Rest in Peace Nu107, Our Rock and Roll Haven

I just learned that my other favorite radio station NU107, that one helped me get through hardships by head banging like there is no tomorrow, is about to meet its end. It’s not actually the station going to enter to an open grave and covered in earth, but the rock and roll branding of the great NU107 Rock Station will adapt the mass friendly radio station formula. In the nutshell, the station, formerly caters to rock music, slowly embraces mainstream stuff.

You may say having a mainstream station is not such a bad thing, but believe me, in our country, if you have a background of listening to decent stations with enjoyable DJs and good playlist, you wish have your ears tore once you hear all the horrible stuff that comes from a local radio station aimed for the CDE crowd. This stations have the most annoying DJ banter, hell shrieking voices, obnoxious program concepts and poor playlist consists of every bad ballads in the planet. The masses eat this kind of station and they will gladly pump it up in their radio stations on their public transportation as loud as possible to the point you cannot hear a single thing outside of the vehicle.

One of the reasons why the station heads decided to switch to the bad yet popular niche is financially related. Actually, for the past few years when I switched to NU, I think the station is dwindling and if I remembered correctly, they were having lesser advertisements. I rarely listen to the station unlike my high school and college days, I still have fond memories of listening to the old Zach and Joey in the Morning show and the fan favorite remote control weekend. Nowadays I am permanently attached to Jam 88.3 for their alternative playlist and Magic 89.9 for their outrageous morning show, which where I originally got the sad news.

NU107 helped a lot of unknown bands to get their music to the country and it introduced a bunch of good non mainstream bands to enjoy. One of the greatest thing ever conceived by the station is the yearly Rock Awards, a great venue to recognize talents that are usually ignored in big time local music ceremonies.

In the end, whatever the stations plan for their future, NU 107, The Home of the New Rock, will always be somewhere in my heart and just like what one of the Gods of Rock will say, LET THERE BE ROCK! Rock on NU107, thanks for the memories and to the station, good luck to your future endeavors.

Lastly, yes I really hate local mainstream pop stations and all that tot tot tot tot bullcrap and &#$%@!!!!!

K-Poppin

A few days ago I was watching a local music channel. The program was a top 20 countdown show and shows the 20-2 recap and I noticed a lot of them were foreign and non-English songs. Then they show the number one song for the week voted locally by a lot of fans, behold,  another non-English song performed by a K-Pop group.

K-Pop, or Korean pop is a music genre, just like in the 80s say, where boys and girls look the same. They are popular, probably in their prime. I think the K-Pop and obsession with everything Korean began during the height of Meteor Garden, those F4 guys and that 5566 group, so on and so forth.

The only thing I don’t understand is why the K-Pop is so darn popular. They sound catchy and danceable but 95% of the lyrics is in their native language which obviously a lot of us cannot understand. I think the only words that you can understand are love, heart and more love. Its like the boyband invasion of late 90s all over again, but this time, we cannot understand them.

Then we got a chunk of scary fans, their own fantards, remember not all of them, just a chunk of them, probably more than 50%. They dress like them, wearing fur and other bondage looking outfits, singing their favorite K-Pop songs even they have really no idea what the lyrics were. They might saying bad words about you or something they will eat you while you are sleeping  and you still don’t grasp it because the music sounds good.

Locally, some music executive cashes in with the K-Pop popularity and invents what he or she calls P-Pop, or Pinoy Pop. Hoping to fork more cash by emulating what does a lot of K-Pop does but the advantage is they are local countrymen and we can understand their lyrics. Covered with ridiculous amount of make up that makes Death from Bill and Ted cry in envy and make them look more oriental as possible, with a little hint of  skin retouching here and there. Alas, we got a localized K-Pop known as P-Pop but sounds like K-Pop but we can understand the lyrics which consists of love, heart and more love because they are P-Pop. I think the P-Pop approach failed horribly because I only saw one P-Pop group and already disappeared in obscurity.

Admittedly, the main background music of the most K-Pop songs are good. I actually wish that they remove all the non-English singing parts of the song and just keep the background music, especially the one that sounds like a slow pace electronica music. Even that over abused Nobody song from the Wondergirls, if you managed to ditch all the singing part, will sound better I guarantee you that. The musicians behind the main music do a better job than the real singers.

In the end one of the things that bothered me is sometimes, with all their manufactured glory, I can’t tell if the singers are male or female. I am not an all the way against K-Pop and other similar counterparts, but come on, there are other musicians that are good, looks decent and does not look like slapped together by a fat music executive.

Yup, its different strokes for different folks so I have no right to preach them but I can tell that in few months or even years time, they will say “Oh man, K-Pop sucks, I never knew there are other musicians out there that are good… and whats this? I can understand the lyrics? all those wasted years….ALL THOSE WASTED YEARS!!”