My Journey Ends

Well what can i say? Today is the last day that Thoughts And Notions continues to remain a band. After three long years of existence, I finally called it quits. The band thing to be exact. I could no longer endure another lineup change. After an unpleasant thing happened, I finally chose to let the band go. I personally feel that the band may have finally given in to pressure. Surviving in a very harsh music scene in a small city like Cagayan de Oro is no joke. For one, we have to contend with the locality's less than enthusiastic support for a local band's original song compositions, and secondly, we still had to wrestle with the mainstream listener's hesitance to appreciate Christian music as it is. Sometimes they put us in a box and say that our music should only be played in Churches. One of the most unforgettable line that I heard being uttered by someone who could have chosen to appreciate our songs without prejudice is this:

"Maganda na sana yung music niyo, kaso Christian lang." (You're music is great, if only it wasn't Christian)

What the!?! Why can't people just appreciate Christian Contemporary Music like how they appreciate other types of music? Basically the music is almost the same except for the lyrical content. An artist can write whatever song he wants, whatever story he wants to tell in his songs, and whatever messages he wants to impart. You listen to a song and appreciate it regardless of form, genre, or other labels that we would want to put in. When I started Thoughts And Notions, I was never afraid of the labels. I didn't care if the mainstream audience would accept us or not. I chose to soldier on and face them head on. For sure some of our songs are tailored for the mainstream market, but i never hid the fact that we are a Christian band, and I am proud of that. But as soon as I expanded the membership of Thoughts And Notions, people with different ideas came in with their own ideas. And I ceded the songs' creative control to them because I was busy handling the marketing aspect of the band. And little by little, we have lost track with what was the band's purpose of existence. We have strayed away from band's mission which was to share God's love through music. I'm guessing that ever since everyone in the band approved of the decision to tone down the Christian part of the band's songs, that's when problems started coming in.

The mistake we had was that we allowed the criticisms and prejudices to get the better of us. I have been talking here in our previous posts that a new album is all raring to go and is in the recording process. Unfortunately, majority of those songs' messages are not like our debut album. We wanted it to be safe and acceptable to the mainstream audience. Songs that no longer talk about God's love, but romantic love. And I guess that was the time when God finally pulled the plug.

I have always believed that Thoughts And Notions came to be because of one reason. And that reason is the love that we (the founding members, Wilbert, Thrina and I) have for God. For all the breaks and opportunities that we have, we wouldn't have achieved them if it wasn't for God's blessings. The band will be going their separate ways and may try out their luck in the mainstream market. As for me, I'm going back to songwriting. It will be a fresh new start for the band. While I would be going my way back to writing songs about God's love and the experience of having felt his love. I want to be versatile in my songwriting. I want to write about faith in action.

So what will become of Thoughts And Notions? Thoughts And Notions will continue to produce, record, and create songs in accordance to it's original intentions with Wilbert, Thrina, and me still in the fold. As what the founding members originally intended it to be. It just so happens that a band is no longer around to give the audience a "live feel" of our music (for the meantime anyway). But then we want to share his love in other more accessible ways. And there's no better way to do it than do it here in our website.

Before I end this post, let me share to you the last track of our debut album. The song called My Journey Ends. This is a fitting song for the band's story for the last 3 years. The version that you will be hearing here is an unreleased version of the song which was recorded with Jun2x Dychauco (our first drummer) doing the additional drum tracks. This is a fitting tribute to Thoughts And Notions' "band" phase. I am planning to release the album's version on radio as the final single for our debut album. Our debut album is still out in major record bars (Odyssey, SM Record Bars, and House of Praise) nationwide.

UPDATE 1

We eventually did finish the album as we reconciled and added some new members. This was a down phase that we had to deal with. And everything happens for a reason.

UPDATE 2 

The version as originally posted had been lost when I transferred the contents of our original Multiply Blogsite to Blogger. Sharing here instead is the link of the song on SPOTIFY.