III Sides To Every Story

Dawn wakes the silence...of a fainted lullaby
Day breaks the eyelid...from a song sung in my eye

--- "Rise N Shine" by Extreme

1992. I was in college then when I came across the band Extreme, evidently famous for the acoustic love-song "More Than Words." The song had inspired me to learn the guitar since Nuno's tapping on his 6-string on the music-video looked so cool. Plus playing it in front of people made them thought that I played very well. Their belief would only be stopped abruptly after the first 8 chords since I only learned the intro then.

I consider III Sides To Every Story, their 2nd album, a true masterpiece ahead of its time. It is one of my, how should I call it, "sulit albums" since I loved all the songs. Hence, sulit.

There was no radio-hit for any of the songs on the album unlike their 1st, Pornografitti, which housed "More Than Words." It's a good thing, actually, as the true appreciators of their music was able to sit quietly with their then walkmans and cd-players, digesting the carefully-crafted songs in III Sides, away from the masa and the media who might ask the hosts of ASAP or SOP to sing it, out of tune.

Among these fans was myself, having borrowed CM's cassette-copy and dubbing it on our Multiplex cassette-player (TapeA to TapeB) to make myself a duplicate. Ah yes, grabbing music was such a hassle then. But it was worth it. Listening to Gary Cherone's vocals and Nuno's chops was a feast of masterful song-writing. They had taught me not to dwell in the More Than Words hype. "III Sides" had more to offer for it had their best work. A pure masterpiece for any alternative-rock lover. Sadly I lost that copy when we moved from Makati to Paranaque. Since then I only had faint parts of the songs here and there in my mind. I truly missed it. Damn I should've stored my tape-collection with more organization.

Fastforward to 2006, I was able to find the said album listed in Bit-Torrent. Needless to say that I have downloaded (and still downloading as of this blog's writing) all the songs in the album. Whoever invented MP3 and Bit-Torrent, wherever you guys are, thank you talaga!!!!

I can't wait to burn it to a CD and turn up the volume in the car ---of course I'll be providing the extra vocals while driving.

I am currently listening to the songs that have finished downloading, with earphones plugged to my laptop.

Ahhh yes. It's like 1992 all over again.

Yup you can give me an original CD of it for my birthday (meron sa E-Bay, hehe).