My wife and I rounded the rarities of this San Juan City mall in search of replicas last Saturday, 6th of February 2021 – let’s just say, we’ve joined the bandwagon and went on the run.
While in this perky vinyl place, I learned that their top OPM sellers are Rey Valera and Ric Segreto. Rey Valera is a staple at home, we have his bluish greatest hits CD that is so influential, I hooked with my friend to perform one of his classics in Eri & I’s memorable wedding day, with my renegade electric guitar, dare I say.
By Sunday morning while preparing to attend a noontime visit, I decided to try and play Ric Segreto songs. I went for Spotify blasting from our TV and was refreshed as to how romantic and manly Segreto’s renditions are – boses lalake, ika nga. Pang-Saint Valentine’s Day, like it’s on the ranks of Bailamos (Version 2) in my list.
Segretong malupet, indeed.
Since I am slowly building up my vinyl collections (as in 45 rotations per minute), and trying to learn more about this culture, I tried to surf around the net and look for vinyl enthusiasts’ must have’s, just to see how others would view this fascination.
Of course, (i) it’s mostly Western point of view and (ii) I haven’t encountered some of their recommended artists, if not album. Or maybe, it’s being looked the wrong way. There’s this one, though that I might give a try because it has a familiar tune and when I tried to look it up, it sounds promising. It’s an album called Rumours from Fleetwood Mac.
That’s when I agreed that the best music to collect are indeed the ones you enjoyed the most. And if one would collect in album formats, one should really be careful in picking compilations.
Which led me to assessing, which albums growing up were the ones that defined the early audiophile in me. I quickly pegged my reminiscing into cassette formats and reminisced the selections I enjoyed the most. And by enjoy, I mean I know all the songs in it from both sides after repeatedly playing them endlessly most of the time with our Sony stereo at weekends.
Here’s my list looking back:
Atomic Bomb (1997) – Rivermaya
This album has a cover that I tried to decipher like its trying to go controversial. Turns out, this is the last album before the original lead singer left. It has the hits, Elesi, Hinahanap-Hanap Kita and Kung Ayaw Mo Huwag Mo.
I also enjoyed Ballroom Dancing, which I think was the reason why I nominated this artist for my org asking then for musical accompaniment for an Eng’g Week event. But the prime jewel in this album for me, is If.
I still dream of a grand Rivermaya reunion with the concept that the first line-up to play would be the current members and they would switch members chronologically backwards in time until dramatically, the original members – the ones that did the first album, end the show. It would bring the house down.
Best of Fra Lippo Lippi (1993) – Fra Lippo Lippi
It’s a normal phase to hear songs that you’d like without knowing their background and eventually learn its details once hooked. That’s how I reacted when this cassette arrived and played at home. Fra Lipo Lippi pala ‘yun.
I love this album so much that, out of the blue, I once semi-completely sang its Stitches and Burns to a high school friend during a break and told me I sing good, then I felt good – she’s in UAE now.
This album gave me some of my go-to karaoke songs like Light and Shade and Beauty and Madness.
For me, the compilation doesn’t have a song that can remind you of another track in the album which I think is a testament to the group’s creativity.
Other memorable tracks are Shouldn’t Have To Be Like That, Even Tall Trees Bend and Love is a Lonely Harbour.
The Carpenters Greatest Hits (local release, year unknown) – The Carpenters (2-cassette set)
Who won’t fall in love with The Carpenters? Karen’s voice is playing between meditative and transcendental. She’s such a vocal hall of fame that at any given place and time you know she could carry you away.
The cassettes at home were of local release, I assume because I actually can’t locate it on the web. It was packaged into this two-cassette casing with a colorway of mostly pink. And it’s a definite greatest hits collection.
Whenever I plug in a Carpenters cassette, I can literally start anywhere. It’s that good.
Stand-out songs for me are Superstar, We’ve Only Just Begun, Top of the World and of course, Love Me for What I Am. Never play this cassette alone unprepared, you won’t know what would hit you.
The Company Greatest Hits (1997) – The Company
An output from perhaps the country’s premiere vocal group, this pink cassette with an artistic angle of the members on the cover posing in benzene symmetry came into my life at the right time.
Muntik Na Kitang Minahal and Pakisabi na Lang should be played next after the other, with the latter I enjoy singing on second voice, go figure.
Everlasting Love is an OPM gem. I just recently learned that its their first official hit after seeing a Moy Ortiz interview promoting a 2021 quarantine concert online.
When I learned that Ortiz was one of the composers of the early 2000’s massively popular Pagdating ng Panahon by Aiza Seguerra, it kind of caught me unsurprised. Much like how I felt learning that Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway was co-written by Avril Lavigne.
Some artists have this certain sonic flavor.
Cutterpillow (1995) – Eraserheads
The gold standard of OPM rock and roll – enough said.
Ang Huling El Bimbo, may be its most popular track but anyone who ever managed to play it from Superproxy to the Overdrive fillers knows that this third album from the most important Filipino band of all time is a masterpiece.
It’s that cohesive, the songs seemed to have lifted each other up. The individual and collective arrangements are so great that the songs should not at all be taken apart from each other. The album art too with all those deconstructed cartoonized animals that seem to define each song is a visual treat.
I have now multiple CDs of Cutterpillow, and I am anxiously waiting for it to be released on vinyl. Related to it, for now I also enjoy a YouTube video of the band recording one of the fillers in what was described as a Hong Kong room in 1995. Epic.
This album in many ways, defined my teenage self, creatively and beyond.
If there’s one album that I’d choose to be preserved by this country’s music industry for future generations, it should be Cutterpillow.
David Gates & Bread Essentials (1996) – Bread
The Essentials, is a nice kit to grow up with if you are learning how to play basic guitar because this album is guitar-driven. It also helps if your parents have old Moptop songbooks at home, the ones with the gritty brittle pages, don’t throw out those memorabilia.
The Bread and its lead singer, perhaps introduced me to emotional marbles and initial exploration of the boundaries of soundscapes. It taught me somehow how to well, feel, knowing that most of their songs, I learned to love without the advent of music videos. You have to hold on with your imaginations.
Baby I’m A Want You is a nice intro. Make it With You is very arresting. Everything I Own and Sweet Surrender are submissive and refreshing, respectively. Diary is unforgiving. Goodbye Girl is reassuring while If is the ultimate song of yearning.
Oh Bread, such a complete circle isn’t it?
I love this album.
Heart and Soul: New Songs from Ally McBeal (1999) – Vonda Shepard
On the first week of August 2020, I reunited with this cassette upon my quarantine visit to my parents’ house in the South while doing a mini clean up.
Its an OST of one of my sister’s favorite TV shows. Blame it on my age perhaps but I enjoyed the music more than the show itself during its release, though I actually find Calista Flockhart attractive with good comedic timing. It’s been said that the show was that popular its protagonist made it on the cover of Time.
I have to refine my initial definition here though, I grew up hearing this cassette being played and had to deal with it with full acceptance because that’s how we grew up in a house of one stereo (and one TV) which I think kind of cultivate a respectful environment.
It also helps that the album is quite noticeable, it actually sounds good and it easily gets into you. Baby, Don’t You Break My Heart Slow, Vincent (Starry Starry Night) and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted are the most memorable tracks by the powerfully voiced Vonda Shepard.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame: An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack (1996) – Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz
The same sister brought this cassette at home, she got it as a freebie in a clothes store named Penshoppe, if I remember it right.
She handed it to me and when I started playing it, I was overwhelmed. The introductory cathedral choir is such a strike, the lyrics from the album sleeves is a combination of reading and poetic exercise. I immediately love everything about it, the words (both lyrics and dialogue) – the music – the arrangement – the story.
Also note that when I initially played this cassette completely and repeatedly, I haven’t actually seen yet the movie which was regarded that time as Disney’s darkest.
Easily, this is the first movie soundtrack I loved. I remember playing it and vocally imitating everything from the Eddie Garcia-ness of Judge Claude Frollo, Quasimodo‘s low profile, all the gargoyles’ playfulness and Clopin‘s mischief with sensitivity.
I know everything in this album by heart. You have no idea how happy I was when I get to finally see the film in the cinema the same year. When my Humanities teacher in college asked us to perform our favorite songs, that moment I selected snippets from Out There.
“…so here is a riddle, to guess if you can, sing the bells of Notre Dame, what makes a monster and what makes a man…”
Postcards from Heaven (1997) – Lighthouse Family
I am including this album in this list because of two things, one, their three great songs are in it, namely Postcard from Heaven, Lost in Space and High. Lighthouse Family was really famous at that time.
And two, if I remember it right, some of my classmates and I danced High as a requirement in our PE class and performed it not in the classroom but inside the department’s office. My then groupmate is a school teacher now.
This is probably the first cassette I have to play for a dance requirement, including all the memories of operating a handheld radio’s stop, play, rewind and fast forward buttons.
It actually also was the time when music video shows were starting to block airtime on free TV if not basic cable. Which makes me think, what was the last great song released without the marketing tool of a music video?.
Shades of Purple (2000) – M2M and No Strings Attached (2000) – NSYNC
It was college and my spoiled cousin and I was sharing a flat in Quezon City, hint our grandmother’s place near the Philippine Coconut Authority.
He’s on vacation and I think I was enrolled in school. My cousin requested Tita for cassettes as his diversion and the cassettes purchased for him were these two. Being good natured that my cousin is, I get to borrow these from him for weekend blasts back in the province of Cavite.
We both loved the two albums so much that uhm well, we tried to attend M2M’s Megamall concert but we weren’t able to catch the entire show. I think we were a day or two out of schedule to our laughters.
M2M was launched to stardom by this first Pokemon film while NSYNC just transferred to Jive and their No Strings Attached album by record was said to be the “best-selling album of 2000”.
My favorite songs from Shades are The Day You Went Away and Don’t Say You Love Me. My best picks from Strings meanwhile are Bye Bye Bye and This I Promise You which turns out to be a Richard Marx composition.
Yano (1994) – Yano
I consider this album as my send-off to UP Diliman. I mean it’s the only album I know with obvious references to my future college – it even has the word “UP” in its lyrics.
In my opinion, Eraserheads is UP Diliman’s greatest musical produce and Yano is their unapologetic best buddy.
Whoever in the family bought this cassette, I will forever be grateful because Yano especially this debut album is a classic engraved in my very veins. I know all the tracks in it and can sing each and every one of them by heart.
Eric Gancio’s guitars are masterful (hear Esem and Banal na Aso, Santong Kabayo) and Dong Abay’s everyman’s voice elevates their mass communicating compositions that dwelled from philosophical (Naroon) to socially relevant (Trapo) and romantic (Senti).
On that note I say, these are some of my most beloved albums I enjoyed in cassette formats, cherished for all time.
twistedbarrio 
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