Not since the Manic Street Preachers announced that their 1998 album This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours would be inspired by the Spanish Civil War has a concept album taken on such an unorthodox subject. The announcement in 2006 that Talking Heads’ David Byrne would collaborate with Norman Cook (AKA Fatboy Slim) on an experimental rock/dance musical based on the life of Imelda Marcos was met with raised eyebrows. After all, would a rock album featuring an all-guest vocalist album made up of mostly Brits, based on the life of a notorious political dictator’s flamboyant wife, living in a former Spanish colony, work?
[Cue to the Blogger’s iPod shuffling to Evita. You win, Steve Jobs.]The Blogger was born and raised in the Philippines, during the latter years of the Marcos regime. Even at a young age, the Blogger received an extremely colourful political education and witnessed the populist “People Power” uprising following the 1986 elections that swept Corazon Aquino to power and drove the Marcos family out of the country. Through it all, no matter how complicated the machinations of power worked feverishly to create history, just about everyone did focus on the colourful First Lady Imelda Marcos, her flamboyant life, outrageous manner, and of course her infamous shoe collection. (The Blogger still gets teased for this every single time he goes shoe shopping. Every time.)
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| The shoe closet. "Only" 1,060 of them. |
Imelda, with her inappropriate predilection for luxury goods when her country was awash in poverty, was so flamboyant that she came to be known simply by only her first name. It signifies her iconic stature, regardless of whether one reveres or ridicules her, that she would need just her first name to let everyone know exactly who she is. Her love of shoes (which no one has ever referred to as a fetish, ever wonder why?) is not just the stuff of legend, but also common knowledge. There is a quote in the shoe department of a local department that has this on the wall:
“I did not have 3,000 pairs of shoes. I only had 1,060.” – Imelda Marcos
So much is encapsulated in that one quote. There’s even more in some of her other quotes, showing perhaps just how out of touch with her people she was (and if she wasn't, how she grew to that state):
