of last song syndrome and fx music

ride a bus, jeep, fx or taxi and chances are they have music on board. walk around and you'll see people with headsets connected to their cell phones with FM tuners. mp3 players are a hit among young and old yuppies today, they sport their whatever ipods or a generic mp3 player wherever they go. bottomline is that pinoys are music lovers.

the pinoy majority also commute to work or school and most of the time ride with a music loving driver. chances are that the driver is tuned in to one of metro manila's most cheesiest radio stations. i know about the redundancy, its just that i cant express enough in words about how cheesy it is.

every morning when i ride a bus to work, i am caught in the same situation. i hear the same beats, mostly ripped off or sampled from some past hit and then some comedian does the vocals of a repeating line taken from commercial. worst thing is that you just cant get the chorus out of your head. that's last song syndrome. it disturbs me a lot because when i walk down the megamall parking lot going to our office at emerald ave., i keep on smiling because this stupid hook (cutie cute cute) just keeps repeating inside my head. luckily if i have tons of work to do, i'll forget about it in an hour. if im not so lucky, then i'll be hearing that same song over and over until i catch my next bus home. then i hear it again. yes the drivers all tune in to one radio station.

to add more anxiety, listener's get bombarded by plugs like 'kailangan pa bang imemorize yan' followed by the most irritating laugh you'll ever hear. then jocks do their thing, speaking while laughing at the same time even when there's no joke. then more novelty music till your ears bleed. i lovingly call this as fx music.

comedians, steroid-pumped boy groups, scantily-clad girl groups, they're not the only ones who dominate fx music. there was a period in philippine music history when the songs were sung by wailing divas. who could forget songs entitled 'aray' with a generic 3/4 waltz beat coming from a synthesizer. the lyrics and titles usually have double meaning to generate appeal to the 'masa'. they were successful, i cant argue about that but thank goodness you can no longer hear them over the radio. i swear if i ever hear those kinds of songs again, i'd shiver and die on the spot.

hmmm you think im an elitist right? well, no, im just being honest. i dont think novelty songs are amusing. irritating, yes. it sure ruins my early morning. i once flagged down an fx but after opening the door and hear a novelty song blasting over the speakers, that aint right. i just said to the driver that i forgot something and let him drive away. one time at taft avenue, i was one of the 3 passengers of a jeep going to pedro gil. the driver was looking for a radio station to listen to. one of the passengers reacted when he tuned in to a radio station i love to hate, not me. the passenger said in tagalog "mama kung wala ring magandang station patayin nyo na lang yung radyo!". my thoughts exactly.

fx music is an industry. amazingly, the composers of these productions make a terrific living out of common one-liners. are they legitimate musicians? well i guess so. they are creative, i give them that much, and rich, now how did that happen?

enough bashing, its sad that as an individual that you cant do anything about it. corporations earn millions from fx music so its here to stay. what more can i say? only in the philippines.

one more thing, i have a solution for last song syndrome caused by fx music:

1. buy a car. install a mega swash buckling audio system. burn your favorite mp3s to cd. listen to it as much as you want. simple right, no more last song syndrome for me.

2. if you dont have a budget to buy a car, get yourself an mp3 player and really good set of earphones. get the sony fontopia isolation plugs, nice sound and also blocks out ambient noise like whatever is playing on the jeep's speakers. =)