Raised on leather

For the rest of our lives, every guy we date will be off the hook because we already complete each other. She celebrated her birthday all the way in Sydney, without me. I told her to go get her law degree because no one could do it better. So because I cannot be there, I’ve decided to bang away on my keyboard like Kerouac and, without second drafts or Shift+F7 shortcuts, talk about the one thing that will bind us until we are decrepit, tattooed and toothless spinsters: rock and roll.

My soul mate and I built the foundations of our friendship on a mutual obsession with rock music. High school is a very tricky time to be forthright about your musical preferences, so it was to my amazement that I was made to sit across from a girl whose cassette tape collection was an amalgam of Poison, Skid Row and Warrant. While the painstakingly manufactured sound of same-sex pop groups reigned as the dominant musical trend (and yeah, we got sucked into it for a while), it was good to know that I had someone who would pass me the left earphone of her Walkman so we could secretly listen to Quicksand Jesus in religion class and have a good laugh. We loved rock music through and through – in its purest form, in spandex and Aquanet, in Kohl-lined eyes and blood-colored lips, in cowboy boots and whiskey-coated wails… and even in toady’s re-recycled versions of what began as a guttural cry from the social underdogs that momentarily managed to shake the foundations of modern civilization.

I wish contemporary rock could vouch for itself without facing the critics’ hackneyed guillotine of sex appeal, fashion sense and clever lyrics. Because it can. So what if it all seems formulaic? Rock and roll, like the great Lester Bangs once said, forever goes on a cyclical journey from glory to self-destruction, only to reemerge again in a different form.

A New Sensation: Fortune’s Fame

This was a very heavy discussion topic between my soul mate and I when she was informed that I would be watching INXS live in Manila for their "Switched On" tour. Although the first concerts I ever saw were of Vanilla Ice and Paula Abdul, the caterwauling guitar licks and compellingly dark vocals of INXS on my aunts’ and uncles’ cassettes haunted the back of my mind and eventually detonated when I found someone whose very presence exuded an inexplicable love for rock and roll. The news of Michael Hutchence’s suicide in ’97 had us holed up in our rooms with a quiet sadness that could only be matched by Lennon’s death in 1980. We kept our bereavement to ourselves and eventually moved on to different rock genres.

You can imagine the disappointment I felt when I found out that Mark Burnett was about to violate one of the greatest rock bands ever by producing a reality show intent on replacing Michael Hutchence with a glorified impersonator. That was until I heard Suzie McNeal bring down the house when she belted out Roxanne by the Police. I was hooked all summer, and to be honest, quite stunned when I realized that the dark horse of Rock Star: INXS, JD Fortune, had come out on top.

The first thing I remember about JD Fortune was his performance of fellow-Canadian Alanis Morissette’s Hand in My Pocket on Rock Star: INXS. Wow. Not only did this dangerously attractive hopeful manage to pull it off, he also revamped the musical arrangement to turn a whiny, mid-90’s feminazi anthem into a raw and grungy animal of a cover that left me mystified. While Fortune came off as arrogant and temperamental when he was on the show, my soul mate and I agreed that he deserved it most – if not for his sinful good looks and talent, then because he understands what it’s like to love rock and roll with every fiber of your being. By the time they were airing the video of Pretty Vegas on television, my soul mate and I were converted and obsessed. We spent the new year of 2006 with my family on the beach, drinking rum, listening to INXS on repeat and professing our undying love to each other and, of course, to JD Fortune.

All Perfect Light And Promises

Five and a half months later, my soul mate was in law school and I finally got a job as a real writer. Fate and its strangely impeccable timing then decided to floor me once again when an amazing friend and colleague of mine (who, of course, shares my undying love for rock music) offered me a free ticket and backstage pass to see INXS at the Araneta Coliseum. I rang my soul mate to brag, totally oblivious and indifferent to the fact that I was alone at a supposedly fabulous MTV Video Awards post-party, waiting in four-inch stiletto pumps for a perpetually late friend of mine to arrive while MiG Ayesa and his wife had just walked past me. None of it mattered. I was going to meet INXS, watch them live and the only thing I cared about was telling my soul mate how much I wanted her to be there with me. I could barely hear her over the ongoing festivities, but I managed to catch: "Make sure you take lots of pictures! Take pictures of JD!" Whether she really yelled that out or I anticipated her thoughts like soul mates do, it didn’t really matter.

The concert was an experience that resurrected my love affair with rock and roll to greater heights than I can explain. Meeting the band backstage before the concert was amazing, although we grew suspicious when the manager/organizer/photographer lined 30 of us lucky groupies up against a wall, did a head count and ran through a set of rules for us to follow ("You can’t touch the band, let them come to you"). I felt like I was facing a firing squad in a strip club, but it was well worth the wait. I shook hands with the Farriss brothers, Kirk Pengilly (I adore him for complimenting my cowboy boots), Garry Beers and the new number one on my secret list of rockers I want to marry: JD Fortune. The band’s new front man struck me as cocky and aloof to all the wide-eyed fans. It made me even more attracted to him. I was at a loss for words. All I could manage to say was, "You guys are awesome, you rock," and "I think I love you." Oh dear. At least I managed to walk away from it with a signed CD and JD’s autograph on my hip.

The show was phenomenal. Though highly entertaining, MiG Ayesa’s performance with The Dawn was a staggering understatement next to INXS’s opening number, Suicide Blonde. My group, bitter that the gatecrashers had flooded our front row seats and pushed us back to the nosebleed section, fought for our slots at the very front row and found ourselves at Kirk Pengilly’s feet. I have never seen a musician switch between playing the guitar and sax several times during a song as if he had been born with an extra set of arms. I was equally amazed when he waved, remembering me from backstage. The Farriss brothers and Garry Beers were equally as brilliant (from what my 5’2" height permitted me to see), playing with the energy I thought they’d lost when Michael passed away. JD Fortune owned the audience, writhing onstage as if he had been possessed by shrieks resonating throughout the coliseum. Feeding on the attention, JD reciprocated with eye contact, violently serenading each and every member of the audience in a tortured, visceral voice that you would only hear from a voracious lover. There were several times he tried to dive into the audience, much to their road manager’s dismay. He was totally different from the stoic dude I had asked to sign my hip a few hours back. I cried when the band played one of my all-time favorite songs, By My Side. They encored for almost another half hour, kicking off with New Sensation. I was so blown away by their performance that I forgot the verses of Devil Inside, Original Sin and Don’t Change. By the time the band performed Perfect Strangers, my favorite off the new album, I was in love. And somehow, I knew my soul mate felt it too.

INXS is often slapped with the misnomer of "pop group," but their performance rose far and beyond my expectations. Full of passion and hunger, INXS has been rejuvenated with a fever that I can only describe as the heart of rock and roll. JD Fortune still has a lot of people to prove wrong, particularly with those big shoes to fill. But for now, he’s doing an incredible job showing he’s got more to offer than just the charisma and sex appeal. You can’t help but root for the guy, especially knowing that if he wasn’t onstage, he’d be down in the mosh pit with us, sharing the dreams in our heads, tears in our eyes and rock and roll in our hearts. It’s pretty clear to me, INXS is back and they’ve got places to go… so much further than we can see.

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Wisdom and wisecracks are always welcome at whippersnappergirl@hotmail.com.