He wears sunglasses at night

Photos by Christine Palattao, for the Philippine Educational Theater Association

Ely Buendia emerges onstage to a mishmash of funk and blues.

He’s wearing a wrinkled, red dress shirt under a three-piece suit and and that air of smug nonchalance we all know too well. He pauses in the middle, scans the crowd of about 400, and then breaks into a wry smile that gets just about every lady inside the Philippine Educational Theater Association’s (Peta) black box shrieking. The men, on the other hand, promptly raise their fists and roar, “Hayup!”

One will be hard pressed to find a local music artist these days that can rouse this kind of enthusiasm the way Ely can. And he has yet to sing a note or strum a chord.

Backed steadily by his band—Rommel Sanchez (guitar), Mayo Baluyut (bass), Wendell Garcia (drums); two singers; and a small string-brass ensemble—the seminal singer-songwriter kicks off “Ely Buendia Sings for Peta,” with “Higante,” a song from “In Love and War,” an album he recorded in collaboration with the late rapper Francis Magalona.

He slings an electric guitar across his shoulders, which, for not a few fans, is enough reason for them to scream their heads off. The strings springs to life, creating a breezy intro for “Alapaap.” The crowd promptly sings along from the first line, and doesn’t let up until the trippy coda—one that evokes that feeling of waking up one day feeling stupefied.

He performs a series of Eraserheads classics rendered in new arrangements and sweeping strings instrumentation, which gives the songs a touch of grandness. “It’s the Ely Buendia Orchestra!” the musician, who now fronts two bands, Pupil and The Oktaves, jests.

He’s not exactly the best of vocalists, as most of us already know, but he does well tonight, even taking liberties in changing and jazzing up some of his songs’ melodies.

Not that it actually matters. Because the driving force of much of Ely’s work—at least during his time with the Eraserheads—has always been the simple narratives, delivered in conversational lyrics, and set to driving melodies and catchy hooks.

The intimate venue allows for some rollicking interaction between Ely and the crowd. When the fans aren’t singing along to such hits as “Maling Akala,” “Ligaya,” “Huwag Mo Nang Itanong,” “Maselang Bahaghari,” “Huwag Kang Matakot,” “Overdrive,” “Lightyears, ” they’re shouting out professions of love: “Ely, I love you!” “Ely, pa-kiss!”

In “Pare Ko,” Ely  stops singing every so often to let the audience take on the song’s oh so sweet line that goes something like, “’Di ba? Tang#@%!” “Galing niyo pala magmura,” Ely quips. He renders everyone in stitches when he tweaked a couple of lines of “Magasin”: “Medyo pangit ka pa nu’n…hanggang ngayon!”

While he rarely performs covers in his gigs, Ely makes an exception for Peta. Perched on a stool, he asks The Oktaves band mate and Hilera vocalist Chris Padilla to join him onstage, and together they fill the venue with the sound of their crisp guitar-playing in the ballads “With a Smile” and The Beatles’ “Something.”

Also in the set are “Santo” and “Ang Huling El Bimbo,” which ends with a showstopping drum solo from Garcia. The crowd clamors for an encore, and Ely promptly obliges with three more songs—“Walang Nagbago,” “Spoliarium,” “Torpedo.” Watching him go over the Eraserheads discography feels like being in one heck of a school bus ride back to the late 1990s.

As Ely is about to exit the stage, a staff member hands him a bouquet of flowers, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with it. The jacket and sunglasses are off; his collar unkempt. And for a split-second, Ely grins…just barely.