Six students at Manila’s Ateneo High School first came together to form a group originally named Comic Relief, building a tight local following for their sharp, playful parodies of well-known tracks before rebranding as Parokya Ni Edgar—translating to Parish of Edgar, the Philippines’ reigning court jesters of witty pop-punk and pop fare that includes the track I Saw Mommy. From their earliest days booking sets at Club Dredd, Manila’s iconic hotbed for emerging alternative music, which they began playing in 1994, the group turned heads with their oddball stage outfits and unapologetically goofy on-stage antics, qualities that turned them into immediate local favorites before they landed a major label deal. Universal Records signed the group with support from Richard Tan, manager of celebrated Philippine punk acts the Youth and Teeth, who leveraged his industry standing to shepherd the band’s first studio effort to release.