For one, you can't blame the Eraserheads for accepting a sweet offer to the tune of a few million pesos. Well, technically, a million pesos is not really "few", or little. They've been gone as a group, too, for quite a while now, and doing a reunion concert is only par for the course for a band that defined a generation. Two, you can't blame the company working the reins behind the concert either. Or not that much. To think that cigarette manufacturers are already banned from advertizing their carcinogenic products in the media and elsewere isn't really enough to hold them back from cutting corners just to do a different version of promoting their bad goods. Well, the Department of Trade and Industry or the Department of Health can run after Philip Morris all they want, but that simply won't stop the fans of Eheads from storming to the CCP Open Grounds come August 30. At the least, a literal resurrection of of a band long-thought dead gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "there are some things in this world that money can't buy".
On the contrary, there are a number of things in this world that we think money can't buy but can, a reunion concert of a group that disbanded for some misunderstandings notwithstanding. Sure, a multinational corporation can buy that for them and for us, but you can't certainly buy the pleasure or the feeling of nostalgia that comes with it. You can finance a whole orchestra of musicians but you can't measure in monetary terms the worth of the music that emanates from that bundle of artists. You can organize a horde of choir singers and fill their pockets to the brim, but you can't quench the thirst of the ears, or heart, or mind for a music that has inspired a breed of young ones—young at heart if not in body—by shoving money into it, coins preferably.
You can buy the form, but not the substance.
So it does sound all well and good to think that, truly, there are some things in this world that money can buy that we think money can't. But apart from that, you can't discredit the reunion concert solely on the basis that a cigarette company organized it, which is just another way of saying that a cigarette company sponsored it. Two ways of saying the same thing, really. But that's not the part where the beef begins. I've heard several groups raising their fists or their voices against the event and the company because the latter is using the former to advertise its array of smoking products, literally. Beyond that, these groups invite the idea that the Eraserheads reunion concert is just another way to lure the youth into succumbing to smoking habits, introducing them to the vast regions of lung problems. I believe that smoking is indeed dangerous to your health. Or, to put it more bluntly, smoking kills. But to say that people are deeply gullible, swinging into concession at the first sight of a heavily-taxed product, is plain unfounded first and last. You can't be any more unforgiving than that. You can't be any more bigoted than that. You can't be any less rational than that. At best, it's dementia praecox, or something worse than what cigarettes can induce to your brain.
And before everybody else forgets, you don't expect the people swarming to the CCP grounds on that day for the smoke. They'll be swarming there for the music. Or if not for the music, they'll be flooding there for a rare sight, one that hasn't been seen for what feels like ages. You want to smoke for the first time, you don't have to trouble yourself travelling all the way to the open fields of CCP and be confronted with an ocean of humanity. You just have to find a place elsewhere, an isolated part of your house perhaps, away from the prying eyes of your family or the gossipmongers in your community.
But there's one thing about the way the organizing company handles the registration process for those who want to avail of the opportunity to witness Ely, Raimund, Buddy and Marcus performing together as one band. You have to provide a copy of your ID bearing your birth date because minors aren't allowed to come-in. We all know minors aren't supposed to smoke, let alone purchase cigarettes at any store, but that rarely happens. The strand of an implied logic is hidden there.
There's one more thing that I hope would materialize in the end. The concert should be smokin', figuratively.
On the contrary, there are a number of things in this world that we think money can't buy but can, a reunion concert of a group that disbanded for some misunderstandings notwithstanding. Sure, a multinational corporation can buy that for them and for us, but you can't certainly buy the pleasure or the feeling of nostalgia that comes with it. You can finance a whole orchestra of musicians but you can't measure in monetary terms the worth of the music that emanates from that bundle of artists. You can organize a horde of choir singers and fill their pockets to the brim, but you can't quench the thirst of the ears, or heart, or mind for a music that has inspired a breed of young ones—young at heart if not in body—by shoving money into it, coins preferably.
You can buy the form, but not the substance.
So it does sound all well and good to think that, truly, there are some things in this world that money can buy that we think money can't. But apart from that, you can't discredit the reunion concert solely on the basis that a cigarette company organized it, which is just another way of saying that a cigarette company sponsored it. Two ways of saying the same thing, really. But that's not the part where the beef begins. I've heard several groups raising their fists or their voices against the event and the company because the latter is using the former to advertise its array of smoking products, literally. Beyond that, these groups invite the idea that the Eraserheads reunion concert is just another way to lure the youth into succumbing to smoking habits, introducing them to the vast regions of lung problems. I believe that smoking is indeed dangerous to your health. Or, to put it more bluntly, smoking kills. But to say that people are deeply gullible, swinging into concession at the first sight of a heavily-taxed product, is plain unfounded first and last. You can't be any more unforgiving than that. You can't be any more bigoted than that. You can't be any less rational than that. At best, it's dementia praecox, or something worse than what cigarettes can induce to your brain.
And before everybody else forgets, you don't expect the people swarming to the CCP grounds on that day for the smoke. They'll be swarming there for the music. Or if not for the music, they'll be flooding there for a rare sight, one that hasn't been seen for what feels like ages. You want to smoke for the first time, you don't have to trouble yourself travelling all the way to the open fields of CCP and be confronted with an ocean of humanity. You just have to find a place elsewhere, an isolated part of your house perhaps, away from the prying eyes of your family or the gossipmongers in your community.
But there's one thing about the way the organizing company handles the registration process for those who want to avail of the opportunity to witness Ely, Raimund, Buddy and Marcus performing together as one band. You have to provide a copy of your ID bearing your birth date because minors aren't allowed to come-in. We all know minors aren't supposed to smoke, let alone purchase cigarettes at any store, but that rarely happens. The strand of an implied logic is hidden there.
There's one more thing that I hope would materialize in the end. The concert should be smokin', figuratively.
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