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Steve Vai's "Boston Rain Melody"

It was almost 11 o’clock in the evening, in front of the shore on one of the resorts at Iba, Zambales. The tide has tremendously risen up…All of the benches were taken by other lodgers, mostly by Koreans from another resort, so we were forced to sit on the cool sand. Nevertheless, it would not deter us from listening to the CD player and the portable speaker we brought down from our room.

We prepared CDs with music conducive to the beach environment, as we already imagine floating on sand and the sight of sea. We were enjoying the CD I compiled a couple of years back, made just before summer of year 2004 started. Some of the songs on that CD are not even beach-worthy material, but we chose to listen to that CD because of one particular song.

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It starts of with the sound of thunder, while drops of rain slowly pour from the speaker. Then the tender and clean guitar intro follows suit, generating a flowing effect reveling with the rain. The song continues with mesmeric verse lines from the guitar, filled with memorable slides and enchanting melodies clear as the sand underneath the coursing water. The tasteful leads treading the rhythm of the water further adds mystique to what is already an orgasmic song.

But just before he returns to the rhythm of the song leading to its end, he pulls off what I think is the climax of this sweet instrumental; finger tapping while tugging the whammy bar of his Floyd Rose, his signature trademark move. This part simply feels like a sonic deluge surging inside your body, suddenly drowning your sense of reality, and forces you to bask into the vitality flowing from this sound, pure and unadulterated. And then you land back into solid ground, holding grasp of yourself.

I remember the times of rain pouring under the gazebo of our home, while my other friends and I were intoxicating ourselves through the wee hours of past evening. I played the song on the player just before everybody got themselves drunk. They, too, were drawn by the inevitable beauty of the song’s overflowing majesty. After that particular drinking session, every time we whip up something leading to someone getting wasted, we make it to a point that we use the song as our background music in order to enhance the drinking experience.

Leading back to the scene at the beachfront, I remembered a lot of things that made me feel cathartic. I remembered the time I first heard this song from my blockmate’s CD player. I remembered during one day from the Holy Week, when the darkened clouds of the afternoon painted the first signs of rain in that summer season, I rushed to the CD player and played the song, just to anticipate and feel the moment.

And now, I’m back to where I started, albeit with the rising tide crashing in on the shore. Considering having gone through other things in life leading to that exquisite moment, the music played at that moment reminds me of those other things.

Just things, I suppose.

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