My Sonic Youth (Audible Reverie)

The downloading era and a bit of flashback


Nowadays, you could get any music you want; from mainstream to indie, to demos to garage music, way back the old times.
The downloading era and the CD-RW era provide you power and opportunity to become the audiophile that you desire.

My alternative teenage years

I grew up in the 90s, filling my head with grunge from Nirvana to almost metal Alice in Chains. To Alternative acts from The Pixies to Oasis.
In the Philippines, alternative music is about ethnicity, just like Joey Ayala, Grace Nono, Bayang Barrios and the like. There must be a indigenous instrument such as Kumintang, Gong or Tambuli. In the western stratosphere, alternative music is being indie, not having a mainstream record.
But there are bands like The Offspring who signed up a commercial record to Sony Records from Epitaph. A local underground hero, The Wuds, signed-up to Tone Def records coming from Twisted Red Cross owned Tommy Tanchanco who turned out to be the Introvoys manager. Bobby Balingit, the singer guitarist of the Wuds said something like their purpose is to gather a much wider audience because they have spiritual and nationalistic sentiments.

The joy of bootlegging and trade-ins

During the 90s, especially the 80s, people are into bootlegging, its just the good ‘ol durable cassette tapes that we play in our portable tough boombox with the sturdy plastic and metal that they use then. In that era, its hard to avail a CD because the common price then was Php 300, cassette tapes were Php 100.00. Now with a CD-R or CD-RW, you can download songs from the internet for free with almost an omniscient source of rare and commercially released music.
You could also borrow CDs from friends and just burn it with you reliable Nero. I support piracy though, because of the cultural revolution that it imparts. We could learn a lot of things ranging from new world music to the blues and jazz of the 50s.
Yet, there is a distinct bliss that bootlegging and trade-ins give music enthusiasts; it is the labor of travelling like going to Wizzle Dazzle in Recto to buy and to wait for you favorite record, they order it from other countries to please their customers.
The thought that you hanker enough, the patience and the joy of anticipation that it stimulate is a great wonder.
Now, yes, you could have almost every music with just a couple clicks of mouse but you miss the ecstasy of wanting like courting a girl and waiting weeks or even months to hear her saccharine yes.

Moving on

Well, I guess I’ll just make the best of the www and the fast-changing technology that we have. I’m not that much of a techie but its I need. Learn what I could learn before the day ends and just incorporate in my craft that I want to transcend ages.