So It’s Finally Come To This: My Semi-Retirement From Music
Looking back, one of the reasons I always loved Almost Famous is because I saw a lot of myself in the protagonist, William Miller. I always related to him more than I related to anyone from Stillwater, and up to this day, I think I would have had a much brighter future as a William Miller-type, always geeky and passionate about music, Penny Lane optional but definitely preferred.
Instead, for much of my 25 years as a musician, I insisted on being Ed Vallencourt — I had to Google the name of Stillwater’s drummer, that’s how obscure this fictional character is! That, despite being only an average talent on the drums and an above-average (though definitely not great) talent as a songwriter. Hell, I’ve even had to deal with people saying my songs have just as much depth as Kristen Stewart’s acting in the Twilight Saga, and I’ve blushed with shame at all the ham-fisted cliches I used in my songwriting, especially those I used in my teenage years as a wannabe “message songwriter” who didn’t practice what he preached. (i.e. writes anti-drug song, smokes weed the very next day.) And just like you can never trust me on the court in the last minute of a close basketball game (so much so that I was once benched for someone who doesn’t even know how to play basketball — TRUE STORY!), I’ve always kinda sucked at writing endings, outros, or whatever you want to call them. Passion drove me to keep playing music for two and a half decades. But among other reasons stated below, it’s common sense that’s now telling me it’s time to step on the brakes and explore other ways to make a meaningful impact in my choice of creative release.
Yes, that’s right, on this day, I am officially semi-retiring from music, which means I am stepping down as The Mox’s drummer and shifting to a creative consultant/co-managerial role in the band. Unless it’s a one-time-for-old-times-sake thing or an instance where I’m filling in for someone, I shall no longer be playing original music in front of audiences mostly made up of young kids, because to be honest, few people want to see someone ostensibly trying hard to stay hip and relevant in his middle-age years. Why watch Steve “How Do You Do, Fellow Kids” Buscemi when you can watch Tony Hawk? My age has finally become a liability — one’s mileage may vary as to when this happens, but since I am neither Ringo Starr nor the late, great Charlie Watts (LODI!) or even Raimund Marasigan who’s only seven years older than I am, I feel that I’ve long overstayed my welcome in the local scene as a drummer. It’s time for The Mox to get somebody younger (say, age 25–35) to bang the skins in my stead, and if all goes well, I will be heavily involved in the search for a replacement.
It’s sadly true that this is a young man’s game and I’m choosing not to play it anymore at the primary level, but we all know it shouldn’t be, and the best thing I should do at this point is to accept this long-running trend for what it is. Hey, I was 15 once and I remember wanting Mike Hanopol (then 45-ish) and even Gary Granada (then 35-ish) to get the fuck off the airwaves and let the young bands rule the roost over at the late, lamented LA 105.9.
In relation to that, my heart’s no longer into it as it used to be — maybe it’s my very, very likely case of the ‘vid that made me unusually introspective ‘round early September. But it was at that point that I realized that no matter how hard I tried to convince myself I still loved playing the usual live gigs, no matter how often I tried to summon my inner Jordan Belfort and scream “IMNOTFUCKINGLEAVING!” (still internally, that is) whenever I’d have thoughts of semi-retirement, I had reached a point, sometime during the pandemic, where I quietly outgrew them in their absence. The heart wants what it wants, and this 43-year-old heart no longer wants to be onstage in a conventional setting.
I’ve also found myself disliking what I’ve occasionally become — a bitter old veteran not unlike pro wrestling’s Jim Cornette, an old man who can’t shut up about how the scene isn’t friendly toward older musicians, those who don’t have the connections, those who aren’t from rich families, or those who didn’t study in Ateneo, UP, UST, or Benilde. I am not a bitter person by nature, and the last thing I want is to be local music’s equivalent of Cornette hating on Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, and other AEW stars, or Bret Hart still complaining about the Montreal Screwjob and Shawn Michaels’ Kliq nearly 25 years after the fact. (As I often say, my fellow rasslin’ fans will get it!)
In addition to the above reasons, I am also extremely busy working on what I hope would be my legacy as an online presence — a website focusing on Philippine basketball stats from the late ’40s to the present. I’ve always felt that we need a local equivalent to what Basketball-Reference is for the NBA, G League, and some European leagues, and as a lifelong sports stats nerd, this project has been a long time coming. It’s not going to be easy, and it may momentarily prevent me from fulfilling my co-management duties with The Mox, but my current priority is to have the beta version online toward the end of 2021, or early 2022.
So what does semi-retirement really mean? Well, it means I am retired from playing original music live, but not retired from making music per se. I am a man of niche interests, and since today’s music scene isn’t conducive to old-school throwbacks with weird influences such as myself, I shall keep recording and releasing studio-only music with a select, most likely fluid collective of co-collaborators. That stuff’s also kinda on hold due to the basketball project, so your patience is much appreciated! And I’ve still got plans to form a ’90s cover band whose target post-pandemic audience would be my fellow Titos and Titas of Manila. Hopefully, this will be a band that can bust out Pavement’s “Summer Babe” or Local H’s “All the Kids Are Right,” before taking requests and playing those standard ’90s rock crowd-pleasers like “Plush,” “Alive,” and “Far Behind.” (Sorry, guys. There’s only one day of the year that I plan to cover Nickelback, and that’s on the first of April.)
As mentioned, I plan to remain part of The Mox as a creative consultant, so this means I’ll still be writing songs for the band, and hopefully for other bands as well. You can think of me as the “Babe Ruth of the Pinoy underground scene” or “Brian Wilson meets Brian Epstein,” but let’s face it — those men are absolute legends, and any resemblance to their legacy should only be limited to their most notable roles. (Nah, maybe not Babe Ruth’s…unless you mean his love for food. Dammit, why is losing weight so damn hard…)
As for the co-management part, my intent is to focus mainly on being a liaison with productions, handling the more egghead aspects of management (keeping track of Spotify streams and other stats, coming up with business proposals for whatever reason), and supporting my co-manager with the promotion and marketing of The Mox. We both have day jobs that take up most of our time, so it’s going to be important for us to coordinate with each other, divvy up duties depending on who’s available and when, and work closely with Migz, James, and the new drummer to formulate the best plans for success in the local independent/underground scene.
It’s been a long, strange trip, a wild ride, one helluva journey, or whatever other cliche you wish to use. Being a musician, believe it or not, has helped me grow as a person and has helped me, as a person on the spectrum, have a much better idea of my strengths and weaknesses. But there comes a time in every man’s life when he has to ask himself — is it worth it to keep doing this until you’re an old man? For The Rolling Stones and other classic rock icons still performing to this day, the answer is almost always yes. For many contemporaries of a similar age who keep doing this (shout-out to Dondi and Mon of PapaMoans, Bryce of Save the Prophet, and Jon of Cinema Lumiere, among others), I have only the greatest admiration for them for keeping on keeping on in a young person’s game. But it’s taken a close call with the ‘Vid (as it seems), a really unforgettable birthday weekend earlier this year dealing with said close call, and multiple battles with anxiety, social and otherwise, over the past couple of years to make me realize that it’s time to change course.
To all the musicians I’ve worked with and the people who’ve watched me perform, thanks for the support, and I hope you keep supporting me in my endeavors. You’ve all been fucking awesome, so please don’t change. To anyone I may have hurt or offended because of my Aspie-informed lack of filter or I-was-a-crappy-human-being-with-a-Napoleon-Complex-as-a-young-man assholery, y’all know my apologies have always been sincere. Not an excuse for the way I acted, and I still feel rotten at times over having acted in such a way.
To paraphrase yet another old cliche I’ve used before, this isn’t goodbye…but more like see you behind the scenes. And in case you’re wondering, I AM OPEN TO DO INTERVIEWS ON BEHALF OF THE MOX as long as it doesn’t interfere with my work! Ain’t no better way of dealing with crippling social anxiety than tackling it head-on, as I’ve recently realized. Expect a lack of inflection, nervous tics, and overall lack of charisma, but come on, you’d probably prefer listening to me talk about The Mox in that boring monotone baritone rather than having to sit through another rambling, incoherent address from Deux:15+15.
Keep on rockin’,
Lorenzo (The Mad Tito) Tanos
