TALKIN' BOUT DEM BLUES

Saturday night. 9:00pm, I hobble into J.Nakpil street in Malate and there is a stage set up in the middle of the street... right across from the Sala... P.O.T. is doing a funky soundcheck onstage, minus adrenaline-pumped lead singer Karl Roy. I stop walking to listen to the wicked instrumental grooves they concoct. Damn, I think. I used to be a part of a band that could kick out the jams like that. I listen until they depart from the stage to make way for another band's soundcheck. Their soundcheck in the semi-darkness, with people milling about, half-listening, half-ignoring them is reminiscent of my artistic life...
___ Check my watch. It's 9:15. I still haven't received a page from the guy I'm supposed to meet here in Nakpil to talk about a possible business venture. They have a pretty well-respected website, they need help for their planned expansion. He pages me... he'll be late by about 30 minutes. I head on cautiously towards Verve Room, looking around in the hopes of spotting a friend, a classmate...anyone. But the faces that stare back at me are filled with vacant, beer-glazed antipathy.
___ I climb the stairs to Verve Room and discover that it is the venue for one of the Manila Blues Summit bar tours. A young blues/classic rock band named Mr.Crayon is all set to start their set. I take a seat at the bar, plunk my black folder down and wait for the blues. Although, come to think of it, I already got them boiling in my blood.

The bartender, this long-haired dude (I think he's named Hank) comes up and says,
"Hey man, you look so serious. Anything I can do, man?"
"Nah, I'm fine. Gimme a Pale Pilsen."
"It's just that you look so serious. Hey lighten up, it's a Saturday night! Did you come from work or school?"
"Well, I was supposed to meet this guy but he's late..."

...And my fiancee is on the other side of the globe, and my band just broke up... and I don't have a single freaking friend to talk with along this frightful stretch of gloomy bars and plastic people. And it's Saturday...a day I've just spent putting together this miserable website and then cleaning the bathroom afterwards. As in, down on my knees scrubbing with brush and detergent on unyielding ceramic tiles, the sweat flowing like putrid rivers across my wretched flesh. Nah... aside from all that, I'm okay. Lonely yes, but okay.

Mr.Crayon, "Manila's youngest blues band", or so the announcer proclaims, takes the stage and their vocalist starts expounding about his girl leaving him and how it aint fair... and how he's got dem blues. And the guitarist launches into extended, narcissistic, overdriven solos --- his tone crunchy enough to slice glass with, his notes bent this way and that.

...And it occurs to me that if I grab the microphone away from the singer and start jamming out some gut-wrenching improv about how my life is a blazing shambles and how empty a night on the town is without the woman who fills my life with brightness, I could beat this sucker at his own game. He says he sings the blues, but I don't feel a kindred spirit reaching out to me in the gloom. I only hear notes. And attempts. I can't sing worth a thimble-full of crap, but I could show this guy a thing or two about the blues, I think.

The guy I'm supposed to meet arrives. By this time, San Miguel has watered down my ache... enough for me to approach the meeting with gusto instead of dread. We meet, I share my ideas. I grab a third beer. And then suddenly, I am back out on Nakpil.
___ P.O.T. is playing, Karl Roy looking like I did that very afternoon, on my knees in the bathroom--- sweaty and exhausted. They funk up the air, but onlookers are mild in their approval. The hell with the crowd. You go, funk boys. The band starts "FishCake" and "Yugyugan Na" before belting out an encore. It's the end of their set. They depart from the stage looking like I feel.
___ I pick a nimble path across the tambays, and walk back out toward Taft Avenue, distressed at how much I failed to enjoy myself.

And the mild alcohol buzz only serves to worsen the emptiness.

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