SAY "PINOY PUNK" and one of the first names that come to mind is Romeo "Wild Thing" Lee. Ever since he first made it to the cover of WHO Magazine back in the 80's in full punk regalia, Lee has been the posterboy of doing things "My Way," the Sex Pistols version. Punk, of course, did not die with Sid Vicious, although its true spirit may be near-forgotten, its style having been co-opted by fashionistas for whom the punk ethos has been reduced to nothing more than designer ripped jeans and deconstructed tops. Lee himself has been called the "ukay-ukay king" in reference to his outrageous getups but there is much more to the man than his crazy hats.
Of all artistic and musical trends in recent history, punk is the hardest to grasp because it is not a genre into which works fall neatly in place. It embraces styles as diverse as the Sex Pistols' abrasive antimusicality to The Clash's accessible ska and reggae to the Dead Kennedys' hiccuppy anarchism. Simply put, a mohawk does not necessarily a punk make, especially one that cost a day at the aesthetician's. As for Lee, he has long given up anything so high-maintenance. So what makes Lee punk? A Tuesday night at mag:net Katipunan gives us a few clues.
Lee's Night, a formerly weekly but now monthly gig, was launched last year in a jampacked affair that featured Pepe Smith (for whom the epithet "rock icon" is so inevitable that it hardly needs mentioning). Since then, Lee's Night has become a favorite venue for the better start-up and upstart bands as well as more seasoned performers. If you are lucky, you might even catch him belting out his signature song--what else but "Wild Thing"--with a passion that could make you forget that Hendrix covered it first. For those familiar with UP Fair concerts where Lee is considered an institution in his own right, the mag:net gigs are mini versions of these concerts, with the blues jostling with reggae, metal with alternative, and unsigned bands with current crowd darlings. There, as in mag:net, it is Lee who holds things together. He is of music but not of any one genre. At home, he is just as likely to be playing Ol' Blue Eyes as Stiff Little Fingers.
Some years ago, he did welcome a TV crew into his home for a peek into his lifestyle. What greeted them was no Better Homes and Gardens, no color-blocked minimalist interior décor; not even paintings matching the upholstery (although there were paintings aplenty). With a mixture of horror and amusement, the crew documented the piles and piles of ukay finds, CDs, cassettes, records, and stereo components that filled the space up to the rafters, a veritable Katamari Damacy interior. Possibly to give "redeeming" value to the story, the feature chose to focus on his early struggles as a UP Fine Arts student, concluding that his then-emerging punk style was born of economic necessity. This may be true, but only halfway. Lee graduated from Fine Arts long ago and, while it may be a little too much to say that there are enough opportunities for talent, nobody is bound to have the same haircut for over twenty years. Unless one chooses to, that is.
And this is what people forget too often. Lee is something of an oddity: a "wild thing," even a "misunderstood genius," because he has made it his life's work to create a persona that, to all intents and purposes, goes against currently accepted notions of self-interest. This is a common enough phase at 15; after 30, however, it has to be regarded as a world-view, and a particularly difficult one to maintain. It is this, more than anything else, which makes Lee punk. For our respectably bourgeois comfort, we emphasize certain things about him--for instance, his being "dakilang tambay" (read: "noble slacker"). The "dakilang tambay" label is belied by his actual accomplishments as an artist. In the past year alone, Lee has mounted two one-man shows, Pope Lee I and Leegend, as well as participating in several group shows. His paintings are as colorful as himself, with the pigments seemingly applied straight from the tube. There is nothing obviously conceptual in his work as far as artistic trends go. What we are shown are disquieting images--some might be stills from nightmares--in a predominantly acid palette. Some works, with their juxtaposition of two different styles, candy-colored pop and raw black scribbles, evoke two different yet coexisting realities. Others, such as the Monay Leesa, are send-ups in true punk fashion of the artistic establishment. There is supreme confidence in his brushstrokes where expression is valued over virtuosity yet, at the same time, there is also something naïf overall. Perhaps because he eschews overtly socio-political themes, the power of Lee's works have to be considered as primarily emanating from more personal sources. While this is already implied in Lee's playful use of his own image in his exhibit titles and invitations, this is most evident in the works that include his self-portrait. This is a vulnerable position which more and more artists are loath to take, given the wide range of evasionary tactics now available. Punk, while it embraces a diversity of styles, vices and virtues, belongs to a relatively innocent pre-postmodern era.
This is probably why the exhibit/installation/happening Lee Almighty, his 2003 collaboration with Baudrillardian fatal strategist Manuel Ocampo and other artists, begged more questions over and beyond those it knowingly raised in projecting Lee as an "antistar." While defamiliarization is a legitimate artistic device, exoticization is something else. In the former, the "fourth wall" between the stage and the audience is shattered; in the latter, a distance is created that may not have existed in the first place. Lee's way of life--tongue-in-cheekily glamorized in the exhibit as something very like art--is, in reality, a heightened version of the way more "ordinary" people live; more, at least, than the sophisticated would like to think. This does not in any way detract from Lee's being "Wild Thing" or challenge the truth-value of the slogan (on posters and a billboard put up during the exhibit) that went something like: "Everyone wants to be a Romeo Lee." Yet there is a sweeping generalization here that glosses over the question of class. A taong grasa and a working stiff might both agree with that proposition but for entirely different reasons. Even others, while nodding assent, might prefer to have their banana-blended frappuccinos and drink it, too. Lee, of course, doesn't have to want to be a Romeo Lee because he already is, and no put-on.
It cannot be said too often that punk is in-your-face. Its element is the real--the more unmediated the better. Punk is familiar with the smell of exhaust of the city streets at noon and the steam of rain as it hits the asphalt. Punk attitude is DIY (do-it-yourself) and by this is meant more than making zines or artistic potholders; it is a philosophy that willfully makes an objet trouvé even of life and its husk that is the body. Admittedly, punk or not, we are all of us constructs with varying degrees of self-determination and transparency. The construct that is Romeo "Wild Thing" Lee will always be a mystery and that is the secret of his antistardom. (Sofia Guillermo)