I honestly, completely, with-all-my-heart believe that it’s not yet the last.
It can’t be the last! It just can’t be.
I mean, come on, it’s good business! I think the Heads profited in two concerts (not to mention all the DVDs and records sold in between the two big events) everything they could’ve earned the past ten years that the band was off the music business. Pupil or Sandwich or The Dawn or Markus Highway could never fill up the MOA grounds and pull off what the Eraserheads did that night. Nope.
More importantly, everyone loved them! A decade, countless of controversies and bad publicities, several new bands, a bunch of music albums, and a couple of heart attacks later, everyone still loves the Eraserheads.
I was *accidentally* there last Saturday and I witnessed it myself, thanks to Marian who, just a few hours before the concert, textblast-ed that she had extra tickets. Hooray for impulsive decisions! I didn’t have to think it over, I just reserved the tickets right away.
So there we were: 100,000+ fans singing along with the music as if the Eheads were never gone. And when they, the fans, didn’t know the lyrics to the less popular songs (like Wishing Wells, and Fine Time, and Julie Tearjerky), they danced, and took pictures, and watched the foursome in awe, and shouted “I love you Ely”s from wherever they were.
I was singing along myself, surprised that I still knew the lyrics from all the mixed tapes my brother used to make in high school. It just felt so good to be there. The short tribute to FrancisM was heart-warming, hands down. Even the awkward-candid moments between Ely and Raimund — the half-smiles, they eye contacts, the hand signals — were just.. unforgettable. Their story has become our story. Their music has become our life’s soundtrack. This can’t be the end of Eraserheads.
And hey, somewhere in the middle of Huling El Bimbo, some girls standing nearby started wiping off tears! And the guys.. their hands were up in the air, faces full of pride. I think I must have gone teary-eyed a few songs before that, over Minsan, somewhere between the lines, “minsan ay hindi ko na alam ang nangyayari, kahit na anong gawin, lahat ng bagay ay merong hangganan..”
Real tears in a rock concert, ladies and gentlemen. I have never seen anything like it.
I wish I was able to sneak in a powerful camera and take photos the way Karla did. But I only had Rico‘s Samsung phone cam. And some blurry images of that night in my head. And a souvenir ticket.
Yep, The Final Set just can’t be the last.
And they really shouldn’t have burned that ancient Sticker Happy piano! I mean seriously! What was Ely thinking?