Every year, Esquire Philippines’ Man at His Best (MAHB) honors extraordinary Filipinos who are reshaping society. These are the men and women who are raising the bar for Filipino creatives, athletes, public servants, and professionals.
This year, we’re celebrating eight modern-day heroes and icons in film, music, sports, business, politics, and journalism. From music legends Eraserheads to award-winning journalist Atom Araullo, we present the 2022 honorees who exemplify what it means to be a Man at His Best.
Meet Esquire’s Artist of the Year, the Eraserheads.
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It's 2022 and we're still talking about the Eraserheads, as did our fathers and mothers, and as did their old friends in Kalayaan they've lost along the way. The band's songs were written to endure against the ruin of time, pop music saturation, and pitfalls of '90s Filipino folklore.
Ely Buendia, Raimund Marasigan, Marcus Adoro, and Buddy Zabala were never cut out for the elder statesmen role in Original Pilipino Music (OPM). It's hard to imagine them touring together every year with the same mythology we know them for today. Imagine them opening for younger groups or releasing quirkier songs or exploring techno or something. We'd probably go, "Oh my god, what happened to their music?" or "Get on with it. Bring on the [Redacted newer new wave band name here]." See? We just can't. And it's good that we can't.
It's even harder to think of them as something else other than being the enigma that they are. They went their separate ways, and for a brief time, the Philippines was a little worse that it was post-EDSA. No amount of clamor could get them to play again for a while. "What about the fans?" The band never did it for the clout (Well, maybe a little?). "What about the music?" They could've churned out more modern megahits if they chose to, for sure. "What about doing it for the love of OPM?" They already did. As that fateful Buendia text went in 2002, the one that led to their inevitable demise, there's a time to stay and there's a time to graduate.
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Romanticizing the past. We do this with all the acts who broke up or people who were gone too soon, of course. Most of the time, we fall into the what-could-have-beens and what-ifs of it all. It's human, I suppose. We tend to look at them through a kaleidoscope shaped by the myriad mental images and feelings they once evoked in us. It's about the fan's collective and individual connection with these things. Nostalgia, after all, isn't just something that happens when we remember the past, but something that helps us cope with the hard present and the future: just like how the Eraserheads are never getting back together. At least, not on a full-time basis... or not today (I got to cut it with the hope).
PHOTO: XANDER ANGELES
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The band needs something more than popular demand to do a show again. They have to really fucking want it. They play and go on their own terms, we all know. The Eheads were too cool for their own good. They're aware of this, too. So are the fans who swept ticket offices and online networks, the ones who bought all 50,000 tickets for the Ang Huling El Bimbo reunion concert on the 22nd of December. The production had even expanded the capacity of the venue to accomodate the frenzy. Talk about staying power.
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It's never too soon for an Eraserheads retrospective. Everyone's done it. The rest of the stories have lived on in Wikipedia entries and rumor mills and hundreds of articles and thinkpieces elsewhere. It doesn't hurt to have another one in 2022, nearly 30 years since the band's inception. We're just in time for the show, too, right? Context first: the '80s and early '90s spurred a Filipino rock movement that would go on to remake the underground rock and progressive scene. It was the precursor for the modern-day OPM we hear today.
Right in the middle of the radio boom and the most advanced pre-internet era the world had (Arguably the best, some would say), in a country whose patrimony had just been reclaimed and was rebounding from the iron grips of the past, a new attitude emerged. People were allowed to be angsty, to be young, to be courageous, to be a little free somehow. There had been no better time to be a rebel along U-Belt. Hence, the coming of the Manila-based alternative rock invasion. Leading the Parokya Ni Edgars and the Teeths and the Wolfgangs and the Rivermayas of the scene was this little band from Diliman called the Eraserheads. They started out playing just like all the other garage bands in the alt breeding ground that was Club Dredd. The band wound up becoming a singular cultural phenomenon.
Suffice to say, the Eheads were prolific, as most geniuses are during the peak of their powers. There was a five-to-eight year span when they were practically gods. In 1993, the band came out with their explosive debut, Ultraelectromagneticpop! We all recognize those hits now: “Pare Ko,” “Ligaya,” “Tindahan ni Aling Nena,” among others. It initially sold roughly 300,000 copies. (This was before streaming, mind you, children). Circus came next in 1994 and in that same year, the band had its first major concert. Eraserheads Jamboree was a banger. It would elevate the band to new heights. Songs like “Kailan,” “Magasin,” and “With a Smile” were playing everywhere after that. They would then release Cutterpillow in 1995, which would go on to hit the gold record even before actually being available in stores.
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The obvious case for their social impact is, of course, their lyricism. It's the same lyricism that would give way to their legend in due time. Music writer Jill Tan Radovan wrote in 2020:
"There were happy stories and there were stories that normally wouldn’t be told. But the Eraserheads made them so easy to understand and appreciate, you’d wish you’d met all the characters in their songs, too. These songs have become an integral part of Pinoy pop culture, resonate with listeners today, and without anyone intending to, have been embedded into our consciousness as a people."
I agree. Before they were run-of-the-mill karaoke mainstays, these songs dominated the charts and represented the zeitgeist of youth culture. We'd sing them to lovers, to friends, to ourselves in times of crises. What made their songs resonate was, indeed, their rawness, the kind of rawness we all had once upon a time. Kids related to them because, well, they were anthems for adolescence. The tunes hummed the blues of what it means to be a teen or young adult in the Philippines during that time. That's universal. They had a certain cadence and brevity that spoke of the perplexing deep-down, both in euphoria and heartbreak. The storytelling was impeccable, too. Songs talked about tragedy, conspiracy (No, "Spoliarium" wasn't about Pepsi Paloma), good, old-fashioned hohols, courtships, childhood memories, breaking up, breaking down, growing up, growing out of stuff. You name it. They wrote it. Their music was box office. It made for good theater. The rate in which they were cranking out meaningful hits was just unparalleled in modern Filipino music. And young people couldn't get enough of them.
That includes me, a probinsyano boy who was born in the middle of Eraserheads mania. I knew "Ang Huling El Bimbo" and "Minsan" long before I knew what melancholy and loss meant. "Pare Ko" was a battle cry for the basted. "Alapaap" was there for, well, my own hedonism. But perhaps the personal favorite of mine is "Shake Yer Head," and I can't tell you how many times I've played this thing throughout some of the most bewildering and darkest periods of my life. "I was born upside down," I've always known. The song just verbalized it. I've taken it to heart, as someone who still goes through a regular crisis of the self every now and then. The song reminds me of that Bob Dylan quote I love: "I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be, and so I'm on my way home." I left the province when I was 19, and I've been on my way since. I just shook my head and walked away (Ha, punny).
But it's funny. I never got to see them at their peak though. Such a pity. Everyone remembers who they were when they first saw the Eraserheads. Whenever I ask some friends who got to witness the band in its prime, I always get the same cheap cop-out of an answer, "Oh, you should've been there, pare." Very Katipcore.
People will always be suckers for reunions. I should know because I'm one of them. I remember buying the September 2014 issue of Esquire Philippines when I was in college. It was the motherfucking Eraserheads, for crying out loud, and it was a duty. We all know that cover by now, the one where they mimicked the iconic Beatles Abbey Road shot. It came with a CD containing new material the band relased at the time, their first in more than a decade. I still have it at home to this day. It was fan service and I ate it up, just like all the other Eheads people who bought out the Ang Huling El Bimbo reunion gig.
Esquire Philippines Editor-in-Chief PJ Caña wrote of the first Eraserheads reunion show in 2008:
"But there was one thing they couldn’t ignore; one factor that pushed them to relive the glory days, if only for one night. (And no, we'd like to think that it wasn’t the money). It was the people who stared back at them, whose eyes they cause to water and lips they cause to smile through a guitar chord or a line from one of their songs. They did it for the fans. It is a testament to how much the four respect, appreciate, and love the people who’ve followed their careers and who profess to loving their music that they threw away whatever hang-ups they might have had about themselves or each other and decided to just give the fans exactly what they wanted. And that’s something we should all be thankful for."
In an interview with Bandwagon Asia during one of their rehearsals, the band admitted to having a little bit of rust to them. That's normal. They're human, too. Speaking to Maddie Castillo, Zabala said, "We're having a lot of fun rehearsing and trying to reconnect with the songs. Now I'm reminded how fun it is to perform live. So hopefully the crowd joins us in the fun. We make the music, they make the noise." Surely they've found their rhythm now. They always have.
So will we when we see them perform together again. The Eraserheads have a knack for knowing when to give fans a reminder of who they were and who they still are. Their show in December is no different. The four of them still exist in a stratosphere entirely their own (I was told that there would be no interviews for this story and I still couldn't resist asking, mercy me). They're a generational talent that's transcended generational allure. They only appear to reunite every decade or so because that is all that their presence allows. It's always a mystery with icons of this stature. These dudes have a million other voices to speak (In this case, sing) for them. That's how they survive. They hope to keep it that way, too.
I guess the real question is: how many once-in-a-lifetimes can we get with them at this point? Not enough, really. The band thinks of this as their last hurrah. If it is, it's been a hell of a run. Their shows have always been predicated on the perpetual noise of the heights of their marvelous reign. That noise is still here. It always will. In the spaces in between these reunions and the next (Crossed fingers, folks), their lore only gets bigger, louder. There are only a chosen few who get to have that kind of hubbub to them. No act can ever replicate the kind of cultural capital the band has had. The Eraserheads were never made to fade into oblivion. They were made to be remembered as they were.
PHOTO: XANDER ANGELES
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Produced by Bryle B. Suralta • Photographs by Xander Angeles • Grooming by Racquel Gutierrez & Lala Flores • Special Thanks to Diane Ventura, Monica Montalbo, Jad Deveza, and DVENT PRODUCTIONS, as well as Edge of Light Studios
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