Don’t you dare die on us, Ely Buendia

By Francis Ochoa
Inquirer
Last updated 11:49pm (Mla time)
01/13/2007

WHATEVER you do, Mr. Ely Buendia, don’t die on us.

You are a music icon who is as rare as they come. You are a vacant cab with an accommodating driver during the holidays. You are a cop who’s actually out to protect the citizenry. You are an honest politician. You are a film fest movie deserving of an award. You are a critically-acclaimed Cueshe hit.

I am a loyal Thomasian; you are the only reason I regret not having studied at the University of the Philippines.

If you go, what does that leave us with? A handful of artistic bands under the radar and Orange and Lemons. We scrounge the city for bars where one plays, and puke when the other’s songs go on air.

Always, always
As long as you’re around, we will always have Eraserheads. E-Heads. The band. The Band.

Forget Pupil. You will always be Eraserheads to me, just as E-Heads can never be reincarnated without you.

You played at 6-underground once with your new band, Pupil. Then for encores, you played two E-heads hits. I still have one of those performances on my cell phone video library, tucked between two sexy clips (that’s how much I idolize you).

Before you, there were Pepe Smith and Mike Hanopol. Smith has had the sense to stay alive—never mind if, physically, he’s long been a weeded-out, jail-dried version of his old self—long after you made the E-heads the next great Pinoy rock band after Juan dela Cruz. Hanopol lives on, too. Don’t tell me you’re planning to die ahead of them?

Die, Ely, and Hale’s going to write a tribute song for you. That should jolt your heart back to life.

Don’t get me wrong. I would benefit greatly from your death.

Imagine how much my Ibañez acoustic guitar, which I bought for P15,000, would be worth now that it has your signature and the dedication, “Francis, rock and roll!” A friend of mine was willing to purchase it for P20, 000—and you are still alive. And that doesn’t include the snapshot of you signing it. Or the notarized affidavit of an Inquirer employee who overheard you saying it was your first time to affix a signature on a guitar.

Do you hear me? You. Can’t. Die. Yet. The next definitive band in the local scene hasn’t emerged. Your presence helps keep music fans—even idiotic ones like me—patiently waiting.

A heart attack at 36? That’s no way for music icons to go. If you were found dead after OD-ing on your drug of choice, I’d probably be more at peace with that. Or maybe if you blew your brains out like Kurt Cobain did.
Or if you were shot, the way John Lennon was, by a maniac—imagine if it was me! Imagine how much my guitar would cost then!

No, Ely, the Philippine music industry needs you. Some say you’re past your musical prime, that after struggling to rein yourself (sometimes with the help of Raymund M and the rest of E-heads) from falling into three-chord pop compositions, there’s nothing left in that wonderfully insane brain of yours but indecipherable music that only those in cloak-and-dagger security agencies would appreciate.

I disagree.

I think you’re very much like a surfer who, exhausted from catching wave after similar wave, decided to plant his board in the sand and sit down to watch the sea. But you aren’t just watching. Your eye is cast towards the horizon, eyeing that perfect wave, waiting.

So get through this and live longer, ayt? When that perfect wave comes, we want to watch you go out there and catch it.

This also appears as a blog entry on theboyfromsmallville.wordpress.com.