The very first song I played on the guitar was from the Eraserheads' third album, Cutterpillow. I remember spending an entire night trying to teach myself the E and A chords on my tiny Lumanog starter guitar. The Jingle songhits I was studying had the picture of Michael Jackson triumphantly raising his arm, undoubtedly taken from his then-recently completed Philippines leg of the HIStory world tour. I was thirteen years old then, and I would begin what would turn out to be a very long love story with music, and it all began with the Philippines' fab four.
Unlike my cousins who lived in the West Triangle area, however, I never was able to go to any of the Eraserheads' gigs in Kampo and Chatterbox, so I was a fan of the 'Heads via radio only. In fact, I was a fan of most music back in the day via radio only. I was a pretty shut-in kid. At this point I'd fib and say that I was practicing for quarantine come 2020, haha, but that's not really a funny joke, and I really wish I spent more time going out and going to gigs when I was much, much younger because my cousins and other friends in the same age bracket who did go out all seemed to have had so much fun.
I did eventually start going to live acts eventually, and I had a grand old time. I and a bunch of friends even became a (very small) part of this live music scene for a time, so I'd come to learn and appreciate the difficulties of setting up events like the 'Heads' upcoming concert this December. I understand just how many people they would need to man the gate, the security, the ingress and egress, the cost of producing material and setting up the venue - or the cost of the venue itself, for that matter.
Plus there is the fact that the 'Heads are undoubtedly the biggest act the Philippines has to offer. Despite the furor over how unjust the prices of a ticket to the concert are, I have absolutely no doubt that the venue's going to be packed, that Buddy, Raimund, Marcus, and Ely are going to be playing at one of the most enthusiastic - if aging - audiences they've ever played, and that the clamor for encores will be numerous. The 'Heads is one of those acts that have become "too big to fail", and for good reason; their music influenced generations of listeners for more than a decade, and reshaped - perhaps revitalized - a music industry that was reliant on aging jingles, ballads, and a curiously resilient disco scene that probably still lives in some corner of the country to this day, where some dj is playing remixes of Annie Batungbakal, Macho Gwapito, and the many, many hits of VST & Co.
I would say that while exorbitant, the fees being asked by the band for their upcoming gig is fair. Exorbitant because the majority of the 'Heads' listeners back in the day were teenagers and children coming from middle to lower class households, and while many have risen above their stations over the years, many remain securely stranded where they had been for the last four decades or so, some through their own faults, but others through no fault of their own (see my post on structure vs. agency). And the ones who did manage to make it are now straddled with real-world issues and responsibilities that might be limiting their ability to splurge on a ticket to the much-awaited reunion concert. A part of me wonders just what my father or mother would have done if either the Beatles or Elvis Presley - their respective favorites - ever played in the Philippines while I was going through high school or college. Would they have splurged on a ticket? Those would have been sure to be expensive back in the day. I'd like to think that they would have treated themselves to something like that once in a while, but I doubt it; when you get to a certain age, and get faced with a certain set of responsibilities, you stop spending on frivolities such as these, and start keeping your money for more important shit, like your kids' college fund.
I also say that the gate prices of the tickets are fair because - well, they're the friggin' Eraserheads. And the fact that they get together to play once in every five years makes the occasion incredibly rare. At this point in their careers, I'm pretty sure these guys can name any price they wanted, and the guys behind the production and management of the event would go for it and find a way to market it. As it is, the 'Heads just teased a concert in December what? Three weeks ago? And the interest for the concert once the tickets started being sold was so wild, the queue was at least a thousand people long, and people were waiting in line for an hour to get a chance to purchase theirs.
If that isn't a testament to just how bankable these guys are, then I don't know what is. I've never actually paid for an E'heads concert, though, and I don't think I ever will (don't quote me on that because that is subject to change in the future lol). Closest I ever got to that point was one of their gigs over at BGC back when the global city was new, and I'd happened to pass through the area with a friend, and we decided to sit outside of the concert grounds and listen in. Fun times, those.
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