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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