We were there for Chris Martin. Because Coldplay Manila tickets were slippery unicorns, and because my sister would not have any of my defeatist shrugging, and because we had a good friend in Singapore who was more than willing to play host.
So okay, we had the weekend. We knew it wasn’t enough. We knew we wanted some tita time to rest before the concert. What to do? Where to go?
I’d said ‘it’s okay, let it go, it’s not meant to be’ to this night too many times for my sister’s liking. But my sister, half in love with the band and Mr. Martin as she is, wouldn’t have any of it, so she persevered. So we found a way. From the first strains of A Head Full of Dreams, she would have had every right to holler ‘I told you so, I told you so, how dare you’ at my face. Followed by ‘how could you have thought we could miss this.’ But the music was weaving a spell. The lights, the heat that slithered and settled in the air, the beams of neon pulsating to the beat. The night was magic, from the first tick of the minute hand to 8 p.m. At one point, Chris took a moment to thank everyone who was there, including the people who flew in and endured the stress and the hassle and the traffic, both land and air. ‘And our mother,’ my sister and I muttered with a laugh. It’s always hard to explain urges like this, the need to feel music this way. But in those two hours there was no need to explain. ‘Sing! Go low, jump high,’ were all we were asked to do. And at one point we might have overdid the jump a little, because the sky and the stars seemed so close.
#ColdplaySingapore
#AHFODtour
So I was looking at my brand new, post-concert Battle Born CD — the first one I’ve bought in years –, and one thing led to another, as they are wont to do on a rare lazy Saturday afternoon. I found myself squatting in front of our CD/DVD rack and there they all were: physical, non-digital, non-iTunes Compact Disks with actual cover art taking up actual space. The covers were not dusty because someone actually took them out for a good wipe, but the labels were upside down and the order was all wrong. OCD and fuzzy sentiment kicked in. I plopped on the floor and took inventory:
Arctic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmare
Bloc Party – Silent Alarm Remixed
Brighter – 16 Killer Tracks from Today’s Hottest British Bands
Chicosci – Chicosci
Coldplay – Viva La Vida
Defiant – Kerplunk CD Sampler 2009 (Kjwan, The Ambassadors, Faspitch, Angulo, Beach Head, Menaya, Enemies of Saturn, Blue Jean Junkies, Subscapular, Astrojuan, Favored Enemy, Sinag)
Eraserheads (complete) – Ultraelectromagneticpop, Circus, Cutterpillow, Fruitcake, Stickerhappy, Natin99, Carbonstereoxide, The Reunion Concert
Fall Out Boy – Infinity on High
High School Musical OST – 1, 2-Disc Special Edition; 2, 2-Disk Collector’s Edition; 3, 2-Disk Premiere Edition
John Mayer – Room for Squares, Continuum, Battle Studies
Justin Timberlake – Future Sex Love Sounds
The Killers – Hot Fuss, Day and Age, Battle Born
Maksim – Variations Part 1 and 2
New Moon OST
Norah Jones – Feels Like Home Deluxe Edition
Sandwich – Grip Stand Throw, 4-Track Mind, Thanks to the Moon’s Gravitational Pull, Thanks to the Moon’s Gravitational Pull (Deluxe), Five on the Floor, <S> Marks the Spot
Silent Sanctuary – Fuschiang Pagibig
Snow Patrol – Eyes Open
Spongecola – Palabas
Sugarfree – Tala-Arawan
The Ting Tings – We Started Nothing
Twilight OST
Vertical Horizon – Everything You Want
It was a nostalgic activity, to say the least. By the time I had money to buy my own records, MP3 players and free downloads were the thing. So I took to buying only the music I knew I would love forever and happily install in my future library with the books that I will likewise love forever. (My future kids are going to hate me, getting moldy paper and scratchy disks for inheritance) The inventory revealed not a fool-proof list, and definitely not a complete one, but it’s a solid start.
I have to deal though with the itchy side effect of wanting to jump into a good gig right this moment.
