On How They Jammed with The Eraserheads

January 5, 2006

It’s around a couple of weeks now since the Eraserheads tribute album Ultraelectromagnetic Jam was released. It’s a collection of renditions of selected Eraserheads’ songs, performed by today’s popular local bands.

I had the chance to listen to the songs. I was very impressed, so I bought my own copy of the album. Today, I’m going to review the songs in this post. As an avid fan of the Eraserheads, I will do the review in light of the original songs’ musical style and composition.

For those of you who are not yet familiar with the Eraserheads, it’s a local band consisting of Ely Buendia on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Raimund Marasigan (or Raymund Marasigan) on drums, Buddy Zabala on bass, and Marcus Adoro on lead guitar. Raimund and Buddy can also play keyboards and generate sound effects, and Ely can also play bass. All of them I think can play the guitar; I read that each of them played a guitar part in the song Toyang. Collectively, the Eraserheads became the Beatles of the Philippines with their immense popularity, songwriting and musical style; they were also the inspiration of many other bands. They debuted in 1993 and disbanded in 2002.

As for the tribute album itself, the title "Ultraelectromagnetic Jam" is a reference to the Eraserheads’ first commercial album, Ultraelectromagneticpop (1993). The tribute album has seventeen songs in all. And best of all, all of the Eraserheads members themselves even participated in the album! But each of them participated in only one song, individually. My minor complaint is that it’s pretty expensive. I bought it for P300 in a record bar. In contrast, the Pinoy Big Brother four-DVD original package costs only P299. But the outstanding quality and performance of the songs is definitely worth it.

The album begins with the hugely popular song Alapaap, performed by 6cycle Mind. I’m very impressed with the band’s rendition, along with vocalist Ney Dimaculangan’s lively, aggressive singing. A lead guitar riff was added to the familiar arpeggiated G Major 7th bass riff in the intro. Cool. The song itself, according to the album credits, was produced by "H. Zabala", which I believe is none other than Buddy Zabala himself (whose real name is Hector Zabala).

Next comes another Eheads hit song Magasin, performed by Paolo Santos. Here’s one good example of Paolo breaking his acoustic tradition of doing music, because he’s into band music nowadays. (But in fairness to Paolo, he still handled some acoustic guitar in the background.) I still like Ely’s original vocals better. But at least Paolo’s song stayed loyal to the original in terms of the song’s key, which is Key of B. Most likely, Paolo and his band tuned their guitars a half step lower than the standard guitar tuning, which was what the Eraserheads exactly did. (I.e., whenever they strummed, say, a C chord, they produced a B sound instead.)

The next song is Spoliarium, one of my personal Eheads favorites. It’s performed by Imago. According to the album credits, one of this song’s producers is Raimund Marasigan himself!. As for the song, I’m very pleased with the band’s rendition, especially Aia De Leon’s gentle, soaring vocals. She definitely put emotion into the song, and the song fitted her very well. They also added choppy chord voicings at the chorus of the song, which I find cool and Beatlesque. (It also reminds me of another Beatlesque song Beetlebum by the British band Blur.) Unfortunately, Aia got short of breath as she was singing the repetitive phrase near the end of the song, but hey, so did Ely in the original. Overall, I’m very impressed with the rendition.

The fourth song is Overdrive, performed by Barbie Almabis outside the cradle. It almost feels as if the Eraserheads performed with Barbie as the vocalist, except that the original song’s key is a half step lower. Even the "spaceship going to the moon" sound effect was almost replicated there. But I still like the original ending harmonies ("Mag-draa…a-ah…a-ah…a-a-ive") better. I also like the original’s funny "shawarma, Offspring, itlog ng kabayo, chili con implant, ginataang gata…" line (spoken by Marcus Adoro, who is Wency Cornejo’s voice-alike when speaking), which was omitted in Barbie’s version. But I’m still pleased with Barbie’s song.

Next is the song With A Smile as performed by one of the country’s top pop/Rn’B band, Sound Border. As expected, their rendition of the song has an Rn’B feel. You can hear additional instruments such as the piano, synths and some percussions which are not present in the original. But they stayed true to the original’s key; they performed the song in Key of G Flat. A pleasing version for me, but I still like the original better, which has a simpler feel.

The sixth song in the album is Tikman, the Burger Machine’s jingle, performed by Sugarfree. Ebe Dancel’s vocals did fine in this song, as well as the vocal harmonies, but I find their version "noisier" than the original because of the heavier guitar distortions and lots of snare drum beats. And yet, there’s lesser guitar solos in the song compared to the original. Sugarfree’s version is in Key of A, while the original is in Key of G Flat, a whole and a half step lower. But overall, their version is pretty good.

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