Our friend sounded incredulous. “Hindi ’yan si Stephen Bishop,” she declared.
Of course, she was just joking, although we wanted to add, “It looks more like Santa Claus wearing a Stephen Bishop costume.”
Never mind that Bishop now has a bulging belly; let’s wait if he can still sing well.
We were at a small gig featuring American artists Bishop, Michael Johnson, and Joe Puerta of the band Ambrosia last Wednesday at the Midas Hotel tent on Roxas Boulevard.
The show, unannounced in the media, followed the artists’ concert with Filipino band Side A, dubbed “Back 2 Back 2 Back,” at Smart Araneta Coliseum last Oct. 18, and served as a side gig before they did two more dates in Mindanao last weekend.
Having failed to catch their Big Dome show, we were glad to have been invited to the Midas gig.
We had actually seen Bishop perform two years ago with Yvonne Elliman and Dan Hill, also at the Big Dome. That was a spotty show, although Bishop got through without embarrassing himself.
And that was part of the reason we were at Midas—to check out if Bishop could still warm our hearts, the way “On and On,” “Save It for a Rainy Day,” “Send a Little Love My Way” and his other songs made us happy each time we heard them on the radio three decades ago.
Weird
Johnson came on first. A balladeer known for his pop hits “Bluer Than Blue” and “I’ll Always Love You,” the singer, at age 69, struggled to hit the right notes in a few instances. That was weird, because his songs were not that difficult to sing. Was it the all-Pinoy backing band that was at fault?
In any case, the 61-year-old Puerta, co-founder and singer/ bassist of Ambrosia, suffered a similar fate when his turn came. His voice cracked on the first number, “That’s How Much I Feel.”
He likewise struggled while singing “Biggest Part of Me”—making us wince because those were his band’s top hits in its prime in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
Tense
We were a bit tense when Bishop, now 61, finally went onstage; we were worried that he, too, might be out of shape.
Fortunately he did a good rendition of “On and On,” his first big hit in 1977—his nasal voice sounding fine, giving life back to the song’s quirky lyrics: “Lonesome Sue / She’s in love with ol’ Sam / She take him from the fire / Into the frying pan … ”
But, alas, there was one moment when Bishop seemed to have lost his way and sang off-key in “It Might Be You,” which he wrote as the theme for the film “Tootsie.”
Instead of feeling bad, we just laughed out loud at the incident because, by that time, we wanted to enjoy our beer.
Karaoke version
When all performers returned for a finale, asking the audience to stand up and join them for a “karaoke” version of the Beatles’ “Let It Be,” we turned kooky and imagined being on the set of “Sesame Street” for a parody sequence: “Letter B, letter B, letter B…”
An insight we gained from this event is that one should not expect too much from performers, especially those in their senior years.
But then again, there are others who, even in their old age, continue to surprise their fans with new songs, or at least new twists to their past hits.
The next time Johnson, Puerta and Bishop visit Manila, perhaps it would save us time and effort if we just listen to their stuff in their original recorded versions.