Goodbye, NU

Last Sunday, a crowd gathered outside a building along emerald Avenue in Ortigas to witness the last hours of NU 107. For 23 years, NU 107.5 has been the bastion of the kind of music that other radio stations did not dare play, or at the very least, was the first to play music that would later become mainstream hits, before the mainstream paid them any attention (They were the first to play Hanson, for example, if you can believe it). And on November 7, 2010, it would cease to exist, as it would be reformatted into another soul-sucking generic radio station. NU was also the gateway for many bands who needed an audience, bands who were starting out, as well as for bands whose unique brand of music left them out of other station’s playlists. Everyone has an NU story, about how the station changed their lives, gave the local rock scene hope, helped them get through trying times in their lives. Here is mine. I first discovered NU in my freshman year of college. I remember the moment clearly because of the enormity of the way it hit me then, and the way it affects me until now. I was sitting on the AS steps in UP Diliman, waiting for my dad. The sun had just set, the campus newly coated in darkness. I was fiddling with my walkman, bored with the stations I normally listened to, annoyed at how all the songs seemed to sound the same, seemed to blend into each other. I didn’t know what I was looking for. I only knew that I was restless, and that I wasn’t content. A little background, which I assure you is essential to my story. Growing up, I have always, always been ridiculed for my choice of music. When I listened to boy bands, my cousin laughed because I didn’t listen to Bread. My high school classmates didn’t understand why I preferred grunge to sappy love songs. My parents thought that everything I listened to was noise. In short, I grew up thinking I was a music freak, and that I would never find anyone who understood me (hey, it was the 90’s, everyone was angsty then). Now back to the younger me sitting on the As steps in UP, aimlessly rolling the walkman radio dial back and forth under my thumb, searching for something that wasn’t banal pop. I slid the dial to the very end of the bandwith, and that’s when I heard it. A dark beat, followed by voices both ethereal and damned. I had found myself listening to Veruca Salt’s “Shutterbug,” the first song I had ever heard on NU, a fitting introduction to an awesome station that would be instrumental in my music education. It was the only radio station I knew of that would play songs by The Pixies, Tori Amos, Suede. It introduced me to one of my favorite bands, Placebo, as well as to many local bands like Fatal Posporos, Greyhounds and Cheese. I remember tuning in to one of their talk shows because the guests were local comic book creators Alamat. I liked Zach and Joey in the Morning so much I convinced my groupmates to interview them as part of a project. At a time in any person’s life when acceptance is a big deal, just knowing that there was an entity out there that felt the same way was comfort enough. As I grew older, my radio-listening habit petered out, then died altogether. Strangely enough, my ties with NU didn’t. I’ve guested on RockEd Radio to talk about horror, been a judge for the 2009 Rock Awards and (probably the moment I’m giddiest about) been greeted on air on Let’s Fun (because who doesn’t get giddy when greeted on air?). My story is not special. There are many stories like it, how NU has touched a life, introduced new music, made the world a little less lonely, and the evidence of this was standing outside, lighting candles, cheering as the NU rock jocks said their last goodbyes, played their last songs, all of which had to do with endings, and how they needn’t be so. The crowd grew thick and as the clock neared midnight, the first strains of the Eraserhead’s “Ang Huling El Bimbo” blared out over the speakers, stunning the crowd into momentary silence that gave way to a cheer, then to singing as the crowd sang along to the last song that NU 107 would ever play, a goodbye to a station that changed the lives of so many. After that came NU’s final sign-off announcement, followed by the National Anthem. People sang along to that too, especially during the last part, the part that goes “ang mamatay ng dahil sa ‘yo.” A fitting end to a radio station that was in a class of its own, a station that served its purpose, now laid to rest. Goodbye, NU. You were my gateway to good music. I truly do not know what I would be now without you.