I’ve been in the band scene for as long as I can remember. Sure I was never serious about it because admittedly, I am not very good at what I do. I remember getting myself my first guitar, a fake Fender Stratocaster, when I was twelve and quickly learned how to play it.

In High School, I played a couple of gigs, mostly for school events like foundation days (and that stupid graduation ball where the Dean of Discipline accused me and my friends of “contaminating” the food with our saliva. We almost didn’t graduate, that asshole).

But my musical career, if you could call it that, peaked right before High School ended. I found out that one of my friends played wicked drums, another one of our friends learned to play the guitar(I would eventually relinquish my guitar-playing duties to him and pick up the microphone to “sing”) and we met an old college guy with weird fingers through him who played the bass.

Next thing I knew, we had ourselves a little band called Tempestuous. Now, “Temepstuous” means being characterized by strong and turbulent or conflicting emotions. I know it sounds pretentious as hell but for the record, I had little to no input on our band name. My suggestions of “Mike Villar and the Yeah Pare’s”, “Mike Villar and Band”, “Mike Villar featuring Mike Villar’s band” and “Mike Villar and Friends” were all shot down and invalidated.

We made up some pretty retarded songs which were huge hits in our school. If you were to ask me which of our hits were the biggest, I’d say our songs “Jakol–Huwag dit0” a song which narrates a young man’s struggle with deviant sexual tendencies; and “Hari ng Talisay” a song about four guys who lived in a street called “Talisay” who started a band, would be our biggest hits.

We didn’t play these songs on our gigs though but instead played Metallica and Nirvana covers on campus and at local bars. We played horrible music but the fact that we were a bunch of 15 year-olds (and a 22 year old. The bass guy with weird fingers) playing Metallica covers made our act a really cute novelty.

Most of all, we had fun, got free drinks and packed venues we played at with friends. Also, there was this one time after we played a set at Saint Claire College in Novaliches, I got a blowjob from a cute sophomore in the woods behind campus. Good times.

We still played in college but with much less frequency. Everybody was just too busy and since I attended med school for my first three years of college, I didn’t get to meet anyone even remotely interested in being a band.

On my second year of college, I got myself a small, ramshackle room behind my university and met a guy named Aaron who is easily one of the best musical minds I have ever met. At my behest, I asked him to be my roommate.

To say that the results were tragic would be an understatement. Aaron smoked like a motherfucker and before long,I found myself taking up the habit too. I spent school days boozing and because I started smoking and I am deathly asthmatic, I was living off nebulizers and asthma medication and dangerously low amounts of food.

Aaron, who had this sort of weird “unstable musical genius” thing going on, would lock himself up in our room, smoking and working on melodies for our upcoming band’s songs while I was relegated to the common living room, watching reruns of Cafeteria Aroma, coughing up blood and being generally sick.

When we finally got around to rounding up our band members and recording the songs Aaron wrote, I was very unhappy with it. My smoking took its toll on me and my voice which, before, sounded like a choir of a thousand angels now sounded like Brian McKnight on helium. Aaron tried to salvage the songs by remastering them but they still sounded horrible.

These songs still exist somewhere on the internet and I am pretty sure they will surface when I finally make it big and destroy whatever career I might have by then.

After that failed attempt at musical success, I have been playing less and less. My fingers, which were once limber musical monsters became stiff, awkward and fat musically impaired pussies incapable of playing even the simplest chord patterns.

Now, I’m back with my old band, Tempestuous playing at company Christmas Parties and ticket-selling production gigs where we earn an average of 1,500 pesos a set. Sometimes, when I’m messed up enough, I relive my glory days by dragging my huge-ass Marshall amp and my fake Stratocaster to the middle of the street and play classic rock songs like Black Sabbath’s NIB and Metallica’s Fade to Black. Sad. Just sad.

Pictures courtesy of Riz and Sharm.

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Tempestuous will be having a gig on Freedom Bar, Anonas Quezon City on Saturday December 15, 2007. We will be playing with the bands Neruda and Maryzart. If you decide to drop by, please make me feel important by talking to me and telling me that even though my music sucks, my grammar on my blog is immaculate. Also, if you know somebody who’s celebrating their birthday, book us. We’re pretty popular with drunkard males in the 40-45 demographic.

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