about X-Files, that was the reason why I got invited to an NU107 show in 1995. I realized that the MTRCB was censoring certain episodes of X-Files and I wrote to Jessica Zafra about it. So, she invited me to talk about it on TWISTED IN THE MORNING which was co-hosted by Claire Miranda and Allen Yotoko.
There was also that period of time when I worked at my dad’s office, which was in the same building as NU, which gave me an excuse to hang out at the DJs booth, hang out with Myrene, Zach, Joey, Francis Brew, April aka Tabitha, Roxy, Jelly Jean, Ron T, and Jaedee. I think I even got to attend two drunken anniversaries of NOT RADIO.
We loved NU so much, we even tried to pitch for the concept of the ROCK AWARDS. We got as far as presenting the idea to Atom Henares himself, but they didn’t buy the idea of basing the theme of the awards on a noontime variety show. Well, we thought it was fun and crazy enough for NU. Still, we had fun putting together that presentation.
I am now 7000 miles away from the Home of New Rock, wishing there was a way I could’ve listened to the last blasts of soundwaves from that great rock’n radio station.
Thank you NU107 for providing the soundtrack for the best and not-so-great moments of my life.
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