ON WHY I HATE ROCK MUSIC

On my bus ride to work today I was seated opposite to this two friends who obviously are rockers, judging from their clothes, and sure enough they are talking about their music preference. You can blame me for being prejudiced, but from the way they talk and the words they use, even a kid can tell they both have nothing to speak of intellectually. They could well be typified like your neighborhood "taho" vendor. Well, I have seen the worst- like rugby boys in Cubao or Divisoria nodding to rock music, and "kargadors" as well.

It used to be that these kinds of people only listen to the likes of boybands or Filipino HipHop (looking the way of Salbakuta), even those old songs rolled into a medley with just one or two persons singing all throughout. And rock is reserved to those with enough intellect to understand what the bands are singing, at least literally. I admit I have been into rock music for the longest time. You can mention rock bands from way back AC/DC and Iron Maiden era to those of the recent years such as Incubus and Staind, and most likely I have got an album by them either on tape or CD. I grew up listening to rock music.

Somewhere along the way, around the time of Incubus and Limp Bizkit- the early 2000s, I just realized that I am sharing the same preference with most everyone else. I heard the errand boys at the grocery store near our home in Bicol listening to Linkin Park and System of a Down. I'm not being egocentric or something, but I do prefer things that are different from what everybody else has. Somebody suggested that this has been fueled by the proliferation of piracy, which opened the whole she-bang of options for music to those who previously are limited to, well, Salbakuta. So, damn the pirates. I do love downloading through the internet, though.

Along with rock, my other biggest music passion is electronic music. At around that very same time my love for rock is waning, I also am beginning to explore remixing and music production through computers. Well, to tell you the truth, I do dig most kinds of music from classical to pop standards to jazz-- the most extreme probably of which is my fascination for violins and bagpipes traditional music of the Irish and Scotts. Around the same time also, the opportunity to be a resident DJ for a local disco (club for us, westernized) opened up for me to explore further into electronic music by way of house music, and also into urban music. And me and my wife lived happily ever after.

Note: Thanks to http://www.shutterstock.com/ for the image