Hello girls... I see, this blog's been idle for weeks now. Allow me to resuscitate it for the time being before I resume work.
A few nights ago, Charms and I attended an eat-all-you-can oyster party at the 9Mile studio, hosted by Cherry and Archie of Cherry Cornflakes. At the same party, the two of us hung out with some of the guys from Naked Tongue. If your memory serves you well, NT was the band that won during the week that we participated in the GBOB event. They're a couple of nice dudes and Charms shared the same sentiments that they had about GBOB.
In line with most of the drunken conversations that we had at the oyster party, I'll be copy-pasting an excerpt from my blog about the airing of our performance at Ratsky just to relive the "wonderful" experience.
[For more accounts regarding Matilda's most recent gigs and get-together, kindly refer to my blog.]
GBOB Airing...I wasn’t able to catch the airing of our GBOB performance on a Monday (last October 17th ). I wasn’t expecting it to be shown that early. The girls texted me about it but I was taking a nap at the time. It was already too late when I got to read them. The weekly event is usually divided into two or three bands for every weekday and I missed out on the day that we were shown. Luckily, there is a re-run of all of the bands’ performance and interviews (those who were slated for the featured week) during Friday night (October 21st). I then got home by night time and my daughter and I were glued in on the tube, waiting for 10.30pm to fall.
We sounded satisfactory except for the guitar parts which were mostly feedback on video. Trust me, it didn’t sound that way on the house monitor during the actual performance and sound check. What we were mostly surprised of was that, Jovi’s single-hand drumming stint turned out to be NOT that obvious as we expected. Ha ha.
See, Jovi customarily brings her extra sticks during gigs, but for some strange reason, failed to bring those for GBOB. It’s not that she needed them always, but I guess drummers traditionally bring them along for pre-cautionary purposes or just in case some unexpected mishap would occur. I’m no drummer so I wouldn’t really know. As a bassist, I don’t usually bring in an extra bass or strings. For the many times that I’ve broken a string or two in the middle of a set, I just end up borrowing a bass from one of the bands that we’re playing with, which, for me, is more practical.
Anyway, so THE unexpected DID happen during our performance!
Right from the beginning of “Sine Cura,” one of Jovi’s sticks slipped from her hand. Nobody was allowed to aid the participating bands and Jovi couldn’t reach for it in the middle of the continuous drumming that she had to do for the particular song. Being left with no other fall back, she just continued playing with one hand until the end of the 5-minute (or so) song.
During performance, I knew that there was something wrong with her playing but didn’t think that she was playing with one hand all throughout. I just thought that maybe she missed out on some of her parts, hence one awkward sounding moment there. I just learned about what really happened by the time we stepped offstage.
That was weird. And to think that it also had to happen during an aired, not to mention global, band competition event! Nevertheless, we managed to laugh things off and joked about it the entire time that we were at the bands’ lounge area upstairs of Ratsky. I kept telling Jovi that the interview should have been conducted right after the performance. If that was the case, she could have at least excused herself and claimed that she admires Rick Allen (Def Leppard’s drummer and known for playing with one hand since one of his arms got amputated due to a car accident).
Many other bloopers were encountered prior to the Jovi incident:. There was also the whole day search for Coi (the band’s violinist) at her sorority’s tambayan and at the UP College of Music (we haven’t heard from her for a whole week until we found her the day before we were to compete); the panicky registration of the members’ list and the consequential need for a “letter for approval” addressed to the head administrator of the event itself; the non-stop text barrage to every member who initially seemed uncertain about joining the event; the drunken lone practice for the event (where I couldn’t play a single correct note, was mercilessly reprimanded by Meh the whole time we were practicing, ended up trashing 9Mile’s equipment and the owners’ bandmate’s laptop adaptor, and woke up the next day with a fist-sized bruise on my left thigh--to mention a few) the night before; and, the last-minute unavailability of Coi since she couldn’t leave her orchestra rehearsals at Ayala (despite me sending the van and Jovan (Matilda's former manager) from Malate to Ayala, on the night itself). Thank you so much, Jovan.
The end result of our segment on air didn’t show that all these things took place and the whole performance was just like “the usual” tight set. Upon viewing ourselves on national television, it occurred to us all that we should have trusted Jovi more with her skills. She didn’t just earn her good reputation as a drummer for nothing. Add to that the fact that she’s been trained, since early childhood, to play skillfully by her dad (who was famous for being one of the best drummers back in the 80’s).
Modesty aside, what we saw on tv exceeded all our expectations and we were all very proud of ourselves despite not winning the large prize at stake.
As for the interview, some parts were edited to shorten it, but it came out good. It was mostly about the featured song (“Sine Cura” had something to do with the accident that befell Meh and the death of one of the victims), the band’s musical influences and the reason behind us playing only one song (there was an 8-minute time limit, including set-up, and most of the “unreleased” Matilda songs exceed 5 minutes of play time).
Despite all the bloopers, the experience was something special and unforgettable, and the girls wouldn’t mind doing it all over again (sans the hassles of course).
