Mr. Big and generations hence

Two generations were out the night of May 10, drinking in the music of their times. Those who were born in this millennium, and maybe their mothers, were out at the SM Mall of Asia, bumping along to the pop music of Justin Bieber, the teenage singing superstar I first heard about on Twitter. Those who found life and love in the 1990s—like yours truly, except that I wasn’t there—were at the Araneta Coliseum, singing along to the songs of Mr. Big.

A quick bio: Mr. Big is the hard rock band that brought us songs like, “To Be With You” and “Green-Tinted Sixties Mind.” They were formed in 1988, broke up in 2002, and reformed with the original members in 2009.

I suppose I can say it was Mr. Big that introduced me to rock. Summer of my freshman year, the radios played “To Be With You,” one of their biggest hits from their second album Lean Into It. An added beauty of this song, at least for me, is that it remains to be one of the best songs to sing as a group. It’s right up there with, “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” and “Closing Time.”

But now that I’ve thought of it, Mr. Big also introduced me to a lot of things.

One of my fondest teenage memories involves my younger brother, my older brother, a cousin my age, and her younger brother. It was a lazy day, and the boys were learning to play the guitar. One of the boys played “To Be With You,” and somehow, we ended up joining in one by one, singing the entire song. We cousins were at awkward ages. The younger boys were becoming conscious of girls; my older brother probably had his first girlfriend at that time. My girl cousin and I were in the thick of puberty.

Somehow, though, that singing along introduced me to the friendship we would enjoy when we were much, much older.

I entered sophomore year knowing “To Be With You” by heart, singing it silently to all my crushes who were rejected by their crushes, switching the word “girl” with “boy” and changing the pronouns, as in, “Hold on, little boy, show me what she’s done to you.” It sounds sappy now, and almost improper, but oh how I felt it when I was younger. And how the words “When it’s through, it’s through” stuck with me!

In fact, years later, muddling through my first true romantic disappointment, I’d recall those words and summon the finality in them. When it’s through, it’s through.

That same year, a classmate told me that there was this other Mr. Big song that she liked. Around that time, “green” was a buzz word for us teens. As in, “green-minded” and “Ew, you’re so green for telling that naughty joke.” I expected the song “Green-Tinted Sixties Mind” to use the word “green” that same way, and for a while, I accepted that mistaken understanding. After all, “green” was only a couple of words away from “mind.”

But I was already a budding writer, and I couldn’t get past the words without fumbling for the true meaning. Back then, research, especially on colloquialisms and references, wasn’t easy. The song title would be my introduction to literary analysis, something I’d encounter more of in university.

Finally, the song “Wild World” introduced me to a bigger world of music, and how little I knew, and how much I should look out for when appreciating it. It’s hard to imagine now how much the radios dictated what we listened to, and, in effect, shaped what we liked. But rock bands were remaking brilliant songs, churning out their own notable versions. Mr. Big covered “Wild World,” and I thought it was an original. One of my know-it-all classmates chided me for not knowing that a guy named Cat Stevens sung it first, and I thought he was pulling my leg. I asked my brothers, checked the album sleeve, and well. I like Cat Stevens now.

If I weren’t a bit agoraphobic, I would have probably been there at the Araneta Coliseum, living out my youth through music. It would have been a nice full circle. But a friend who went did say one of the guys promised to return. Maybe I’ll have another chance.

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