Apocalypse : The Second World War

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By MAJOR TOM | November 1, 2009

I’ve been so busy with work-related activities that my blog is on a slowdown for the meantime. I wonder what issues are hugging global politics right now, or those within our midst. I wouldn’t be as informed as I am usually is due to my busy schedule nowadays.

Maybe I just put some morsel of thoughts once in a while just to keep things on and running. I'd be so busy till the middle of December.

Last night, after driving my wife and kids to a friend’s despedida party, I kinda still felt the tiresomeness that resulted from a most recent travel to Cagayan de Oro and other Mindanao cities that I went to bed so much earlier than expected.

And the bed was so soothing to my bodice and the night wind was comforting similarly.
And to top it all, National Geographic channel was exhibiting a series I’ve been anticipating greatly these recent days, Apocalypse: The Second World War, a six-part television program about the events and happenstances of World War II, captured by camera while the war was unfolding, with so many clips that were previously unpublished.

Truly, war is so atrocious and so evil. Yet reminding me that anecdote about how war sometimes becomes inevitable and necessary.

I think I’ve finished watching only 3 of the 6 segments. I hope I’d be able to catch up with the other three. I felt that among many documentaries I’ve seen before, I most enjoyed this one. Not that I am a fan of war, if ever there is a term like that, but it was such a mind-opening experience, about the horrors of war, and what form of evil can men actually commit and implement.

David Cook's Star Shines All The More With New Hit Single

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By MAJOR TOM | June 3, 2009

When David Cook's new single came on FM radio, I thought "Come Back to Me" was such a catchy rock ditty that I wanted to play it over and over again. I was even thinking of calling the FM radio and talk to the DJ. But nah, that was something we don't do anymore, making song request over the phone --- or do we still do that?

In fact, I liked the song first before I knew it was a David Cook song. Maybe it's true that David's voice is not so unique after all.

So, "Come Back to Me" is a number with a very strong come-on, and to be sure it would further reinforced David Cook’s stranglehold on his new-found fame, making his star shine all the more.

Maybe I won’t talk about this very catchy song anymore, maybe you just have to hear it playing.

Radio Playtime Pupil’s Teacher’s Pet

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By MAJOR TOM | May 9, 2009

Ely Buendia is riding high so once again with Pupil’s “Teacher’s Pet” garnering massive playtime on primetime radio. It’s on KLITE Manila; they’ve been playing it all so often and that makes it tops of the charts, years after it was officially released .

Just when we thought we can count Pupil as just another Eraserhead spin-off, the band lurches back with this ditty that has got not only great sound and melody, but really, really clever lyrics, one that only Ely Buendia could spew out and no one else, at least in the local music scene. It’s so original that way.

Consider how Ely sang in “Teacher’s Pet”: “You are a natural selection, a full-proof rule without exception. Let me indoctrinate you, while you indoctrinate me.”

That’s really awesome lyric making.

And the song itself sound so much like a Billboard charter, only if we don’t easily recognize that it’s Ely singing a catchy ditty all along.

Maybe I’ll just publish the entire lyrics for you to browse. Hope I won’t go copyright violating for this.

Teacher's Pet by Pupil

You could be making the grade

You could be making the grade

Don't let your memory fade

Stop cramming when the meter starts running

The Chris Daughtry Irony

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By MAJOR TOM | May 7, 2009

I stopped playing online poker for an hour tonight so I can watch “American Idol” on cable television and that’s a sign how I am such a huge American Idol patron. As a matter of fact, I am often glued to the singing competition show every time it’s on, perhaps five years in the running now.

I just loved how talented these amateur participants are that I often have doubts if ever they are really real contestants and not just been hand-picked by the show’s producer. And especially the early parts of the season, the one’s they held on stadiums, where lots of goofy things happened, and lots of crazies wanting to have their 15 seconds of fame. I had guffaws most especially when these so out-of-sync contestants really thought they were shoo-ins and even spew bitter and stinging words for the judges, most especially at Mr. Cowell. The episodes are so much funnier than any spoof one could ever snatch on TV, really.

But this year, I haven’t got to watched lots of American Idol episodes due perhaps to my busy work schedule as a University teacher. Or perhaps, I just got tired of it. So I watched AI sparingly now. I don’t even know the names of the current season's finalists, unlike in previous years.

But hey, this year’s version of American Idol really has stupendous talents, like now it’s so true, as what Randy Jackson have always been saying every time, that this year (like every year he says), the show has the most talented group of contestants than any other year, and the most tight of competition at that. Like he always says that, and it sounds so patronizing doesn’t it?

So now it’s down to the top 3 and next week would be final night. That’s great excitement for AI lovers. The cute girl with the rocking voice was booted out and it was a misjudgment. But hey, I ain’t got no vote privilege to ever complain, being far from the American coast.

And Chris Daughtry appeared with a new single. To date, he had sold 5 million copies of his debut album and had won a Grammy or two to boot. Probably Chris is the most successful Idol graduate to date. Except perhaps that Carrie Underwood could challenge this status, being so huge now in country music world.

Now I wonder, if this would be such a patent irony. We all know that Chris Daughtry did not win the AI the year he was a participant and was a far fourth actually, losing to Taylor Hicks and Ms. Katherine McPhee.

This must be what we can call the Chris Daughtry Irony. He is the reason why perhaps I could surmise why some contestants probably want to go home early and do a daughtry, having some kind of a sweet revenge, or a stunning comeback, proving all of em wrong.

Slumdog's Most Sublime Music

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By MAJOR TOM | February 25, 2009

I have thoroughly enjoyed watching this year’s Oscar awards night especially that my most favored movie to triumph won smashingly that night, in a fashion that I had expected, just like the way “Titanic” did it some years ago.
“Slumdog Millionaire” was such a runaway winner that it bested other nominees from almost every category it was nominated in, from “Best Picture” category to “Best Sound”.

It was kind of a unique feeling seeing or experiencing for the first time how oriental culture takes hold of the rein away from the West, as we are so accustomed to, and never let’s go, even just for one night, in music and in visuals. A.R. Rahman’s music just scintillated the night away that his musical number with M.I.A. on stage that night was just one for the books.

Maybe it’s time that we see the oriental side of the spectrum; maybe it’s time that the world recognizes that the Asian artistic spirit is just about to make a comeback and be here for good, not in hostile competition with the Western Culture that we all had adored for so long now, from art to music, but in a harmonious and Zen-like co-existence.

Slumdog’s sound and soundtrack had particularly made some extraordinary strides that for the first time an Asian musician won the nod in the movie scoring category. In this line, I would like to share how haunting and sublime the movie’s sound and music through this video, “Latika’s Theme”:

It’s a music that was played in the most emotional moment of the film, when Dev Patel’s character, Jamal, was finally about to be reunited with Latika, his love interest for a very long time, after a very long and tumultuous search, one that had caused even the violent demise of his older brother Salim.

It’s a haunting sound, like a sound from a long time era, an ancient sound that perhaps this was a sound that ancient India had been cradled in, upon a magnificent era of art and architectural achievements - from Angkor Wat to Taj Majal.

Slumdog Millionaire should remind us all how India, or the people thereat, had once the most advanced culture on the planet, having had the oldest religion in Hinduism, the direct precursor to another well-patronized religion in Buddhism, where it’s founder had been an ancient Indian prince called Siddharta Gautama, who was later on to be more popularly known as Buddha or “the enlightened one”.

In the story of Siddharta, he was once a very young and richly prince of great nobility and surrounded by all the grandiosity that life could ever provide, from gold to pearls, and had not known any form of misery or suffering whatsoever. One day, Siddharta heard a sound from somewhere far afar, and he was so enamored by the sound of the music that he had followed it. In his pursuit of the sound that he had not had heard previously, he was led to the outside portion of their home, to a place where he had never been to before, and there for the first time he saw a lot of poor and miserable people, many sick and dying. The scenes of misery and struggle had baffled him entirely that when he returned home, he had somehow chastised his mother for not telling him that in fact, life is not all joy and merriment but in reality, also of sorrow and pain. This realization had been the main instigation for his extensive soul-searching later on, one that had led him to the forest, and stayed hungry for days and nights to come, in pursuit of enlightenment.

When I heard “Latika’s Theme”, I somehow felt how Siddharta Gautama must have felt when he said that there was indeed a very beautiful music somewhere out there.

Slumdog Insufficiency

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By MAJOR TOM | February 18, 2009

IT'S PERPLEXING.

The most talked-about film today has something fishy going on that’s not worth mentioning at all. Golden-Globe’s “Best Drama Film” winner “Slumdog Millionaire” --- it’s producers to be particular --- has apparently left some of its heroes out in the cold, especially the kids that the filmmakers had plucked out of the Calcutta slums to play important roles in the British-made film that portrays and focuses on the lives of three young kids, growing up in filthy streets amidst the virulent political turbulence in India that had occurred some time ago, specifically about the harsh and often-bloody confrontation between the Hindus and Muslims there, where one of them kids had gained the chance to become a millionaire when he grew up, that is, in the most unusual way --- winning India’s version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”.

I’ve seen trailers of the herein-mentioned film and I can appreciate how it had garnered many accolades so far and in fact it remains as the top bet to win top honors in the upcoming Oscars awards night on Monday. British film director Danny Boyle ( Trainspotting, Sunshine) has certainly achieved some cinematic milestone with this recent work of his.

But then, this controversy; the child actors and actresses employed in the film were merely paid paltry sums and remain to be living in squalid habitats still, as they were before, even if “Slumdog Millionaire” had already surpassed $100 Million in gross ticket sales. Now that’s a lot of money to be talking about and it’s nearly criminal that these adorable kids don’t get as much as they should be getting. They should get to live in mansions from now on if you ask me and be driven in limousines everyday of their lives. That’s what they deserved.

I can sense some lawsuit brewing hereat. A sharp and snooping lawyer could surely spot some goldmine of a lawsuit and I have no problem with that whatsoever.

Hercules and Love Affair

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By MAJOR TOM | February 4, 2009

When I was just new to being a music lover, like really being into music, sometime just after my high school days, I had a thought then that I didn’t have much interest in dance music. Not that I were just being typical of most rock music lovers, who shows no restraint at all in showing (off) their contempt for “dance” music, like it was only for sissies and phonies. In fact I could like them so well in the past. When I was a very young kid, like somewhere between 8 or 10 years old, I had often jibed and feel the beat of songs like “Brother Louie” or “Tarzan Boy” being played in game arcades that I had frequented then.

Perhaps, it was my great leaning to New Wave that had somehow made Petshop Boys reasonably chic and modish.

Or perhaps, Depeche Mode was really a dance band when they started making music in the mid-80’s that we countless millions of soul who had loved them in their early days really and actually had loved dance music, without us knowing it.

One day, about several months ago, I passed by my favorite video rental store and got hold of the tribute concert video to Leonard Cohen titled “I’m Your Man” , and I just got blown by it. It was a very good concert video/musical, and could be just second to U2’s “Rattle and Hum”. There was this fat guy in that show who just appeared on stage and sang Cohen’s “If It Be Your Will” and I thought it was a fabulous number, the way the fat guy sang it was so terrifyingly haunting that I kept on watching that part of the concert over and over again.

The thing is - I never knew the name of the fat guy even if I had gotten so interested with his so enchanting voice. But I tried searching in the net and I later found out that his name was in fact Antony Hegarty. I thought that I liked to hear most of his song and wondered if ever he had some works before and truth to be told, indeed he was in a band, two of them in fact, Antony Johnson and the Aeons and Hercules and Love Affair.

This was how I discovered the sumptuous and wonderfully-crafted album Hercules and Love Affair, the self-titled debut album from the band with the same name.

The album is a dance album that’s why I was having some soliloquy about dance music in the beginning part of this post.
Now I wonder if finally, dance music is just as pleasurable as rock music. I wonder even if dance music is finally making a huge comeback, back to its heydays in the 80’s.

And for a dance band, Hercules and Love Affair’s album is so seriously wonderful and lyrically emotional that it was not like any other dance album that I’ve got ever known of.

In the beginning song “Time Will”, Antony Hegarty sang “Don’t Lie to me. Don’t Make it Up… I cannot hold half a life.” Now that’s just an emotional outbreak that just got me so wedged with this album.

In “Blind”, the band showed exceptional liveliness with a very jibing bass intro that makes the body move effortlessly and being so caught up by the ever so melodic vocals of Antony, making it one of the most original pieces of music that I have heard so recently.

And as if this wasn’t enough, the album moves on to higher ground in the extremely vigorous “Raise Me Up” with meandering lyrics that sang “They put you down. They pushed your face down. You kissed the ground.”

Naomi Ruiz also maintain vocal duties in this band and she is sometimes called “Fabulous Naomi” and the first time you hear her sing, it would be no surprise why she is called that way. Her voice is smooth and flowing like a crystal afloat an ice field, that in “Iris” and “Athene” she just turned the songs into full bloom naturally. She immediately reminds the listener of EBTG’s Tracy Thorn, so confident in voice and one who needs no vocal acrobatics whatsoever.

Almost every song in the album is as catchy as a fresh rainbow, almost all. It’s a being rare that way. Every song in it could actually be played on FM radio and that’s ultimate radio-friendliness that doesn’t happen every day.

Rating : 9/10