February 15, 2025
Himig Natin by Juan Dela Cruz, digitally remastered
Himig Natin by Juan Dela Cruz with original artwork printed with laser printer
After scouring the web for weeks for Juan Dela Cruz’s Himig Natin album without success, I finally found a secondhand CD being sold for ¥1,200 by a music store through Amazon Japan, of all places.
The CD arrived the next day, covered in a protective plastic. It looked almost new.
Someday I’m going to do a proper review of this album but for now my short impressions will probably suffice.
Digitally remastered Himig Natin with cover artwork that leaves much to be desired.
It’s commendable that Vicor Records has finally remastered and released this great album on CD 30 years after the original LP. On the other hand, the presentation could have been done with a little bit more enthusiasm.
Everything about this CD–except for the music of course–is (to put it kindly) disappointing.
The overall design looks stale, there is no CD booklet, while the compact disc itself looks like it was printed with a cheap desktop inkjet printer.
But the main problem is the CD cover.
What’s wrong with using the artwork (front and back) from the original LP? It’s bad enough that CDs are smaller than vinyl so you get smaller artwork. But the people behind this release were probably thinking, “well that’s too bad, now let’s make it even smaller by putting some unnecessary oversized text and the company logo on the cover”.
The physical aspects of the CD aside, the music in this album is great, as you would expect from the progenitors of Pinoy Rock.
My thoughts about this album is pretty much summed up by this enthusiastic Japanese fan I read a while back:
It’s finally been reissued!!
The masterpiece second album Himig Natin by Juan Dela Cruz, a heavy rock band that Joey Smith (drums, vocals) of Speed, Glue & Shinki (Shinki Chen + Luis Luis Kabe + Joey Smith) joined in his native Philippines after the band broke up, has finally been officially released on CD for the first time!!
The original analog version is still a legendary out-of-print item that is worth hundreds of thousands of yen, and all the bootlegs that have been released in the past have been analog-downgraded and have terrible sound quality that even skips needles (lol), so it’s safe to say that this is a long-awaited reissue! It’s a work that I’ve been waiting for a long time.
It was 2,520 yen including tax.
The music is clear at first listen, and this is a work of high quality that will make you slap your knees and say, “Yes, this is it!” It has a Speed, Glue & Shinki vibe, in which the essence of hard and heavy psychedelic rock that was popular in the 70s is condensed and packed.
Because it is an imported CD pressed in the Philippines, the jacket is a flimsy paper that makes you want to say “What the heck is this?”, so it is not something to be praised visually. But as for the sound quality, it is a reissue from the original master, so the sound is perfect. As expected, the official version is on a different level (lol)!!
So yes, the album cover is still bad, but that’s not something that can’t be remedied by the office-variety black-and-white laser printer.
So I downloaded the original artwork, pasted it in a CD cover template, printed it on an ordinary paper, and inserted the resulting album cover into the CD.
Problem solved.
It says something about the mediocre quality of this CD that a low-resolution JPEG file printed by an ordinary laser printer on an office paper would look so much better than the original.
Since I buy CDs because of their physical appearance (see Spitz’s Fake Fur album for example), in this case if a high-quality download were available I would have just downloaded the files off the web and burned it into a CD myself.
February 13, 2025
A piece of commentary from Japan about Freddie Aguilar’s “Anak”
Anak (息子) by Freddie Aguilar, Polydor Records Japan (Mercari)
Probably the most famous pop song that came out of the Philippines is Freddie Aguilar’s Anak, subsequently recorded by many different artists in many parts of the world.
In Japan, the song was introduced to the public on the NHK program News Center 9:00 in July 1978. From then on, it became very popular, with at least two Japanese covers recorded by local artists: Tokiko Kato and Jiro Sugita.
Anak means “child” in Filipino; in the Japanese versions it is called 息子 (Musuko), which means “son”.
A quick search on Mercari and Yahoo Auctions reveals several record singles from those two artists, but there are more still from Aguilar himself.
There’s no way to be sure but I would guess that there are probably more original records of Anak (both single and album) remaining in Japan than there are in the Philippines. Even a few records sold on Carousell are Japanese versions.
Anak (息子) by Freddie Aguilar, Polydor Records Japan (Mercari)
My interest in this particular record is the write-up which provides us with an interesting piece of commentary from Japan about this song (translated into English from the original Japanese):
Suddenly, a worldwide hit song has been born in the Philippines!
It is a simple, melodious song with a touch of melancholy, titled “Anak” by the up-and-coming singer-songwriter Freddie Aguilar. This song, which tells the story of a parent grieving for his son, has sold 600,000 copies in the Philippines.
This is of course the highest-selling record in the Philippines, and it has already become a hot topic not only in the Philippines, but also throughout Europe and the United States, with big artists in Europe and America starting to record the song one after another. It is also currently popular in Japan, and Tokiko Kato’s Japanese version will be released at the same time.
NHK’s “News Center 9:00” also reported on this big hit from the Philippines and due to a flood of inquiries from viewers they even had to rebroadcast it, which was an unusual occurrence. Perhaps the simple melody that we need in this noisy modern society is what made this song such a hit.
Freddie Aguilar (real name Ferdinand P. Aguilar), who wrote and sang this song, is a rising star singer-songwriter born on February 5, 1953. He worked as an engineer after completing his studies in Electronic Engineering in 1972, but his love of singing led him to start singing at a folk music venues in Manila.
He sang at a club in Olongapo City until 1976, but returned to the folk music venues in Manila in 1977, but what really propelled him to stardom in the folk music world was his top prize at the 1st Metropolitan Manila Popular Music Festival held on March 3 this year.
Aguilar’s performance of “Anak”, which he composed himself, moved the audience that filled the Folk Arts Theater and the viewers watching the live broadcast on TV. The First Lady of the Philippines (Imelda) Marcos, who is well-versed in the arts and is famous for nurturing artists, also gave Aguilar generous words of praise.
The song was immediately recorded and released on March 27th, and quickly rose up the hit charts as soon as it was released. Three months later it was awarded a platinum disc.
On April 25th, an album with all songs written by him under the main title “Anak” was released (released in Japan on September 21st, record number MPF1190, cassette CPG5055), and he is currently very active, appearing on TV and radio, and performing in concerts.
He is also currently working on his second album, “Buhay”.
Anak (息子) by Freddie Aguilar (Side A: Anak; Side B: Anak Ng Mahirap) (Mercari)
A bit surprising but there are also several records from Asin, like those below. The Filipino lyrics are printed at the back with katakana readings for the Japanese to read through. There are also translations of key Filipino words in the song.
I find it amusing that Lolita Carbon’s profile includes her height and weight.^^
● Real Name: Lolita ● Born in Philippines, 21 years old ● Guitar, flute ● 160cm, 43kg
Anak (息子) by Asin (Lolita Carbon), Record City Japan (Mercari)
Anak (息子) by Asin (Lolita Carbon) (Side A: Anak; Side B: Masdan Mo) (Mercari)
February 7, 2025
Nothing happening… yet spring has come
Red berries on branch in late winter (Maria@Unsplash)
Last Tuesday, I was reading a haiku book that I got from the mail, a book that I used to have in my bookshelf many years ago but got lost somehow and now I have it back again.
And the first haiku is:
何事も なくて春たつ あしたかな
Nothing happening
Yet spring has come
On this morning
春たつ=春立つ is the Japanese action word for the Chinese 立春, which marks the first day of spring. This falls around February 4 so spring has gone by without anything happening, according to Shiro, the Edo-period haikuist.
February 4 feels a little too chilly for the start of spring, don’t you think?