The song request was for “I Will Survive,” and for the first time in 35 years as a professional singer,...
Guitarist Edgar “Koyang” Avenir devoted much of his not inconsiderable talent to making others sound and look good, while he himself remained in the shadows. He had perfected that most subtle art-accompaniment-that pushed the soloist forward into the spotlight while rendering the musical backing as unobtrusive as possible.
An accident of birth gave Paul Marney Leobrera the blues. He was born with a cleft palate and lip, and although they had been surgically repaired, the residual scar and speech impediment made him the butt of insensitive jokes and a magnet for unwanted attention from some of his schoolmates at the New Era University high school.
The summer when he was 13, Rico Blanco would often climb onto the roof of his house. The signal of DZXB, Blanco’s favorite “new wave” FM station, was weak in San Pedro, Laguna, where the family had moved from Sta. Ana, Manila. He stood on the roof holding aloft a broken-off radio antenna hooked up to his boom box with wire from a spiral notebook, hoping to catch some stray radio waves so he could listen more closely to every note of Madonna, Prince, Duran Duran and Depeche Mode when they went on the air.
WITH the Communist Party of the Philippines now largely owning up to the Plaza Miranda bombing and the purges of the late 1980s that decimated its ranks, the last remaining mystery of the Left is how Pinoy folk rock pioneer Heber Bartolome managed to hook up with beauty queen-turned-guerrilla-cadre Maita Gomez.
Not many can pull off the rock star look at 60, but Pinoy rock pioneer Gary Perez—best known as the lead guitarist for Sampaguita back in the peak years of Pinoy rock in the late 1970s, early ’80s—manages it, barely.
Lank of leg and long of tooth, but still fleet-fingered at 63, Nitoy Adriano is the very epitome of the grizzled rock ’n’ roll veteran.
Kalayo has variously been described as playing “experimental,” “contemporary,” “folk,” “fusion,” “world” and “roots” music, but “music without borders” is probably a better description.
Rock can be learned, but it cannot be taught. At least, that’s how the old adage went. Back in the day, in the dark ages before mobile phones and the worldwide web, if you wanted to play rock and roll, you bought yourself a guitar and a copy of Jingle magazine, and spent countless hours locked in your room learning the opening riff of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” from the classic 1972 “Machine Head” album.
According to the writer’s “rule of three,” things that come in three seem more satisfying, more effective, and more significant than those that come in other numbers.
