It’s a generational thing

My column for last week's issue of Vox Bikol.

DURING weekends, it has become a family tradition to motor to my hometown in Sagrada, Pili for our weekly worship and a visit at the old folks.

For about three months, the trips became an ordeal as the electronics of our 10-year old car that survived Reming’s wrath, though bruised and battered by flying purlins that twisted in the winds, suddenly conked out. But everything is back to normal now, our weekly pilgrimage even made better by the rediscovered versatility of the car CD player.

You see, that three-year old CD player can play MP3 tracks. If you can’t grasp the difference, think about this: while traditional CDs can only have 20 singles -- my Ultraelectromagneticjam for instance had 17 -- a blank CD can have around 140 MP3s on them. That’s more or less seven music albums in one serving.

Since I started burning MP3 songs and playing them the past three weeks, with all my seven kids on board, with their mom and grandma to boot, I noticed that if there is one other thing that binds our family together, it is our common love for music.

Last Sunday, for instance, we sang our heart out to the booming beat of Spongecola’s Bitiw and the mesmerizing Tuliro. The former is one of the reasons why I believe the original version of Pedro Penduko (starring Matt Evans) is much better than that forgettable urban sequel that featured the so-called Engkantaos against the evil Calagua.

Our tastes are rather eclectic. My eldest daughter Sophie, for instance, shares my passion for Santana’s Smooth, for which she now scores 100 in our aging Magic Sing, something she previously did for Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, John Denver’s Annie’s Song and Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. (She keeps a notebook where the codes of these “signature songs” are readily available.)

But they are also generational: she couldn’t relate to Maria! Maria!, another cut from Santana’s Grammy Award-winning Supernatural album. And while I also sing myself hoarse to My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade in unison with them -- an MTV in Divx format is conveniently tucked among some movies in my now Brontok-free laptop -- I find myself crooning by my lonesome to Matt Monro’s haunting version of If You Go Away (at least the parts in English) that includes most passages from the French original.

The immortal love songs that sustained me through melancholic lovelorn episodes of my youth, they call ancient. Her grandchildren will probably call them fossils, my wife quipped heartily.

These trips are both educational -- they recently discovered, for instance, the greatness of the Eraserheads, the band their father grew up in college with -- and edifying. In these days of quiet desperation, when all seemed lost and hopeless, the power of music is a soothing salve to a weary heart.

We'll carry on / We'll carry on / And though you're dead and gone believe me / Your memory will carry on / We'll carry on / And though you're broken and defeated / Your weary widow marches on / Do or die / You’ll never make me / Because the world will never take my heart / Come and try; you’ll never break me / We want it all, we want to play this part / Do or die / You'll never make me / Because the world will never take my heart / Go and try; you'll never break me. / We want it all, we want to play this part./ We'll carry on!