Where is ely buendia

We played the Mongols—and later, Pupil—any time they released a single. The Eraserheads made music that embedded itself in the psyche of young Filipinos in the 90s. They made albums that became the soundtrack of a generation. But friendship is a poor substitute for musicianship when making meaningful music, and the Eraserheads had musicianship in spades. The synthesis of their combined experience, skill and personality produced songs that will outlive us all.

One day, when we grow up, we will learn not to mourn the loss of things that were never there in the first place; I promise you, it will be a most sobering experience. Photo from Ely Buendia's Instagram account. The author with Buendia.

The former Eraserheads frontman is widely recognisable and deeply private, a rock star paradox that continues to plague him. Which is why he was doing grocery runs and banking errands in face masks, way before the pandemic came to Manila. The Philippines has been notoriously vague about lockdown restrictions, but in mid-July, before the government called for a return to stricter quarantine measures, the musician was able to hit the road again with his motorcycle club, the Cruiserheads. They struck socially distanced poses for the shutterbugs, then ate at a restaurant with plastic partitions.

These days, dining out means shrugging off the prison-visit set design. Credit: Courtesy of Ely Buendia. The lockdown gave Buendia, a man long tangled in an awkward dance with fame, a reprieve that was more than welcome. Except when August swung around, he found his name hitting the headlines once more, when a talent contest mounted by a food brand awarded top honours to an alleged plagiarist who borrowed liberally from musical arrangements and creative treatments from Ang Huling El Bimbo: The Musical , a production that heavily features the music of The Eraserheads, with both his blessing and admiration.

From theme songs for adverts to t-shirt rights to telco tie-ups to, yes, musicals, his work with The Eraserheads — divorced in , briefly reunited for shows in and , followed by a string of dates abroad — is a horse that refuses to die. Credit: Owen Reyes. He made his bones in his early 20s, and not in any half-assed way. On the subject of going against type, Buendia gets a different skip in his stride. He starts speaking of the late, great Marlon Brando, whose lifelong creed was to push the envelope.

Brando, in the end, would pretend to be in deep thought, looking up. They take time to think about it. His own stellar discography is testament to this heady friction, but no matter the circumstance, he always stood by the work, reception be damned.

In reality, the early releases of The Eraserheads left much to be desired in terms of production. The snares sounded like tin cans, there were no lows to speak of, and the guitars were imprecisely tuned. So a quarter of a century later, as an act of corrective curation, Buendia would spearhead its digital remastering and vinyl reissue. The studio legend, he explained, treated any material that landed on his doorstep not as songs or notes, but as a web of frequencies.

The limited vinyl reissue was a hit, and copies reportedly sold out on the day of the launch, on November 24, The fans love it, and I respect that.