Beck: Reliving My Rock Star Dream

This should be my favorite anime ever. Alvin had told me about this 26-episode series about the beginnings on what will become Japan's next big rock band almost two years ago now. The best thing I liked about it is that it is fictional but it has so many references to rock stars and rock bands. It also has lots of parodies of places in Japan that the characters almost seem to have lived in the same streets that I stroll along here. No stupid fantasy stuff...just good characters, guitars and music. It's really a great relief as I was already bored with Bounto episodes of Bleach.

I really did appreciate the series very well because I used to have rock star dreams which I believed could be started by mastering the guitar. At one point when I was 14 or 15, also the age when the main character Koyuki starts playing, I'd strum my uncle's Yamaha folk guitar in our terrace which overlooks nothing but greens of mostly sugarcanes. I don't even remember making school homeworks way back then but I remember mastering chords and breaking them. Like Koyuki, I played rhythm guitars and vocals way back. I guess this was a result of idolizing Ely Buendia. And so way back I wanted a Fender Telecaster badly...perhaps as badly as Koyuki had worked to earn enough money to buy his yellow Telecaster.

Now I have my Telecaster, Castro, but my rock star dreams have already faded. This doesn't stop me, however, into going into the next stage, as in this anime, in learning the guitar: is scaling. I don't know if I would ever be able to write songs but maybe if I'd renew my love affair with Castro then it might just work. I'll try scales a little bit and learn the blues like the band's lead guitarist Ryusuke. His story with the blues in the series is one good sub-plot. Ryuusuke is the romantic when it comes to music, he's very skilled in guitar but he considers technicality as only secondary to the aim of music which is to express feelings. As Dying Breed's Eddy Lee (a fictional band in the series) puts it, "A guitar is the human soul, speaking with just six strings."

I don't know if this series can be appreciated by someone who can't empathize with the youthful romance with rock music, playing in a band and dreaming to become a rock star but if you did or thought you did at one point in your life, this series is a mandatory watch. I'm now spending more time with Castro and I intend to be with him more often because of Beck. When the theme, Moon On the Water, was first aired, I grabbed Castro and slept with him trying to learn the chords by ear. I'm still with my old methods of learning songs but that night I realized that Youtube is the new Song Hits. This video below is the one I liked most. I loved this song the first time I heard it. The lyrics and melody kills me:

Full moon sways…
Gently in the night for one fine day
On my way
Looking for a moment with my dear
Full moon waves…
Slowly on the surface of that lake
You were there smiling in my arms for all those years
What a fool…
I don’t know about tomorrow
(what is like to be?)
I was sure
I couldn’t let myself to go even thought i fell… the end
Old love affair
Floating like a bird resting her wings
You were there smiling in my arms for all those years…