By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

SITTING next to the radio growing up, we learned the words to songs the old-fashioned way: straining and trying to figure out what the heck those singers were saying. Now, for the most part this was not too hard; there seems to be a gene inside all Filipinos that allows them to understand, memorize and then regurgitate on command every single Barry Manilow song. But there were challenges: Pearl Jam and every single band who tried to sound like them were really hard to get. But sometimes we had help. Aside from being just the best music magazine like ever, Jingle had, notably, correct lyrics to the songs of the day. As the articles receded and the lyrics spread, Jingle Songbook/chordbook become the go-to mag for the words even as a virtual legion of imitators came out of the woodwork, some of them with ridiculously erroneous lyrics.

Who knew that the ultimate solution lay in weight on TV of all places. A nation weaned on the power of videoke was waiting to watch even more TV. When ABS-CBN started up Myx in 2001, it seemed like a quaint variation on MTV and Channel V. Wow, I was really off on that. Myx, by streaming the words to every single video they aired, was perfect.

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By Eric S. Caruncho, Staff Writer
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

Being on my third iPod (the 80-gigabyte, fifth generation), it goes without saying that I have finally succumbed to MP3 technology along with the teeming masses.

There is something to be said for having all your music at your fingertips. If I get a sudden yen to listen to a particular song again, all I have to do is turn the clickwheel and there it is. Not too long ago, such an urge would have entailed digging through my collection of 1,000 plus CDs or 2,000 plus LPs and 45s and God knows how many cassettes, firing up the stereo system (assuming I actually managed to locate the cut I was looking for), and playing the track. If it was on vinyl, there would first have to be the complex ritual of cleaning the record with my antistatic brush and home-brewed cleaning fluid, cleaning the stylus of my turntable with a different brush, and carefully dropping the needle in the groove with the volume off to avoid any speaker-damaging noise, before turning the amplifier up.

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By Eric S. Caruncho, Staff Writer
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

PIONEERING radio disc jockey Dante David, better known by his on-air monicker Howlin’ Dave, died last May 26 after suffering multiple organ failure. He was 52.

David was best known for having championed Pinoy rock on “Pinoy Rock and Rhythm,” his radio program on DZRJ, in the 1970s.

It was on this program that local audiences first heard the music of the Juan de la Cruz Band, Anakbayan, Mike Hanopol, Sampaguita, Asin, Heber Bartolome and the other acknowledged greats of Pinoy rock’s first flowering, in between Howlin’ Dave’s inimitable free-associating spiels.

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By Eric S. Caruncho, Staff Writer
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

Editor’s note: And while you’re at it, check this out: What didn’t see print in the SIM, May 11, 2008 issue because of limited space.

WHILE going through my e-mail, I noticed one forwarded by a fellow “Jingle” magazine alumnus, which announced that June Millington would be conducting a workshop on “the global Pinoy musician” sponsored by the Lunduyan ng Sining, a local women’s NGO.

The phrase “blast from the past” is overused, but in this case, appropriate because I knew who June Millington was.

I remember a Time article that came out sometime in the very early 1970s — possibly before martial law — which featured two rock bands: Joy of Cooking and Fanny. It was the very first time the general public heard about the phenomenon of “women in rock.” There were of course female singers — Janis Joplin had only recently died of a heroin overdose — but women musicians playing their own instruments and composing their own songs and competing on equal footing with the likes of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones? It had never happened before.

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