Pop Culture Interlude: Arnel Pineda!

Been back from UCSB and currently exhausted and have much to say about my visit there.

But first, as I am still brain fried, let me offer this brief pop culture interlude: Sunny Vergara emails me and Oscar from the Philippines, asking if we’d be down to see the new Journey at the Shoreline Amphitheater in September.

So totally worth the price of lawn ticket admission: Arnel Pineda! Whom Oscar and I have been watching all evening on YouTube, and whose CBS News Sunday Morning Interview is just a perfect little tear jerker. Seriously though, if you think about how many tenor range Western rockers Pineda can mimic, as we see in all of his Philippine cover band, the Zoo’s YouTubes — Sting/The Police, Don Henley/The Eagles, Robert Plant/Led Zeppelin, Steven Tyler/Aerosmith, John Rzeznik/The Goo Goo Dolls — doesn’t it make you think of the art of Filipino mimicry of all things Western? At this point though, I am not hatin. I am thinking that this talent Pineda has has enabled him to access exactly what so many Western gazing Filipinos dream of accessing. So more power to him. Born in Sampaloc to a couple of tailors, a former scrap metal collecting street kid, now he’s on his way to becoming a worldwide pop culture icon. You can’t make up his found on YouTube story, and those tears for his mother! It’s interesting to see the new Journey concert footage, with a hella big Philippine flag waving in the audience. And I think it’s also interesting how much news this seems to have been making. I am wondering what that’s about. For me, I feel like I grew up around Western rock and roll worshiping Filipinos, so many uncles and cousins with guitars. And this is something that always drew me to community folk with jam sessions on guitar, pulutan, San Miguel beer, or a much more wicked tagay. This is what’s marked so many of the gatherings in which I’ve found myself, so I can’t help but totally love Arnel Pineda’s story. And his voice.