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Buddy Zabala, Raimund Marasigan, Ely Buendia and Marcus Adoro in a scene from the docufilm 'Eraserheads Combo On The Run'. Handout

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Totel V. De Jesus

Because we were there in the 1990s, covering the band explosion that many regard as the second golden age of Original Pilipino Music, memories inevitably came rushing back while watching &quot;Eraserheads: Combo On The Run,&quot; Maria Diane Ventura&#x27;s documentary on the iconic group. The film premiered on Netflix on May 30 and is now available in 190 countries.Cramped but wild gigs and the “ammonia-smelling” comfort rooms at Mayric’s Folk House on España Street and Club Dredd along EDSA, the slam-dancing stoned punks raising dust and smoke in humongous concerts at UP Sunken Garden and Amoranto Stadium; those were the best of times when we really watched concerts without raised smart phones blocking our views. Everything was precious memories. We were in the moment.Those years, we were learning how to sing their songs while playing guitar <a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/life/07/23/20/how-gilbert-guillermo-shaped-music-journalism-and-pinoy-pop-culture-with-jingle-magazine">with the help of Jingle magazines.</a>I was still in college when I first saw main songwriter-vocalist-rhythm guitarist Ely Buendia, drummer Raimund Marasigan, bassist Buddy Zabala and lead guitarist Marcus Adoro at a university gig even before their first commercially released album, “Ultraelectromagneticpop.”They were not the main band but serving as front act for After Image, Introvoys and The Dawn. I remember the lineup in that usual order. They were wearing simple oversized T-shirts, jeans and Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars and back then, I can’t help but ask: who are these rowdy punks cracking jokes with their untuned guitars? At the time, I didn’t know their names and the songs they were performing.  They didn’t even play punk rock the same way we knew Wuds and The Philippine Violators and I thought, I just thought, the vocalist who looked like a gym-avoiding version of Gardo Versoza sounded like Heber Bartolome. But then there’s the melody that easily stuck to our ears, the witty, simple and relatable lyrics of “Pare Ko,” “Toyang,” “Maling Akala” and songs in English like “Shake Yer Head,” “With A Smile,” which we thought were covers from some British obscure bands.  Suddenly, we found ourselves humming those songs even if, at the time, we didn’t even know the titles. It was nearing the mid-1990s and grunge was slowly creeping in when “Ultraelectromagneticpop” came out. If we say grunge in the local scene, there were the other “cooler” groups via the Alabang to Makati route led by Wolfgang, Razorback and The Breed. Basti Artadi looked like he came from Seattle. The Eraserheads didn’t fit those standards. As colegialas would say, they were so “kyusi.”<div><iframe class="instagram-media instagram-media-rendered" id="instagram-embed-6" src="https://www.instagram.com/p/DX_qhaUj839/embed/captioned/?cr=1&amp;v=14&amp;wp=540&amp;rd=https%3A%2F%2Fod2-workbench-web.abs-cbn.com&amp;rp=%2F#%7B%22ci%22%3A6%2C%22os%22%3A6824493.600000024%7D" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="" frameBorder="0" height="1085" data-instgrm-payload-id="instagram-media-payload-6" scrolling="no" style="background:white;max-width:540px;width:calc(100% - 2px);border-radius:3px;border:1px solid rgb(219, 219, 219);box-shadow:none;display:block;margin:0px 0px 12px;min-width:326px;padding:0px"></iframe></div><script async="" src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>My friends and I bought cassette tapes of “Ultraelectromagneticpop” just for the heck of it and we still viewed Ely really sounding like Heber Bartolome. Yes, we laughed while hearing him in songs like “Toyang” and “Tindahan Ni Aling Nena.”But suddenly, we knew all the words to their songs. We sang them while playing our battered acoustic guitars in street-corner drinking sessions. Thankfully, only few can afford videoke and if there were special occasions we had those machines, the songs of the Eheads weren’t on the play list. We played guitars all day and waited for their songs on NU 107 FM, when it was still all pure rock music, and a few on the more maverick LA 105 FM. Intriguingly, “Combo On The Run” starts with their third reunion, “Eraserheads: Huling El Bimbo” on December 22, 2022 at SMDC Concert Grounds. It was an answer to a social-media dare. It was a fulfilled promise. Earlier in 2021, Buendia was asked by a fan via X, formerly Twitter, of a possible regrouping with his former band mates. We all remember his answer that went viral: If Leni (Robrero) runs (for president in the May, 2022, elections). As we all know, “Eraserheads: Ang Huling El Bimbo” happened seven months after incumbent President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte won the elections. Buendia and the group were subjects of widespread trolling, but still, the concert was reportedly attended, onsite, by 100,000 fans and watched by millions via live streaming. Afterwards, the band toured key cities abroad and Ventura appropriately captured the band’s popularity behind-the-scene, their magnetic pull among migrant Filipinos. However, the documentary didn’t mention there was a planned major concert on May 31, 2025, sort of homecoming, titled “Electric Fun” also at SMDC Concert Grounds as fitting follow-up after the “Huling El Bimbo” world tour. The <a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/entertainment/showbiz/events/2025/9/17/eraserheads-electric-fun-music-festival-postponed-for-second-time-to-2026-2155">supposedly 10-hour concert was postponed</a>. As earlier announced by the organizers led by WEU, “a range of challenges that made proceeding with the event unfeasible.”Fans are still waiting for this to happen.The members, as a matter of course, went on their separate ways again.  “Combo” is a chronological account of the band’s rise to fame until the recent years, showing each member, all middle-aged artists, still creatively doing their own thing. It traces the band’s rise to fame from the time they grouped together and recorded their bootleg album, “Pop U,” in UP Diliman. Interviewed separately by Ventura, each member opened up on what led to their eventual breakup in 2001, what happened in those years before their first reunion on August 30, 2008 at Bonifacio Global City Open Grounds in Taguig City, when Buendia had his second heart attack. Even Ventura, who was Buendia’s common-law wife and personal manager at the time, explains her side on what caused the disbandment.Ventura knew that among the sensitive topics that need to be tackled is Adoro’s strained relationship with one of his daughters, singer-composer Syd Hartha.<div><iframe class="instagram-media instagram-media-rendered" id="instagram-embed-4" src="https://www.instagram.com/p/DY6z88kFolc/embed/captioned/?cr=1&amp;v=14&amp;wp=540&amp;rd=https%3A%2F%2Fod2-workbench-web.abs-cbn.com&amp;rp=%2F#%7B%22ci%22%3A4%2C%22os%22%3A6770672.399999976%7D" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="" frameBorder="0" height="1023" data-instgrm-payload-id="instagram-media-payload-4" scrolling="no" style="background:white;max-width:540px;width:calc(100% - 2px);border-radius:3px;border:1px solid rgb(219, 219, 219);box-shadow:none;display:block;margin:0px 0px 12px;min-width:326px;padding:0px"></iframe></div><script async="" src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>The first time I saw “Combo” was when it was released in Philippine theaters in the summer of 2025. Now, I have seen it probably four times since Friday midnight and I still discover something new, reopening old memories from the 1990s, when we were all starting out. One of the realizations I had after watching “Combo” for the fourth time was that I don’t know all of the Eraserheads songs. Though back then I bought a cassette tape, it’s only now I am listening to their last album, “Carbon Stereoxide,” on the band’s official You Tube account. When I was still covering the music scene in the 1990s and the following years, I knew then that they recorded this album without each member, as Marasigan recounts in the documentary, being present in the studio at the same time. It was a cut-and-paste thing in the editing department. It’s something they had to do to fulfill a contract. I am familiar with “Maskara” and love it up to now but the other songs are all new to me. I probably heard those songs  once or twice when I played the cassette tape and completely forgotten about them. Zabala said some of these songs were written deliberately to push the limit of their fanbase, if they would really like whatever the band came up with.But this is nothing new. I read somewhere, The Beatles did the same with songs like “Helter Skelter” but the difference was, all four members were physically present in the studio. The music geniuses that they were, “Helter Skelter” was considered by critics as the first heavy metal song. By default, despite not being in the same place at the same time during its creation, Ely, Marcus, Buddy and Raimund did the same with &quot;Carbon Stereoxide,” perhaps the best experimental yet still melodic sound that we can still listen to in middle age while dealing with gout attacks and other illnesses that we’re paying for from overindulgence in those decades.I feel lucky because up to now, it feels like I am listening to their newest album. I don’t have to wait for them to regroup again, not for another major concert that may take forever but to record new materials.It sounds silly but looking back in 2001 and the following years, like the four guys, I think I was one of those fans who focused on other concerns in life. We grew older and our priorities changed with the times. Even Basti Artadi, Glenn Jacinto and Bamboo Mañalac left their respective bands to try their luck in other fields, abroad. Up to now, there’s no definitive documentary on Juan dela Cruz band, Anak Bayan, and the other founding fathers of Pinoy Rock.<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1780289401148Ely Buendia treats select mainstream media people and vloggers with three songs, playing acoustic guitar, after screening &#x27;Combo On The Run&#x27;. Photo from The Ely Buendia Facebook page.JPG" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960" alt="Ely Buendia treats select media with three songs, playing acoustic guitar, after screening &#x27;Combo On The Run&#x27;. Photo from The Ely Buendia Facebook page"/>Ely Buendia treats select media with three songs, playing acoustic guitar, after screening &#x27;Combo On The Run&#x27;. Photo from The Ely Buendia Facebook page</div>The most wonderful thing with “Combo” is that it was made and released when Buendia, Adoro, Marasigan and Zabala are still alive. It’s them telling their own stories. Nostalgia is good but seeing them in their separate gigs now is better. We’ve move on with them. Their songs have become modern classics that younger generations discover and continue to patronize.<div><a href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/entertainment/showbiz/celebrities/2026/5/29/diane-ventura-on-sharing-eraserheads-story-with-younger-generation-there-s-a-lot-to-learn-1203">Diane Ventura on sharing Eraserheads&#x27; story with younger generation: ‘There’s a lot to learn’</a></div>For me, it’s a bonus that I saw “Huling El Bimbo” at SMDC Concert Grounds with my teenage daughter. Her generation is taking over and we, middle-aged sling-bag-filled-with-maintenance tablets-carrying fans are just but thankful we are still here. In the documentary, Zabala repeatedly uses the phrase “I came from that generation…” — about three times — as a point of reference when explaining how he handles disappointments.On a positive note, I am proud to tell the younger ones: I came from that generation when the Eraserheads was just starting, rose to fame, disbanded and along the way, with their music, helped us cope with our lives for the better. And lucky for all of us, they are still here.

Watching "Eraserheads: Combo On The Run" feels like opening a time capsule for those of us who covered the 1990s band boom, an era many consider the second golden age of Original Pilipino Music.

Watching "Eraserheads: Combo On The Run" feels like opening a time capsule for those of us who covered the 1990s band boom, an era many consider the second golden age of Original Pilipino Music.

Netflix review: Watching ‘Eraserheads: Combo On The Run’ is more than nostalgia

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Netflix review: Watching ‘Eraserheads: Combo On The Run’ is more than nostalgia

Totel V. De Jesus

Published June 01, 2026 12:55 PM PHT

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Updated June 01, 2026 03:43 PM PHT

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Ely Buendia

Eraserheads: Combo On The Run

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