Moshpit Productions
Southern Invasion
an exploration of quintessential music down south
portrait of denial * all wound up * carygrant * goldfield
in loving memory * matching type * nuclear boogie * pay it forward
waiting shed * war donkey
Jazmer's Alabang April 10, 2005
Sunday 7:00 PM
P100
Philippine Violators, Bad Omen and the Askals were really distant names to me back then, when I used to listen to their songs as a teenage punk fan that was among the many anonymous blokes that littered the streets of Recto. Back then such names were to me basically synonymous to such songs as ‘Sikat Na Si Pedro’ (Philippine Violators), ‘Maling Sistema’ (Bad Omen). But that was then…
This is now.
Today is quite different for me and the rest of PayItForward because this time in that small venue along España Manila we were seeing the name of our wee band lined up along with our adolescent punk heroes who’s names echoed to us the sounds that played the anthem of our youthful angst that was courtesy of such cassettes that were released under the moniker of RMD and Middle Finger Productions, also vividly refreshing our memories of those a dime a dozen DIY shows that we got to see during the 90s.
This time it is a startling realization for us that we were on the same gig with them playing under the same production as that of the Violators and for a newly formed band that has been in existence for only a couple of months we see it as a breakthrough in itself for us since this was only our second gig as a band and we’re now watching Bad Omen in awe as we’re waiting for our turn to play.
This was just our second gig. Our first one is on some distantly unknown venue in
Looking at the flashing of the red, yellow, orange, blue and all those other spectrums of light crash down on the sight of Bad Omen rocking out all I could say was basically right now is awesome. Absolutely awesome.
They finished their set.
We play and for a couple of minutes or so we sang and put our hearts on the center stage as we utter the unsung hopes and dreams that we as a working unit of musicians and individuals put into melody those songs that were made so as to utter that blissful noise of our emotional punk yearnings and screams which were given life by the buzzing clatter of distorted guitars played in full blast alongside the pummeling staccato of drums.
I know that in the days to come all this would all but fade into but the obscurity of a distant memory for us as a band, nevertheless it would not change the fact that once upon a blue moon we shared the same stage with them whom we really looked up to musically, and I know that there might be others who’ve written about such memories more eloquently than this one about that time in their lives when they have come face to face with their heroes, and I know this piece of writing is not such.
But true enough this was written not because of flattery, or self-immolation. This is a heartfelt appreciation of how God enabled us as a band to be of such stride so as to play with them.
It was simply amazing and that’s just the beginning…
_________
please be informed pictures of the gig will also be posted soon....
"The remaining noticable characteristic of 'Che' is his filth. He hates to wash and will never do so. He is filthy, even by the rather low standard of cleanliness prevailing among the Castro forces in the Sierra Maestra. Once in a while, "Che" would take some of his men to a stream or pool, in order that they might wash. On those occasions "Che" would never wash either himself or his clothes, but would sit on the bank and watch the others. He is really outstandingly and spectacularly dirty." --slanderous description of Che Guevara from the 1958 C.I.A. dossier
Even in the most anti-establishment of underground circles, I'm amazed by how frequently I hear people complain about people they call "hippies" or "crusty punks." "These crusty punks came in here and smelled up the whole place," they'll say. What great transgression have these people committed to be so reviled? They have a different orientation to the question of "cleanliness" than the rest of us do.
Where do our ideas and values about so-called "cleanliness" come from, anyway? Western civilization has a long history of associating cleanliness with goodness and merit, best summed up by the old expression "cleanliness is next to Godliness." In ancient Greek plays, evil people and spirits--the Furies, for example--were often described as filthy. The Furies were dirty, aged, and female, exactly the opposite of how the playwright who described them saw himself; their filthiness, among other things, identified them as an outgroup--as alien, animal, inhuman. Over time, cleanliness became a measure with which the "haves" separated themselves from the "have-nots." Those who possessed the wealth and power required to have the leisure to remain indoors, inactive, scorned the peasants and travelers whose lifestyles involved getting their hands and bodies dirty. Throughout our history, we can see that cleanliness has been used as a standard of worth by those with power to ascribe social status--and thus, the "Godly," the self-proclaimed holy ones who stood above the rest of us in hierarchical society, proclaimed that their cleanliness, bought with the labor of the others who were forced to work for them, was a measure of their "Godliness" and superiority. To this day, we accept this traditional belief: that being "clean" according to social norms is desirable in itself.
It should be clear from the history of our ideas about "cleanliness" that anyone who is critical of mainstream values, any radical or punk rocker, should be extremely suspicious of the great value placed on being "clean" according to traditional standards. Besides, what exactly does "clean" mean?
These days, cleanliness is defined more by corporations selling "sanitation products" than by anyone else. This is important to keep in mind. Certainly, most of these products have an uncanny ability to cut through natural dirt and grime-but does removing natural dirt and grime with synthetic chemicals necessarily constitute the only acceptable form of sanitation? I'm at least as frightened by these manufactured, artificial products as I am of a little dust, mud, or sweat, or (god forbid!) a stain from food or blood on my shirt. At least I know where the dirt/"filth" came from and what it's made of!
The idea that it is worthwhile to use chemicals (whether they be deodorant, detergent, or shampoo) to eradicate organic dirt has some frightening implications, too. First, it supports the old Christian superstition that the biological body is shameful and should be hidden--that our bodies and our existence in the physical world as animals are intrinsically disgusting and sinful. This groundless idea has been used to keep us insecure and ashamed, and thus at the mercy of the priests and other authorities who tell us how to become "pure": once, by submitting to their holy denial of the self, and now, by spending plenty of our money on the various "sanitation" products they want to sell us. Also, as capitalism transforms the entire world from the organic (forests, swamps, deserts, rivers) to the inorganic (cities of concrete and steel, suburbs of asphalt and astroturf, wastelands that have been stripped of all natural resources, garbage dumps) the idea that there is something more worthwhile about synthetic chemicals than natural dirt implies that this transformation might actually be a good thing... and thus implicitly justifies their profit-motivated destruction of our planet,
In reality, these corporations are far less concerned with our actual health and cleanliness than they are with selling us their products, anyway. They use the high value we traditionally have placed on sanitation to sell us all sorts of products in the name of cleanliness... and who knows what the real, long-term health effects of these products are? They certainly don't care. If we were to become ill in the long run from using their special cleansers and hi-tech shampoos, they could just sell us another product-medicine--and keep the wheels of the capitalist economy turning. And the shame about our bodies (as producers of sweat and other natural fluids which we deem "dirty") that they capitalize on and encourage also aids them in selling us other products which depend upon our insecurity: diet products, exercise products, fashionable clothes, etc. When we accept their definition of "cleanliness" we are accepting their economic domination of our lives.
Even if they agree about the questionable nature of today's sanitation products, most people today would still argue that sanitation is still healthier than filth. To some extent this is true--it probably is a good idea to wash your feet if you step in shit. But, aside from obvious cases like that, there are a thousand different standards of what is clean and what is dirty across the world; if you look at different societies and civilizations, you come across health practices that seem suicidal by our sanitation standards. And yet, these people survive as well as we do. People in Africa a few hundred years ago lived comfortably in a natural environment that destroyed many of the very prim and polished Western explorers that came to their continent. Human beings can adapt to a wide variety of environments and situations, and it seems that the question of what kinds of sanitation are healthy is at least as much a question of convention as of hard-set biological rules. Try violating a few of the "common sense" rules of Western sanitation some time, and you'll find that going a few weeks without a shower and eating out of garbage cans aren't really as dangerous or difficult as we were taught.
Perhaps the most important question when it comes to the unusual value we place on traditional "cleanliness" is what we lose by doing this. Once, before we covered up our natural scents with chemicals, we each had a unique smell. These scents attracted us to each other and bound us emotionally to each other through memory and association. Now, if you have positive associations with the scent of the man you love, it is probably his cologne (identical to the cologne of thousands of other men) that you enjoy, not his own personal scent. And the natural pheromones with which we once communicated with each other, which played an important role in our sexuality, are now completely smothered by standardized chemical products. We no longer know what it is like to be pure, natural human beings, to smell like real human beings. Who knows how much we may have lost because of this? Those who find me disgusting for enjoying the scent and taste of my lover when she hasn't showered or rubbed synthetics all over herself, when she smells like a real human being, are probably the same ones who shudder at the idea of digging a vegetable out of the ground and eating it rather than eating the plastic-wrapped, man-made fast food that we have all been brought up on. We have become so accustomed to our domesticated, engineered existence that we no longer know what we might even be missing.
So try to be a little more open minded when it comes to the "crusties." Perhaps they just smell bad to you because you've never gotten a chance to discover what a real human being smells like. Perhaps there might be something worthwhile about being "unwashed" in the conventional sense that you haven't noticed before. The moral of this story is the moral of all anarchist stories: accept only the rules and values which make sense to you and really are in your best interest. Figure out what's right for you and don't let anybody tell you different--but also, make an effort to understand where others are coming from, and evaluate their actions by your own standards, not according to some standardized norm.
