Persistence of artistic success, persistence of commercial failure
In the West, a band's history is often measured by its level of media mileage, tours, record deals, album sales, controversies, and etc.. Blood of the Stone surely won't pass basing on these standards in its three year history. But it has a story to tell.
Cebu - Rock n' Roll Periphery
The island of Cebu, in the first place, is not a good place to start a paying career as an artist musician. Although it is a city, it doesn't have the machineries to sustain an independent music scene. Most of its bands replicate their albums through burning not pressing. There is no local paper that writes mainly about music. Normally, Cebu's music activity is seasonal. Most concerts happen during college intramural season ( August - September), Octoberfest, and Sinulog Festival(January).
The picture began to slowly change in late 2005 when Bisrock (Visayan Rock) rose and dominated the local scene. Thanks to local station, Smash FM, for earnestly promoting music sung in Visayan. The broadcasting of Bisrock, however, has no quality control that even garage quality demos often get airplays which draws criticism from discriminate listeners. Although chaotic in its infancy, Bisrock is still a promising movement with musicians working in progress. Blood of the Stone is a proud participant of Bisrock.
Brief History and of Love Crime Calligraphy
Blood of the Stone is the concept of college dropout, mail clerk, janitor, usher, teacher assistant, artist, musician, and poet Eric Goden Lomocso. In the spring of 2003 in Los Angeles, California he recorded a three song demo with bassist Tobar. The meaningful musical partnership lasted 5 months. Under heavy economic pressure and stress from the fast time pace of LA, Lomocso decided to fly back for good to Cebu, Philippines in November to continue working on his idea.
The rock scene in the West overcrowded with bands could not care much if a two month old band had played 8 original songs in its first gig. In Cebu, however it is a record worth noting for no band has done it, yet, in the island's rock history. Lomocso did not express much pride over the so-called new record, because it only made him realize Cebu's cultural depression which will give him serious problems by the end of 2004.
In March 2004, the 11-track album, Love Crime Calligraphy was recorded with Alexter Sopsop on the bass and Eduard Tompong on the drums. Amidst of the fatigue, fever, and infected throat Lomocso was suffering from, the album was nonetheless completed in 8 hours. For the record, Love Crime is a highly technical album recorded at raw punk rock speed. Three weeks later, it was mixed and mastered by Kerryl Demeterio. It was music instructor, Christopher Racal, that got BOTS a recording session at Backyard, playing the implicit role as the catalyst for putting the band on the map in just a short time. Cebu was unaware that there was a new band with avant-gardist aim moving underground.
Lomocso gave a copy of Love Crime to local labels, Indie Culture Records and Lighter Records but was not received well for reasons only the labels knew. In August 2004, Smash FM started playing several tracks from the album such as: Ninth Life, Bad Love, One Way, Love Crime Calligraphy, & Momentarily. BOTS slowly gained an underground following. Other stations followed airing BOTS songs two years later. Cebuano painter, Andrew Barba commented on Love Crime as "truly a work of art". The album remains under recognized today.
Bisrock - An Infantile Musical Disorder
Kill all the critics. Or let them compose their own songs. Seriously, that's not even the issue now. What is important is the young's burgeoning interest to make songs in their own language. That is for me magical. Every now and then, there will be some of them who'll be dishing out songs with a literary flair. In fact, that's happening now. Literary value and grammar? Oh, hell, let the critics reread Frank Sinatra or Air Supply.
-- Januar E. Yap, Cebuano writer (on his defense of Bisrock)
Visayan rock music has already existed back in the early '70s. A blues rock band named Leon Kilat( Lion Lightning) probably was the first to sing in local language. Unfortunately, the band had no recorded material which virtually left them unknown. Their former members probably had their songs recorded on cassette tape. Twenty years later, their songs were finally popularized by a reggae band that called itself Jr. Kilat.
In the '80s, a local music store organized a long series of concerts called Local Ground. The trend that it set was not to uplift the Visayan culture but a blind assimilation to Western rock. Playing the latest rock hits from Europe and America dominated the mindset. It was normal forSweet Child of Mine to be covered by 5 bands on the same event. Bands during that time did not pay much importance to singing in Cebuano, although some did play a metal version ofBaleleng, an old folk song.
Local Ground evolved into Showground in the '90s. A local radio station, DYRT, produced Brown Under Ground Sound(BUGS), a program that promoted original local rock music. BUGS, also, organized many huge concerts during that decade. The '90s was like Cebu's Golden Age of concerts. Scrambled Eggs was probably the first band to play an all-Visayan original repertoire several years before the word Bisrock was popularized. Sadly, greed and lack of artistic vision by the organizers provided the scene a shaky foundation, which led to Showground and BUGS's collapse in the late '90s.
The consequences of the two scenes' recklessness and demise left a profound impact on the remaining survivors. Some of them express skepticism on Bisrock as merely a fad that it will just fall like the ones in the '90s. Bisrock, however, is more of a youthful musical experience not a low-cultured production like Showground and BUGS.
There has been a revival of concerts ever since Smash FM started airing Visayan rock music in 2005. Bands in the '90s, with very few exceptions, mostly play covers in English. Bands nowadays could play up to 10 original Visayan songs. Present Bisrock, although highly criticized for its predominant novelty and puppy love theme songs with pop flavoring, still can not be denied as the phenomenon that has given Cebu a fresh start. Had it not for the predecessors' mishandling of the scene two decades ago, the situation right now would not have been this messy.
Vigilante - Lomocso's Bisrock Bullet
Masked authority, name your price, let's make a deal
before you go on with your terrorizing
for we need more criminals
so the judicial system could grow.
-- Vigilante (translated from Cebuano)
Lomocso has already written songs in Cebuano as far back as 1997. He used to sing his poem, Dalan sa Kaminyoon (Road to Marriage) at San Francisco State University's The Depot during open mic sessions. A couple more lyrics fusing gothic and tropical imageries were written few years later. Lomocso did not fully realize, yet, the importance of his underground Rock en Español experience in LA in the years to come. Its application now has become invaluable in his contribution to Visayan culture.
In September 2005, Vigilante was written days after someone was executed in the open at dawn nearby Lomocso's place. Three masked men shot their victim who was a known petty thief from a neighboring barrio. The occurrence was just one of the countless killings done by paramilitary and vigilante groups all over the country. The death squads' primary targets are activists, outspoken journalists, and ex-convicts. The local and national government keeps a sinister kind of "neutrality" as the body count rises.
In this kind of reality the song struck a raw nerve in the mass audience. Vigilante's brutally sarcastic lyrics and offbeat acoustic rhythm earned Lomocso a Bob Dylan-like status in the scene. The feedback that Lomocso has received from the audience strengthens his belief that it only takes a heart, guts, imagination, and an acoustic guitar to conquer Cebu by music and use it to address social ills to affect changes. Lomocso calls it art with social responsibility.
Preliminary Conclusion
Three years have passed and Blood of the Stone remains an underrated rock act in the Philippines. Its low profile kind of mass popularity in Cebu is not the fetishism that glamorous indie bands in the West receive from their exclusive fans. Blood of the Stone does not fit in the typical rock band success story whether indie or major. Instead it has earned local popularity somewhat comparable to 19th century troubadours before the invention of the phonograph. Most Bisrock listeners identify BOTS with the single, Vigilante, not with the concept album,Love Crime Calligraphy. It is a rock act with western avant-garde aesthetics fallen victim to Third World politics and economics. However, the internet has made BOTS' case accessible worldwide to those few who would take the time to read, giving its music a fighting chance from being completely forgotten. Locally, Bisrock has given Lomocso cultural solace from his setbacks, to keep him hopeful about the future.
Written from a third person point of view by Lomocso himself from October 28th to November 2nd, 2006
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