The Fighting 44s

Thanks to new 44’s member lingyai who sent this. I remember seeing this a while back, and I sent it to my Thymos group. I also thought either I or someone else had posted it here on the 44’s. I guess I was wrong. So thanks, lingyai for bringing it to my attention, and thanks for the GQ article, which was MUCH better than that short little CNN article that I read when I heard the news.

So the news is that Arnel Pineda from the Philippines is the newest lead singer of the famous group Journey. In the article, they talk about how the band leaders found Pineda on YouTube, and how they contacted him and brought him from the Philippines to the U.S. The article talks about how Pineda grew up in a post-colonial environment where audiences preferred singers to play songs that were not original, and how performing the same songs over and over (literally) drove Pineda to drink and do drugs. It’s a really amazing story.

There were two parts of the article that the analysis-nerd in me found very interesting.

1. The post-colonialist aspect. The article says:

[Pineda] went on to cofound a band called Amo, which evolved into a band called New Age, featuring Cajipe on guitar. Like many Filipino bands, they played a mix of original material and covers of American and British rock and pop. While the U.S. occupation shaped Filipino musical culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Philippines truly became a cover-band nation in the ’60s, when the islands served as a way station for troops en route to or from the Vietnam War and every nightclub needed bands who could entertain American servicemen with Top 40 rock ’n’ roll. To this day, Pineda says, “if you only play original songs, [audiences in the Philippines] will not appreciate you 100 percent. They want to hear you singing other bands’ songs that made it to number one. Like Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Journey.”

In the early ’90s, New Age relocated to Hong Kong, a time-honored path for -Filipino musicians seeking their fortune. It didn’t go so well. Playing the same cover tunes every night began to drive Pineda crazy. He was bored, so he drank, took drugs, and generally pursued any and all forms of rock ’n’ roll self-destruction available to a boy from Manila adrift on the Hong Kong bar circuit. Before long, he’d wrecked his voice. When he found he could no longer hit the high notes in Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight,” he went to a doctor, who told him to retire. He was 27.

It’s amazing how much colonialism has stifled creativity around the world.  In the Philippines, they’ve got some really amazing artists, but the colonial aspect–i.e. “white people do it better”–forces these creative people to work within a standard of pure imitation.  How else can people become world leaders if their culture encourages them to be world imitators?

2.  I think it’s awesome that the band is giving an Asian guy the opportunity to be frontman.  I don’t know if it’ll work out–as the article mentions, there seem to be some management issues outside of race–but it’s great that they extended him the offer, and it’s really awesome that it comes from a band which has achieved mainstream success not only in the American music market but in American music history.  The idea of an Asian American lead singer is almost unheard-of in mainstream American music.  One thing that all articles mention is that Neal Schon was inspired by Pineda’s sound, but evidently he was impressed enough with Pineda’s image as well.  Props to them, especially for taking the risk on an unknown from another country who is different (racially, anyway) from what they are accustomed to.

3. I think the band made a great career move by finding him on YouTube.  That’s totally 21st century, and I can’t think of a better way for a band to reinvent itself!

And that’s my commentary.

Oh, one more thing: I seem to recall “Open Arms” being the theme song for a Japanese drama that I really like, but for the life of me, I can’t remember it.  Skrips?  Xian?  Catty?  Pat?  If anyone remembers, please let me know.  I do remember that Elton John’s “My Song” was the theme song of “Iguana no musume.”

Edit (5/23/08): Here we go:

Don’t Stop Believing (in Chile):

Faithfully (with his old cover band Zoo):

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 12:56 am and is filed under Blog, Newsworthy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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