A few years back I realized that my ignorance of the scene is due in part to the fact that I do not really know a lot of people - this is caused by certain circumstances that limits me from going around. If you are in this same situation & is curious about the scene, one of the best resource person is Jep. He is an all around nice dude who has witnessed the early 90's scene and is well read about the underground and the counter culture that comes with it. You do not even have to personally talk to him, just search the web for articles bearing his name or better yet, the printed zines he has put out and the organizations he has been involved with. I would like to think that Jep along with his closest friends have accepted me and others into their fold without any misgivings despite me being relatively late in the game - something rare in this world that is infected with the unavoidable culture of exclusivity.
So here it is folks...get ready for school...
What a time to be alive, so how are you with the end of mankind on the horizon and all? Hi Arch, Thanks for asking. So far so good. Half the world is on quarantine and here in the Ph, we are on lockdown. This madness shows everyone how the government can and will fuck you up any way they want to if they have no fuckin use for you. I hope you and the wife and kids are all right, well-fed, and making the most out of this clusterfuck we're in. Thank you, for now we get by and hopefully survive through this. This is undeniably a surreal time to be alive. How do you relate and equate all this to the principles and philosophies of your love for music and underground culture? How does it help you cope? Yep, surreal it truly is. This is definitely a first for me. We are experiencing lockdowns (nearing 2 months) on an unprecedented, almost-global scale. The government and it's ruling class sponsors have consistently shown us, the working class/poor communities how they run the world. They dictate to the masses what is and isn't allowed. More often than not, their actions make little or no sense at all. Blind obedience is the rule of the day. Well, fuck that. I get by and continously cope and keep my sanity by keeping in touch with family and friends. One of the earliest lessons I've learned when I entered this dynamic hardcore and punk scenes is that we are truly a minority and every one of us counts. That's a line from an old Agnostic Front song from the 80s. The government doesn't give a fuck about you or me or anybody. That's the reality that's become even more obvious at this time. What we have is each other. I've seen more friends doing direct action through community feeding, reaching out and providing protective equipment to our health workers, holding productive discourses on food planting and such, etc. You have folks trapped in places away from their families, folks forced to work for the corporates exploiting them for money, folks in the health care sector being sacrificed tremendously for far less than fair living wages. Most of these are my friends. Your friends. Our families. It's a fuckin' outrage is what it is. So yeah. Shooting me a message just checking on how I'm doing is really what keeps me well-fed and healthy and on my toes these days. And having all this downtime gives me more time to listen to more music and read more about things that exercise my train of thoughts. Can you run us through what you've listened to during the past 6 or 7 weeks? When I go online these are what I've been streaming heavily these past few weeks: Exploited - Beat The Bastards Nausea - Extinction Wugazi - 13 Chambers Husker Du - Savage Young Du Andra Day - Cheers To The Fall Fontaines DC - Dogrel Bleakness - Functionally Extinct Truckfighters - Gravity X Nawa - Ancient Sufi Invocations New stuff from locals Sälöt-Demo 2020, Wuds - Alay, Betrayed - Why Must Everything Involve Politics? That's a diverse list there, as I would expect from you. Anything new you've been trying to dig into? Barely a year ago, some folks in a band called No One Wins dropped their album called "In Mortem Libertas". It's not been heard or accepted by many, but that's exactly how they preferred it to be. They're quite an adrenaline fix. Do check it, bruv. Hmmm No One Wins sounds like a very dubious and pretentious group. I don't buy it.
Anyway, I am sincerely interested in the Laguna scene. Educate us please & take us back to it's roots. I have always thought of it as a place of pioneers when it comes to punk and underground music. I'll be honest with you. I wouldn't be the best resource person to talk about the roots of the Laguna scene simply because I wasn't there when their first wave happened. I was adopted into their scene around 96. You see, I was from the metro then. And I'd only swing by for extended periods of time to visit the crew in Laguna and spend time there when I was out of school. But if you look at their history books (AKA zines documenting that golden period), you'll find that their scene's godfathers were 2 well-respected hardcore punk bands Aggressive Dog Attack and Biofeedback. They started the ball rolling by playing wherever and whenever show organizers from Manila and elsewhere invited them to play. You have to keep in mind in those years (1992-1993-1994-1995) provincial scenes were fairly young, and were led by 2-3-4 bands actively organizing shows, running fanzines, distros, etc compared to the scene in the metro, where there were an over-abundance of bands. In Laguna, ADA and BFK saw our scene's potential. This prompted them to set up more local shows. They began writing their own fanzines, and doing their own cassette tape releases. DIY was pretty much the order of the day. That move spawned the birth of other great Laguna bands like Camote Chunks, New Found Heritage, Social Outrage, they were mostly crews and collectives made up of these above mentioned bands. As well, there were the groups behind these bands such as the Strong South Laguna, Killing Squad crew, Crossxblood crew, Southside Strong Locos, Dare To Care, etc. These were from the lower Laguna areas, not to forget the upper Laguna scenes brewing in the Calamba, to the San Pablo-Los Baños areas, namely the Acid Cow collective, Playground Suicide & such. As you can imagine, we've had plenty enough to keep our little scene growing at a steady pace. Notable bands that came out of this era (Late 90s) include Anal Scream, Aberrant, Autumn Willow, B.N.B., Barrier/Milagro, Balance, Before 21, Bent, Bio-Jerks, Brainsalad, Broken Frame, Bubblegum, Charved Neck, C.B.E., Children Of The Damned, Chilidogs, Crackpots, Crimage, Collision, Counter Attack, Catacomb, Downgrade, Expendable Youth, Failure Of Truth, Hand-Painted Wall, Holding Hands, Homecide, Hulk Hogan, Jellyfish Babies, Jolly Pops, Kiddie Corps, Kambing, Life Is Short, Lotus Pride, Mellow Del Prado, Militant Minds, Mortus, N.S.P., On A Day Like Today, Outlast, Parkas Atropos, Piledriver, Progression, Rabid Chihuahuas, S.A.W., Sk8 Fags, Space Cow, Spanky, Spenglers, Touchdown, Tons Of Intense, This Was I, Thin Line, Valley Of Chrome, Village Idiots, Whatanoodle, and lots more my memory escapes me. I could still remember the times when shows were nonstop during those years, when almost every band ran their own zines, and cheap studio recordings were aptly released independently on cassette tapes as documentation of the band's work. In fact we like to believe that when the scene in Manila lay dead after the Twised Red Cross era, (up to 1989), provincial scenes kept the ball rolling, Laguna definitely playing a big role. To this day, with its 24 municipalities, I could say that around half of these are actively involved in their own respective ways.
During your early years there, how did you begin to get involved with the local crew and how did it lead you to coming with a zine of your own?
I stared going to shows in Km19 at Edsa, that's where I met the guys who made up the Crossblood Crew. These were several bands (Skrewheds, Biofeedback, Bulldozed) who let me tag along back to Laguna after one show that they played there. This was my baptism into the DIY underground community. The Santa Cruz siblings' house in Biñan was considered the headquarters of Crossblood Distribution. Everyone was welcome to stay there and spend the night as you please. So I did. I lived in that house for a couple of years. This was where I saw them organizing zines that they sold at cost to the kids during shows. It was really a small, collective effort of guys photocopying original fanzines that they had traded with their own to zinewrites from around the world, using the good ol' fashioned snail-mail where you personally write letters to other people halfway across the globe. Yes, there was no internet then, and reaching out to scenes outside of the Ph took a couple of months waiting time for snail mail replies. So you'd see these folks pre-show at the HQ stapling zines that they photocopied, ready to trade and sell. I was bewildered at such a concept. The thought that you could also write your own shit, print it and spread it to kindred souls alike felt pretty much empowering for a 16 year-old, snot-nosed broke kid, yes? You would see them cutting photocopied inlay covers for dubbed cassette tapes that they distributed, traded and sold. The way that they operated was that they'd write someone, a band or a zinemaker from outside the country, they would ask permission if they would like to trade stuff (tapes and zines) with them, and when trades were done, they would ask permission if they would allow Crossblood to duplicate their tapes ("dubbing") and photocopy their zines here to be made available for trading or selling. That way their stuff would reach a wider audience with minimal cost. Naturally, almost everyone in the tape and zine trading circuit back then were all for it. They were cool with those ideas. It was very expensive to get stuff overseas mailed here so not everyone was able to buy what they wanted. That came as a relief to us as we were kids barely in or out of high school then, with no jobs and such. As it was all the rage back then, I decided to write my own zine.
Do you think the digital age has eroded the essence of the underground trading circuit that you have witnessed back then? Or is saying this just another bitter rant from an older generation?
Has the internet somehow limited the drive for confused kids to go out and experience the counter culture and artistic alternatives around them?
The "digital age" really is a double-edged sword. You have to consider that the advancement we have in technology is really what drives us forward. It keeps us updated and helps us get to where the future takes us. In terms of the trading circuit I've witnessed a hundred years ago, all these physical formats that we've clung on to have now been replaced by softwares. The tapes, CDs and records are now available as music files, the paper zines now replaced by webzines. It does help us get more connected. If I am a Filipino kid in today's world and I want to shoot a message to a band a million miles away or connect and interact with like-minded individuals from someone who's cultures and worlds apart from me, the internet and the www makes it really easy to do so. If you are looking for a book that was only available in a hundred year old library from the western world back then around 30 years ago, that book is now available to download and read online. The downside to it though is with things being more accessible and more easier to grasp these days, kids have a tendency to take it for granted. It's human nature for us to do that, though. When something you have in your posession is not something you shed copius amounts of blood, sweat, and tears on, then you care less about putting more value into it. I hate to say that I'm old school, because I am just plain old, but I do appreciate something for what it's worth, you know? If kids go out of their sheltered, comfort zones and choose to create their own adventures with things that resonate with them like our punk and hardcore counter-cultures, and just be creative while having fun, then why the hell not? They will be the ones running the scene long after we're gone. The internet is a tool. If you use it to your advantage, then it has served it's purpose.
I totally understand what you're saying and I appreciate that you are open to change despite earning your stripes through the previous ways of D.I.Y. Now I want to let others see through your eyes the life that you led when you were young which eventually steered you towards the scene, I hope you will allow me to dig deeper and know more about the person behind Konspirazine. What were your struggles growing up? Nothing interesting actually. I'm a nobody. I don't think I have any stripes. I'm just as much a spectator as you are or like the folks beside me at the gigs. I grew up poor. And that is something I am very, very thankful for. It makes you want to be better than where you were at yesterday. My folks used to lead comfortable lives back then but having a 6-children (I was the youngest of the siblings) household just somehow finally took its toll on them. When I started elementary grade, every fuckin day was a struggle. I grew up without toys or even TV. The only thing I had for entertainment and leisure were books. We'd only buy shoes (the cheapest) when the ones I wore were finally beat-up with use. I took commuter bus rides to and from school every day from the first grade onwards. Growing up poor, that experience stays on your mind for a really long time. You'd always remember. And getting educated in a Catholic school with peers who were way better off than you, you start to shy away from making a lot of friends. The school counselors labeled me an 'antisocial'. 5th grade. Can you believe that shit. Being a young teen in the early 90s, discovering punk and its branches out of the cornucopia, learning of existing scenes around you written in the Rock & Rhythm magazines of old, it was bound to happen. You realize that this feeling of isolation, being the school outcast, being different from your peers, being laughed at and looked down upon. These are the exact, same things that were felt by folks who play in hardcore and punk bands. These bands shared with you your hurt, your frustrations, and your anger, and your hope. And being surrounded by people who share that with you is really a powerful and an empowering support system for a kid. That's when you tell yourself that you're gonna be in this hardcore and punk thing for life. That shit right there hit a nerve, I think most who will read this will be able to relate to that. Somehow suffering, alienation and abandonment early on in our lives is a language most of the people in the scene are fluent in. But with unbiased analysis you pretty much made it through all of that scarred and all but still you are kind to people and to our furry friends! We all know you write a zine and organize shows, but how about the advocacies & community actions you have been involved with. ( dude, i know you're not the type to wave your kindness around but pls satiate my curiousity and my webzine's thirst for content haha ) We've run fundraisers for dog shelters thrice, (-please volunteer, foster, adopt whenever you can!), for friends hospital bills, for friends in communities victimized by arson, typhoon victims, children's book drives for faraway schools, etc. Those are just some I have personally took part in with the help of the Pojax crew. When other crews set up fundraisers, we're there to support too. Our friends who have run feeding programs or donated equipments to hospitals and health care workers have got our support. 100%. You can always take part in helping out others. It never ends. On a personal level, I love to advocate for dogs. Those are my weakness, man. I've had volunteer friends/vets in CARA, Save The Laguna Pitbulls, Save-ALL, Strays Worth Saving. Do check out those groups and spread the word. Every little thing helps.
I need you to confess, for the record, your love for Baroness, Oi & literature. Yeah, I won't keep it a secret. Baroness is my absolute fave. Just pure total worship. Other zinemaker friends ( Crapsalad and Real Tight Crew ) continously give me shit for it. I don't care. It sucks that Pete quit the band due to their heavy touring schedule, he was such a beast with that guitar. Baroness is all the different, juicy genres of rock thrown into the mix that your 711 cashier-barista serves with a sheepish grin on his face. That fact that none of their different albums sounds alike is a feat that they have so far perfected. I'm so far waiting for Gina to go nuts with her guitars on their new record and bring back the heavy. Hopefully SEA tour promoters do the impossible and bring em over sometime soon. -As a teen, I got into The Exploited as I delved deeper into punk and I got a hold of dubbed tape copies of the first 2 Sounds Magazine compilations "Oi! The Album" and "Strength Thru Oi!". I loved every bands on there. That started my fascination with Oi! music to this day. If you compare the UK82/UK Oi! punk sound to a lot of the early NYHC sounds form the late 80s/early 90s, they are heavily influenced by it. The Hard Times album by Biofeedback is really an Oi! record disguised as 1994 Pinoy Hardcore. -My folks had a library at home. When I was a kid, there was just way, too many books in the house. A lot of them either got destroyed by termites, or wrecked by flooding, etc. But they were a lot. And growing up without television forced me to turn to reading books instead. I'm not smart. I'm not an academic. But I fuckin' know how to read. Read books, people. It's fun! Which work of literature has so far made the biggest imprint upon your mind?
I've particularly enjoyed Lewis Carroll. Hemingway, Serling, Poe, Hitchcock's selections, etc. at an early age. Those were books I'd read at bedtime.
IS Konspirazine on its death throes or do you still have dreams and shit about it lying around? What's the most memorable or craziest interview you've done?
I don't think it would really die down, you know? I don't see it ever dying down. I may write something occasionally and throw stuff here and there. The thing with zine writers as historical data would show, is that we all are a lazy bunch. We could churn out shit in between weeks, and sometimes (in my case) I happen to enjoy putting shit out a decade apart. So sue my fat, brown lazy-ass. But yeah, keep watching this space for any new announcements. Obviously the craziest interview I've done was with the remaining members of Biofeedback. Cid is now in music heaven, falling victim to a drive-by shooting in the early 00s. So I got to write to Reypeace, who's in the UAE, and Andy who's in the US, and Honesto who I used to work in the same company with at the time I sent the interview questions back in 09. Although I've been good, good friends with reypeace, it was rather intimidating having that convo with what I consider to be the best representation of Pinoy Hardcore Punk scene's most important band in the last 3 decades. Andy's response to when I asked him about the song "Lasenggo, Gago" was that "There's nothing wrong with drinking. I love to drink. One of the best things you can do is share a drink with friends." and to which Reypeace added "There's nothing wrong with people drinking alcohol. What's wrong are assholes drinking alcohol." That, to me just shows how incredibly human and down to earth these guys were. And I drink like a fucking fish, so you can make that connection. But yeah, that interview was full of life. It was done past their prime, with one member gone, just talking about the band, their struggles, their triumps, and their friendship. FYI-I like to interview bands way after they'd fold. I've done so with Tame The Tikbalang, The Beauty Of Doubt, etc. Haha.
The last thing you said is interesting. Why do prefer interviewing defunct groups instead of catching them in their heyday?
It was more out of convenience, rather than necessity. These were guys I've know way back in the 90s, guys I got to see a couple of hundred times. It just so happened at the time I wrote them, they were no longer playing actively. I guess you could say I hung out with the right crowd, then.
And which Titos from still active bands today do you look forward to interrogate as they sit in their rocking chairs in the future?
For zinewriting and bringing tge zine culture forward-BJ Cabaluna of Rock & Rhythm Mag and Wendy Says zine and Dennis Oi for Oi! Standard/Manila Oi! for Pinoy punk's roots and royalty Bobby Wuds and Boyet Betrayed. For Laguna's rich history the almighty Boi Piodos of A. D. A.
How about that Radyo KNTTN dude?
Ha! You got me there. What you're doing is a great service for everyone online who cares to stream and download music made by Pinoys, be it locally or otherwise. Thanks and may we never exceed our fucking bandwidths for the rest of your program. Goddamn sure I'd love to do a one-on-one with you, you sly bastard.
( the response above is an inside joke that is too complicated for me to explain )
On a serious note, you have lost a few friends in the scene, is it ok for you to share some cool moments with them and how they've made an imprint upon your life?
Fuck. You make me feel older than I should. There's quite a lot of soldiers we lost along the way-Rhoda Ground Zero, Yap COD, Dex Laki, Dex Liit, Cid BFK, Kim Ground Zero, Niño Loads, Ababon Bulldozed, etc. All these guys I've hung out with, shared drinks with, attended gigs with, all of them are sorely missed. They've all given us good times and memories to cherish. The saddest loss I've ever had was Dennis "Motmot/Tomtom" Matibag's passing. This dude was a legend. In the very early 90's, he wrote press for other bands thru his Screams From The Gutter pieces in Rock And Rhythm Magazine, he did Anti/KeepDaFaith zines, and together with Reypeace spearheaded the country's earliest mail-order distribution legs of traded band merch focusing heavily on cd-dubbed tapes, and reproduced (to death) zines through Stick Together Distribution and CrossxBlood Distro. He did vocals for a lot of Manila and Laguna's sprouting bands Psychotic Change, Bulldozed, Power Of Discipline, Isvarah, and Bound By Fury, among others. Mot was 9 years my senior. When I met him, I was just a snot-nosed teen, very eager to learn more about the underground scene.
He was my mentor in a lot of things. He was a mean-looking MF but as soon as you get to know him, you'd find out the dude's got a heart of gold. When I was a kid out on the streets with nowhere to go to, he offered his place to me and said if I ever needed to crash I was always welcome. No ifs and buts. That's just how he rolls. It's didn't get to the point where I took him up on his offer (I stayed at Alvin Skrewheds instead-Ha!), but it made me feel good that this very important figure in the scene happens to accept me and welcomes me with all the baggage I got. That's quite a big deal for me. Anyone who knows Mot have a similar 'adoption' story to tell, guaranteed. The thing with hardcore is that it never was an exclusive members-only social club. You can be anyone, any age, you can be queer, you can be rich, poor, the devil or a saint, you'd still be welcome. And that rang true for the early Laguna crew I became friends with. Mot was OG street-smart. He taught me how to pay jeep fares when you're short on money, You've got to pay in coins and pretend to drop some behind the driver's back when you hand them your fare and say "Ay manong, nahulog po yung barya." and instructed me to ONLY do that when you don't have enough cash. PS-Mot also gave love advice to a lot of people I know. Hahaha.
It's really heartwarming to know how you've kept all those memories with you and how you could look back with fondness and share with all of us despite with all the uncertainties facing us in the immediate future. I can't thank you enough for wasting your time with an idiot like me. But take note that I am holding off harassing you for now because I have a lot more to ask you in future articles where I intend to feature you! Thank you Jep and be safe, say hello to the family for me!!!!
Hey Arch, thanks for shooting the shit with me, I appreciate it. For anyone still reading, let me just end this piece by encouraging everyone to seek new music all the time. To communicate and create that demand for paper zines and webzines. To hug a brother today. It's always uncool for folks to beat up their partners. Quit doing that shit. Hate the government but not its peoples. China included. Take care of the scene take took care of you. Draw the line against corporate hardcore. Do not sell out your beliefs. Perceptions may change over time but its principles will not. Take care of the kids, man. Call your mom tomorrow, it's Mother's Day. Peace.
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