58. TALES OF THE TAPE

TALES OF THE TAPES

 Yesterday was a free day, so I decided to do a bit of cleaning around the house. I must admit I am a pack-rat like my parents, who never threw things away. Instead, we had the habit of stowing away things in the nooks and crannies of old cabinets, shoeboxes, biscuit tins and other secret compartments—until they are forgotten forever.

 So, great to my surprise when I found again my old cassette tapes stashed in one drawer of an antique altar table. Of course, you know what a cassette tape is—that thing which you wind with a pencil and plopped into a cassette tape recorder, around which our family music entertainment revolved for many decades. I had my Dad’s Xavier Cugat tapes, tapes from the folks in America, study tapes from my former ad agencies Ace Saatchi (from the 80s!) and Jimenez DÁrcy.

Lo and behold, even my school tapes from the mid 70s, are here—used for my radio productions as a Communication student. I can’t believe they’ve survived hours of playing, mold infestation and countless scotch tape repairs!! More amazing was the fact that many of them were still playable.

 I plunked one into my trusty cassette recorder and the garbled, but recognizable sound of a commercial I taped for a class assignment in 1976 spewed out of the speaker. It was a radio ad for a milk brand “Grow-Up Milk”, where I sang a jingle plagiarized from Nino Muhlach’s Milk Maid commercial. I even voiced the announcer part as well, in which I enunciated the address of the milk company—“siete doble siete, tapat ng poste, Manila!”

 The same tape contained assorted recordings I did that are almost 40 years old! I recorded for posterity, my friend Vic Lamug singing “Simple Man” when he guested on a folk program over at Station RMN. This must have been around 1976, when most us were in the folk scene. Too bad didn’t record my version of “Scarborough fair”.

 There was also several takes of my folk group rehearsing the song “Hurry Sundown”, for Visioned Link IV, in 1977. I had a nasal voice then, as now, but much tinnier! I was floored when I flipped the tape and heard the strains of “Dahil Sa Iyo”. It was our competition song for the Commerce Talent Show, Group Singing. We were a shoo-in to win as most of our members came the talented “Rhymes and Rhythms”, and we were coached no less than Levi Granadosin, one of the famous singing Granadosin brothers. Our vocalization sounded good on the tape, but onstage, we flopped and had to settle for 2nd.

 The most fun was listening to us rehearse the songs for our college day presentation night, entitled “Come Alive”. I wrote the lyrics of the theme song (“What do we need to survive/ We need love to come alive!/ Well I guess there’s no other way/ Come alive with us today!) with music supplied by my talented classmate Francis Cardona—who doubled as the music conductor!

The highlight was the staging of the musical “Timmy”, with all-original songs written by classmate Jojo Barreiro. I could distinctly hear Tina Chua singing the title tune, “T-I-M-M-Y…that’s Timmy! Something out of a fantasy…”. And guess who played the title role? Me!! Also in the cast--and on tape-- was Cya Jonson, leading the ensemble with the rousing “Welcome to our village…we hope you feel at ease…welcome to our village…and sing!! , Well, at 18 years old, we could certainly sing our lungs out! Such verve..and such nerve!

 My tape compilation grew when I went to work in Manila—and a few saved cassettes yielded jingle studies done by the prolific jinglemaker Caloy Agawa for the Ministry of Tourism account, then handled by Ace Saatchi. There were 3 studies done for a domestic tourism jingle that had for its theme “Huwag Maging Dayuhan sa Sariling Bayan” (Don’t be a Stranger in your own Paradise, English version). I did the English lyrics and my CD, the Famas Awardee Jimmy Santiago wrote the Pilipino version which completely knocked me out for its lyricism and imagery.

 My agency ,Ace Saatchi was a regular in inter-agency competition that were all the rage in the 80s---and in 1987, we joined the Inter-Agency Christmas Chorale Competition. Caught on tape were the voices of our choral group singing a most unique competition song—“Jellicle Song””, from the musical cats.

 The song had been reworked to include Christmas lyrics, and included lively purring, meowing and caterwauling!. Listening to the song, I was transported back to the big final night where we came in feline outfits and belted out our song under the musical direction of Betsy Basilio. It was no-contest from the start--we swept competition away, winning Best Choreography and Best Chorale Group! What other stories could these ancient cassette tapes hold?

Well, I haven’t listened to all of them and I plan to do that in the next few days. Maybe I’ll start with my 30 year old home recordings doing my versions of those “”I-am-just-a-poor-boy-though-my-story’s-seldom-told” folk tunes. Or maybe I’ll have the contents transferred to a disc or digitized some day.

Then again, maybe that’s not necessary--I’ll just play them on my vintage cassette recorder and relive once more those carefree days when our pleasures were simpler, when things were less complicated, and where worries were solved with a familiar song, a guitar and a tape recorder on hand.