#GetMusicIndieGo

[musikametro]

Oh Mel! 😍😍😍 #GetMusicIndieGo #MoaArena #JensenXflips #idol #crush https://www.instagram.com/geneefishy/p/BUUTdbMjzjC/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=848l43xm5l4k

[thosewhocantdomusic-blog]

In Defense of Get Music Indie-Go… Sort of.

Pointing out the pointlessness of this shitfest is as done and obvious as pointing out Shotgun Combo’s sexism. So I decided to defend it... sort of. 

MCA’s Get Music Indie-Go is lame. If you think it’s cool, you’re objectively wrong. And you’re lame. You’re more basic than the new Harry Styles record. 

The line-up (save for NINNO because I love that guy) looks like it was assembled by some corny dad who’s trying to win over the affection of his high school daughter whose knowledge of “indie music” begins and ends with Arctic Monkeys’ AM. They really just took some of the most bland and commercial-ready local artists and lumped them together in one gig. The final nail in the coffin is guest band An Honest Mistake, a generic pop punk band from Malaysia (signed to Warner, mind you) that belongs more in PULP’s Bazooka Rocks than anywhere else. 

Despite that, I do think that GetMusic Indie-Go, as stupid as the event’s name is, can do a bit of good to local music. Aside from the fact that they are giving some “college acts” (a term they love using that makes this whole thing sound even more ham-fisted) the opportunity to get exposed to a huge audience, this event may become a gateway for many to more interesting music. The cheapest ticket you’ll get is P1000, and that’s already a huge difference from the standard P150-P300 + one free beer at bar gigs. And by doing that, I think MCA already knew that if you’ve angrily commented on MCA’s Facebook about the ridiculousness of the price, then you’re not their target audience. If you regularly go to bars to watch gigs, you’re not what they’re looking for. The audience that they’re trying to get are the people that are young, dumb, and sheltered enough to think that this is worth it. Honestly, that’s not entirely a bad thing. Because if these young, dumb, and sheltered kids can’t be bothered to go to Saguijo to watch real indie, at least they’ll get a lengthy swig of it here. And although one of the most problematic parts of this event is that they use “indie” to describe something that contradicts the literal meaning of its root word, they are at least spreading the term. They’re planting it into the minds of the people who are clueless about it. By doing that, MCA makes people curious, makes them want to learn about it more. This is like how getting into Blink-182 can get you into The Clash, how Slipknot can get you into Morbid Angel, and how Kanye West’s Yeezus got a lot of hipsters in training to check out Death Grips. 

I highly doubt that Get Music Indie-Go will ever be taken seriously. Not with that line-up, and definitely not with that terrible, terrible name. Still, I don’t think it deserves the amount of hate it gets. At it’s core, it’s the strawberry-flavored lube that’ll help ease the uninitiated into the coarse vagina/asshole to more interesting music. We all needed that at one point after all. You’d be lying if you didn’t.

[consciousandthegoodness]

Unisex Banyo Hitz last Saturday at #GetMusicIndieGo. Thanks to @mca_music for having the balls to put it up, and thanks to everyone who came to support the scene. Congrats to all the artists and the crews who were a part of this momentous event. Impossible pa lang 'to. Mabuhay tayong lahat! #ParaSaEksena (at SM Mall of Asia Arena, Philippines)

[laizacostelo]

Get Music Indie Go

A celebration of Indie Music and an advocacy of MCA Music in support of bringing Filipino Artists together. (April 20, 2017)

Indie Manila: bit.ly/GetMusicIndieGo

[thosewhocantdomusic-blog]

Was Get Music Indie-Go Worth It?

eeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtwasitwasallrite.jpg

I went to Get Music Indie-Go because I was lucky enough to get my hands on some VIP tickets. Don’t ask how. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not proud of myself. 

ANYWAY. 

Billboard PH recently wrote about it and goddamn did they tip-toe around the motherfucker. It was so obvious that not a lot of good things happened that night because under the “Highs” section, all they could say was (essentially) “There’s aircon,” “Jensen and Reese were cool,” “there was food,” and “it happened at MOA Arena.” They couldn’t say anything offensive under “Lows,” so all they said was “It was expensive,” “It started late,” and “There was a lot of trash afterwards.” 

I feel bad for them for not being able to just say outright that the thing was a flop. There were probably around fifteen to twenty people in the upper and lower box areas, and just half of both VIP A and B were filled. They should’ve just rented out SM Skydome or the Samsung Hall at SM Aura to save them the embarrassment. It was so sad, that when I woke up the following morning, I thought really hard whether I wanted to write about this or not. I held it off for a few days because I got depressed every time I started thinking about it. I thought I would never write about it, ever. Then today I listened to some Steve Lacy, Pouya, and the new Death Grips, and that got my mood up real quick. Now I’m ready to shit on this again.

First of all, it wasn’t bad. It was just plain disappointing. They’re justification for doing it at MOA Arena was that they were going to do things they can’t do at bars. Aside from MilesExperience, this was a lie. Every band did exactly what they do at bars. While Jensen and the Flips and SUD did have back up singers, I don’t think that’s something you can’t do at bars. Sure, there’s the fact that there are better acoustics at MOA Arena compared to Route 196, but that was already expected. I arrived late, so the first artist I got to see was Reese Lansangan. I’m bummed that I didn’t get to see NINNO (the only guy I wanted to see anyway) and Conscious and the Goodness, but judging from the stuff I’ve read, they didn’t do anything mind-blowing either. I missed She’s Only Sixteen too, and thank God I did. 

And there’s also all the screens they used, which infuriated me because they didn’t even put it to good use. Initially I thought they were going to do some Kanye West-type shit, but they ended up just splicing together their music videos and random screensavers. Check out a photo from Jensen and the Flips’ set:

Reese’s

The visuals didn’t complement the music to make an immersive experience. They serve no other purpose than as something to stare at. The only artist that actually tried in terms of visuals was somedaydream. He paired his trippy electronic music with some equally trippy visuals that I can only describe as “like walking around in campus while stoned with 3D glasses on.”

Surprisingly, he was my favourite artist that night. 

Every now and then, he also used these vague, trying-to-be-profound mouth-farts that looked like t-shirt designs from H&M.

Photo from H&M

It’s funny how both coincidentally look like cheap rip offs of two different Joy Division albums. 

In the smoking area, I overheard one audience member saying somedaydream’s set was “too artsy for him.” I don’t want to generalise, but that reveals the kind of people this “indie music” festival attracted. An artist actually tries to do something different, and it’s already “too artsy” for the poor audience member. 

As expected, pop punk band All Time Low  A Day To Remember Simple Plan An Honest Mistake stuck out like a sore thumb. They’re my second favourite artist from that night, though, because their music is incredibly fun live and they’re funny as hell too. In between songs, they spent their time cracking jokes and looking for groupies. I don’t think they even knew what the show was about. In the middle of the set, they invited Dee Cruz Eunice Jorge Hayley Williams Juliann Savard of Save Me Hollywood and uhh yeah I guess that was cool. 

There’s also the “college acts,” and I don’t want to go into that because none of them were memorable. I think one of them sounded like 6cyclemind (which is never a good thing) and another sounded like Paramore. it’s annoying that there are still bands that are stuck in Paramore Hell circa Riot! I mean, even Paramore has gotten over Paramore and has moved on to ripping off The Strokes. I heard Mrs. Fin auditioned for this thing, and I cannot believe that these hacks were accepted and not them.  

Through out the night, the bands kept promising that there was going to be a “huge surprise.” The surprise turned out to be MilesExperience having a choir, a cellist (Coeli San Luis), and the UST Yellow Jackets Drumline on stage during their set. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see this set, and I would be glad to be corrected by any fans out there with footage when I say that that looks like a clusterfuck trying so desperately to pass off as a huge surprise. When i told this to my sister, who’s both a UST student and a huge MilesExperience fan, all she could say was, “What? Why??” If you’ve heard MilesExperience’s music, you’d know that it isn’t something that would go well with a choir or a drum line. A cello makes sense, but a drum line and a choir?? I don’t think I’m alone when I say that the real surprise of the night was when Gabby Alipe played “Soul Searching” for the first time in two years. It was a much bigger surprise because it meant something, and not just a bunch of random things put together to look big and important. 

I went to the show with TWCD contributor Hayden Kho’s Non-Celebrity Sex Buddy. While we were waiting for our Uber, she said “I’m starting to get why this is such a big deal to the bands now. Think about it: the last time a Filipino band got to play in MOA Arena, it was the Eraserheads.” That analogy’s inaccurate because you simply can’t compare E-heads to a band like Sud, Jensen, Miles, or Reese - and no, not even Gabby Alipe. But, yes, I got her point. At the tail end of Reese’s set, Reese was at a loss for words thanking her fans. And during Sud’s set, Ballecer could hardly move out of nervousness. Despite the broken promises and the overall disappointment, the show was actually pretty heartwarming, and I felt great for being there. And I’m actually glad that the artists, albeit undeserving, got to play the gig of their dreams. The next time another one of these things comes up, I’ll be lining up for a ticket and as long as its free because I am not giving my money to something that is so not worth paying for, I’ll be there.