The World of Hastang

Normally we don’t concoct unusual endings for our songs. But for “Mid-flight”, we did anyway.

It’s funny because we never really made a conscious decision to do it. It just came to us when we did our final band rehearsal a day before PNB version 5. This only proves that there’s more to full band jamming than just perfecting a song’s rhythm, feel and over-all delivery. Doing time in the studio also breeds creative spontaneity, which in our case, worked really well in crafting a rather atypical finale for the song.

So when we played it live for the first time in Handuraw, there was a feeling of relief, elation and slight anxiety at the same time. Relief because we weren’t exactly just going through the motions in bringing the song to life (there were arguments, frustrations, confusions, “single-line antics”, stabbings … just joking about that last one). Of course, there’s always the feeling of elation in introducing a new song to your listeners (kinda like coming home from school and telling your mom, “Mommy, look what I did in art class today”). Lastly, slight anxiety because the song might be too “pa-kaging” for the Handuraw crowd (on second thought, it might not have mattered much—people were coming to see a noise party, for crying out loud).

All in all, we still had a good time playing in that gig (as usual, the pizza was great). Plus, we had a chance to meet a nice chap named Mondoy who has a unique way of showing his support for the local music scene. He makes these clever drawings of local bands (inspired by those nifty band caricatures in www.rocktoons.com) and judging by the thickness of the clear book he always carries, he’s done quite a number of them. Bai, Mondoy, we’re honored to be included in your repertoire and thanks for supporting local music. Cebu needs more avid music advocates like you.

P.S. I’m tempted to write something about Murray’s post-PNB5 antics. Oh well, maybe in the next entry.

guile loves his girlfriend, adores (er, adored) Michael Jackson, and wants "to be complete". When he's not playing bass for Hastang, he creates thingamajigs for icomm and writes gibberish in his not-so-secret diary.
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