CERUMENTRIC aka Erick A. Fabian Sr.

I have been very busy with my new electropop project, CERUMENTRIC.

Go visit the MySpace profile for music and free downloads.

CERUMENTRIC

When Zines Become Your Life

I’ve put my zinework to a momentary halt due to my decision to take on a job as a web design/graphic media consultant for De La Salle Professional Schools. It has been quite a jump, careerwise, as I am once more adjusting to the pile of workload put upon me in an office environment.

I guess I can look at this as an opportunity to learn new things and incorporate them into my vision of putting zinecraft on a professional level. I don’t think that just because it’s not mainstream it has to look shitty. On the course of my work I took a crash course on Photoshop and Pagemaker, tools I believe can help a great deal on doing zines without sacrificing the DIY aesthetic, whatever it means to each one of us.

The question “If you were offered a lot of money to make your zine mainstream/commercial, would you accept it?” is a cliche that, for me, has passed into irrelevance at present, and quite frankly, the question is unclear on a lot of points. In as much the same way that the meaning of profit has changed for me. I am still (and hopefully never) going to buy into big market capitalism, but I do not see anything wrong with making just enough profit from your own projects, for as long as no one gets exploited in the process, and for as long your principles are intact. While I do not see myself making any profit from zines, due in part to the small specialized market that it has (it does have a market), I want to see things develop and smoothen as far as making the publishing operation self-sufficient. The said question about ’selling out’ has become irrelevant to me, as a person who prefers doing things on his own, without the fetters of red tape, group consensus, and commercialism. For me, the question is: If I had the resources under my control, would I decide to expand what I’m doing with zines and other DIY projects? The answer is yes, definitely. What is the point of making a zine if you don’t want anyone to read it and access it easily? Instead of relying on big business to distribute and validate my work, I would rather become the business itself. I will expand things. It will not be just about zines. It will not be just about comix. It will be also about short films, small press books, indie music records, low-budget documentary films, and other things that can be done the DIY way.

Subcultures have developed a sense of disdain at commercialism, refusing to buy mainstream goods. But the nature of man, as a basic consumer never goes away. Something else will simply take the place of whatever it is we rejected in the first place. Instead of being unconsciously manipulated into buying something, why not have the choice to buy something meaningful and something that transcends market value?

Zines have become a part of my life, and as I grow and mature, it also evolves as an expression of who I am at present, a person balancing his views without forsaking the ethics that has brought him into it in the first place.

I do not need to blame corporations and big business for the terrible quality of consumer products when I have the ability to create what I want things to be. It is up to us to redefine what great art is, what awesome music should be, and what good taste means. That means looking beyond one’s discontent and finding satisfaction in creating not because it has to sell, but because it expresses our idea of what is mind-blowing.  

Rock (Star) In A Hard Place, part 1

Issues of race, good taste and media manipulation in Rockstar: Supernova

Manufactured rock music? Some critics display their disdain over the current ‘Rockstar: Supernova’ series by tagging it as such, among so many ways of taking potshots at what is obviously a flawed but otherwise watch-able show. Surprisingly enough, my wife has been following the show more religiously than I do, considering that I am the in-house rock music aficionado. While I personally wouldn’t go so far as to tag Supernova ‘manufactured’, I have several issues and concerns that I would like to address.

Dave Navarro (Jane’s Addiction/The Panic Channel guitarist) has somehow lost his edge (and I don’t mean straightedge, as he’s quite notorious for his partying habits in the past). What happened to the attitude that he was known for during the late 90’s Guitar World Magazine front cover pictorial? The corresponding write up in the said magazine espoused him to be the heaviest guitarist to ever play in the Chili Peppers when he replaced John Frusciante. While viewers might praise him for being the ‘nicest’ commentator in the ‘Rockstar’ series, a Ryan Seacrest-type of advocate for the underdog, Navarro seems to have been reduced to being a Paula Abdul, giving commentaries not because of his apparent expertise as a music veteran but as a gothic patron saint of pity on reality TV.

Jason Newstead has always been the underrated bassist of yore, despite critical acclaim when he released a solo album years back. It has always been predicted that he is on the verge of leaving Metallica, especially when his bass parts were not highlighted the sound engineers in The Black Album and Live Shit, being drowned out in the low midlevel, high gain thrashings of Hetfield and Hammett. Supernova just might be his real ticket to musical recognition. Unfortunately, his thrash metal technical sensibilities have been similarly subdued, which makes me think whether the executive producers of the show actually influenced the band to be soft with the contestants when it comes to talent. There are occasional flashes of music vet brilliance, but those usually come out whenever one contestant or another plays a grunge number, if not some old radio rock ditty that he wouldn’t be caught listening to back in his thrash metal days.

Tommy Lee, while not necessarily an exceptional drummer (that title belongs to drummers like Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy and King’s X’s Jerry Gaskill) but nonetheless deserving of credit for being the skinbeater for glam rockers Motley Crue, seems unbelievably mild-mannered and soft-spoken after lying low for years of bad press and his attempt to get into the rap metal bandwagon with Methods of Mayhem.

It has been the politically-correct cliché that race does not have anything to do with it, but one look at the mostly Caucasian majority of the contestants makes one think twice. What are the chances of that happening in a reality TV show that claims on its advertising that it did a ‘worldwide’ audition? Are there not enough talented rock singers in Asia, Africa (specifically South Africa, which has a thriving scene of both mainstream and underground rock.), Malaysia (where the prog/thrash/death flames are kept burning), Singapore (despite heavy government censorship, several alternative/punk/metal bands flourish) or the Middle East (specifically Israel and Pakistan, both of which have emo-metal scenes and Sufi singers who swear by Led Zep, as in the case of the Pakistani rock supergroup Junoon) for at least one of them to actually make it to the show? Or is it because of the known fact that Western mainstream rock music as an industry is still Single White Male-dominated and has enjoyed the position of being the benchmark of what rock is supposed to sound like all these years? I leave that for people to judge. Sure, there are more Caucasians in the Western Hemisphere, but something tells me that SWM rock hegemony is still somehow being maintained. To be realistic, Asian mainstream rock fans will still be screaming for and worshipping the bigger-than-life White Male Rock Gods, simply for the inherent sense of The Other and The Different  that similarly duped the early Native Americans into giving all their gold to the White Conquistadors. I take into exception countries like Japan, where local rock stars are venerated like heroes in their own right while somehow maintaining an unsure balance in their patronization and appropriation of Western influences.   
(to be continued with more to follow…)

Red Eyes After Rending

all such pressing concern
buried in the hate and anger
so i will beg again
you are giving me several chances
even if i err

i am formed by your pity
and the strength of your head
so hold me together
my eyes are red
the water and salt remain

get me across
i hold to your belief
that we can fight the world
outside our door

there is dignity in you
i see myself alive
we dream our empire to fruition
the passion of our love
like soft slippers.