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By: Eric S. Caruncho Nineteen seventy nine was an exciting year for Pinoy rock. Punk had broken two years earlier with the bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, and X-Ray Spex infecting the music world like some lethal virus. The new sound was slowly infiltrating the local airwaves when Chickoy Pura and Nitoy Adriano decided the time was ripe to form a band. Chickoy had been doing a folk-singing gig for a couple of years; Nitoy had been a guitar player since high school days. Nobody gives much of a damn about Sabado Nights here at Mayric's. It is Friday night in this dank, cramped dive along Espana, and Friday night is The Jerks' Night. The room is packed with hard drinking regular, and everyone of them knows that he is going to get his 50-peso entrance fee's worth, because the four nondescript guys on stage are quite possibly the best rock & roll band in Manila. Maybe not the best known - just the best. The band has been playing a rock -solid if eclectic set of classic covers for most of the night- Stones, Cream, Joe Jackson, Lou Reed - with the occasional originals thrown in. Finally, Nitoy Adriano picks out s bouncy, Afro-beat inflected chord pattern on his well-worn Strat. Pino Fernandez and Benjie Santos nail the rhythm down on bass and drums. Throat raw from singing half the night, Chickoy Pura goes into chorus. Most of the audience is by now too drunk to get up and dance, so they just join in, drumming on tables, clinking forks on beer mugs. Ang naglalakad ng tulog ay tiyak na mauuntog. "Minsan naaasiwa ako dahil tila lahat na ng banda ngayon may major label contract, " says Pura. "Bakit kami wala? Pero nawawala ang pakiramdam na 'yon pag tumutugtog na kami. At peace ako na mahusay ang banda ko - puwedeng isabay kahit kanino. Wala akong insecurity kasi alam kong 100 percent magde-deliver ang banda." "Bakit hindi kayo nakasama doon? 'Yan ang laging tanong sa amin. May pressure din sa amin ang maging commercial, at siyempre okay din sa amin ang magkaroon ng major label contract. Pero hindi to the point na magbabago kami. Bilang musikero, ikaw pa rin dapat ang magcha-chart ng direksiyion ninyo bilang bilang isang banda." --- Chikoy The two had bumped into each other on and off in Manila's folk circuit, which gravitated around clubs like the Bodega, T.G.I.F., and the Kola House. They hooked up with Jun Lopito, then already well-known as an ace lead guitar player who had played with the legendary Joey "Pepe" Smith. Next, they stole a rhythm section from an oldies band and tried to think of a name. Chickoy came up with "the Jerks" - he was not aware that a New York band called Teenage Jesus and the Jerks already existed. (Later a California hardcore band named themselves the Circle Jerks. They didn't know the Jerks already existed." "Basta may pangalan," said Nitoy, so "the Jerks" it was. The Jerks burst into the scene at a time when the pioneers of Pinoy Rock had either gone into hibernation or left town for better paying gigs abroad. The field was wide open for an aggressive young band They recorded three songs - two originals called "Romantic Kill" and "Big Deal," and a ska arrangement of the Beatles' "Day Tripper," which was picked up by Howlin' Dave of DZRJ, the only rock station on AM at the time. Listeners were startled. Here was a Pinoy rock band who - sacrilege! - not only had an English name (harking back to the Sixties when bands called themselves the Jovials, the Moonstrucks, and the Downbeats) but had the gall to compose songs in English. Since the Juan dela Cruz Band had come out with "Himig Natin," the bands on the scene had gone on a nationalistic bender, adopting names like Anakbayan, Asin, Banyuhay. The mighty Psyclones of Olongapo had even renamed themselves Maria Cafra , in deference to the tenor of the times. These pioneers had taken great pains to make Tagalog a suitable medium for Rock & Roll, and here where the Jerks on radio, singing: That's what I'm gonna do Call it a romantic kill" Meantime, they had picked up Pino Fernandez as a bass player. Another reformed folkie, Pino had hung around the Jerks for a long time before being asked to join. "Nagpagawa pa nga ako ng T-shirt na may nakasulat na 'The Jerks' Number One Fan,' para libre ang entrance ko, " recalls Fernandez. Three years in Olongapo, playing four nights a week, turned the Jerks into seasoned road veterans. "Nahasa kami ng husto," says Chickoy. They returned to Manila only to find that playing gigs were few and far between. As the country reeled in the recession following the Aquino assassination, the Jerks themselves went into hibernation. In 1998, after a couple of years of scuffling for session work, Chickoy and Nitoy joined a showband and headed for Japan. When they returned a scant four months, they found the local music scene in the midst of a transformation. Activist Music had long disdained rock & roll as decadent Western capitalist music. Only folk music, the music of the masses, was fit to express the noble sentiments of the struggle against oppression. Rockers, on the other hand, thought of activists as humorless automations who wouldn't know a good time if it came up and bit them on their stuffed-up idealistic noses. Then, the unexpected happened. As bands like U2 and Midnight Oil began to espouse popular causes through music, activists learned to rock, and rockers learned that politics wasn't necessarily a bad word. "Rock is very aggressive music," says Chickoy. "Bagay na bagay siya sa protest, kasi yung mga grievances mo mas madaling ma-express sa mas agresibong paraan. Mas effective lalo na kung mga bata ang dapat marating." The Jerks started hanging out with the protest music pioneers such as Jess Santiago and Gary Granada. Under their influence, Chickoy's creative juices started flowing again-this time in Tagalog. Finding inspirations in the plight of ordinary people like himself, scuffling to make ends meet, he began writing songs. When drummer Flor Mendoza left for another tour of duty abroad, the Jerks began to shop around for another. They found another fan. Benjie Santos was till in fourth grade when he first heard the Jerks. He had been playing with the Runaway Boys, a rockabilly outfit, when the call from the Jerks came. The new, improved Jerks-the band's present incarnation-would be Chickoy on vocals and rhythm guitar, Nitoy on lead, Pino on bass, and Benjie on drums. And while they wouldn't - couldn't give up playing the old standards by the Stones, the Who, Cream, and the Clash, they would increasingly focus on the original songs now flowing from Chickoy's pen. Songs such as "Reklamo ng Reklamo," perhaps their best known song, which is about lazy butts who keep complaining about the state of the nation but don't do anything about it. Bumili ka na ng tiket Sa Amerika mag-piknik Huwag ka nang babalik Reklamo ng reklamo Gustong maging Amerikano Reklamo ng reklamo Ang tatay mong kalbo! The Jerks contributed songs to a number of compilation albums, including the cause-oriented Karapatang Pantao, and the Freedom from Debt Coalition's Lost Generation. They also played as part of Lokal Brown, a studio-only supergroup that included Lolita Carbon and Pendong Aban among others. Meanwhile, a revolution was taking place (though no one was aware of it at the time). Inspired by, among others, the Jerks, young upstarts had been boning up in their bedrooms and dorms on chord changes and forming bands: the Eraserheads, the Youth, Color It Red. The kids (for most of them were still in their teens) formed their own scene, around places like Club Dredd and Mayric's, the only clubs where they could play their own music. The next genration of rockers were busy being born. Then the unexpected happened: the Eraserheads opened a breech with their first album, which went multi-platinum in a matter of months. Other bands soon followed in their wake, and pretty soon "alternative" music was outselling rap and pop artists. In 1994, the Jerks left on a half year contract to bring rock & roll to rock-starved audiences in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Again they returned to find the music scene transformed. Cohorts such as Tropical Depression and Ang Grupong Pendong had finally gotten record deals. Everyone, it seemed had gotten record deals, except the Jerks. True, Gary Granada had released The Jerks Live! on his independent Backdoor Records label, an album culled from live performances at Mayric's which turned out to be one of the year's best releases. But for intents and purposes, the "alternative music" bandwagon (and gravy train) had left the Jerks behind. The temptation to sell out is always there, specially now that most of the Jerks are entering middle age (Chickoy is 38, Pino 40, Nitoy close to the half-century mark. Benjie is the odd man out, being under 30). They also have wives and children to support, with only their earnings from club gigs and the occasional session work to rely on. But as Mike Hanopol used to sing: "Ganyan ang buhay musikero." Besides, when you really come down you really come down to it, being the best rock & roll band in Manila is enough. |
| This article first appeared in Sunday Inquirer Magazine on September 24 1995. |
| This also appeared in Mr. Eric S. Caruncho's Punks, Poets, Poseurs: Reportage on Pinoy Rock and Roll. Published by Anvil Publishing , Inc. |
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