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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. So now, I find it odd when I'm watching a music video and the words are not on the screen. It also had the interesting side effect of showing you could write lyrics and who could not. Pupil's "Disconnection Notice" and Sandwich's "Procrastinator" are sublime examples of songs with lyrics that not only work but bear thinking about long after listening. And sorry, Lady Ga-ga but "Poker Face" has an infectious hook but wow those lyrics are really dumb. Your mileage will of course vary depending on why you want the words. For those who simply want to be able to sing along, then it really doesn't matter how awesome the lyrics are. Po-po-po-ker face it is. But for those who adore a good line or two, then this new way of appreciating Pinoy music works on so many levels. So ride with the wind and hold that grip steady to watch and read and appreciate that new Kjwan song. It's perfect. Read about the Out of Body Special, Manila's best-kept musical secret in the February 15, 2009 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

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. Now it's all there in my hard disk, neatly filed into folders and partitions. Acquiring music has also never been easier. To be honest, I haven't bought a CD in years. Why bother when almost all new music is just a download away? Even the most esoteric recordings are surprisingly easy to track down on the Internet, and with a fast connection, it only takes a few hours to download. Now my music library is bigger and broader than ever before. Not only am I more or less up-to-date on the latest indie releases but I have also been able to catch up on music I missed out on from decades past. When I look back at the amount of time and money I spent in the last 20 years hunting down and acquiring music, I just have to shake my head. If I had dedicated the same amount of time and passion to something else, I could have mastered two or three foreign languages, or worked a second job. Now all I have to show for it are shelves of CDs and LPs and tons of stereo equipment gathering dust while I listen to my iPod on headphones. Something's amiss, however. I've never been able to get rid of this nagging feeling that in embracing the convenience of MP3s and music downloads, something has been lost. And I'm not only talking about the superiority of analog over digital music that purists have always held against the admittedly sonically inferior MP3. In making music so easy to acquire, MP3s and downloads have all but eliminated the thrill of the hunt, and maybe that was more than half the fun. Music used to be hard to get. When I first started buying records, an LP cost seven pesos—way out of my league. It took many months of saving up my school allowance before I could purchase my very first album: the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. My second purchase took even longer: it was Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, a double album, which set me back all of P14—a princely sum in those adolescent days. In any case, I only had a few records, which I listened to over and over again, on my father's stereo system, usually at night with headphones, until I literally wore the grooves out. I knew every note Jimi played on "Electric Ladyland", every tape splice in "Sgt. Pepper", by heart. To save money, I would borrow my friends' albums and tape them on my father's reel-to-reel. There were a couple of places in Sta. Mesa Market and Farmer's Market in Cubao that would tape imported LPs for you, and that's how I got into the likes of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Larry Coryell. I would also borrow Thelonious Monk and blues LPs from the old Thomas Jefferson library and tape them. This was the forerunner of music downloading. The music industry even launched a campaign against it: "Home taping is killing music", they cried, successfully lobbying for a tax on blank tapes. Unless you had generous relatives living abroad who would send you records, music was still hard to find in the late '70s and early '80s. I remember scouring the racks at the record section in Unimart in vain for something to buy and found nothing but Styx, Kansas and Reo Speedwagon. Worthwhile releases were few and far between, and the local release of something like Blondie's "Parallel Lines" or the first Joe Jackson album was enough to get my blood pumping. I still relied on borrowing or renting LPs and taping them, however, for my music fix. "A to Z Records,” run by Leslie David and Ces Rodriguez, a couple of congenial music mavens and record hounds, was my haunt. A handful of us music-starved and cash-strapped wretches would rejoice whenever Leslie and Ces managed to get their hands on something choice, like the latest from Japan (the band, not the country), the Cramps, Husker Du or the Smiths. An import LP was something to be cherished, savored and shared, passed from hand to hand, turntable to turntable, its essence imprinted on magnetized oxide particles. The advent of the CD put an end to all that. Many music aficionados found it hard to make the change. The first generation CD players were frightfully expensive, and the CDs themselves were initially costly and hard to get. But as the music industry got behind the new technology, they became somewhat easier to acquire. Being now gainfully employed, I found myself, like so many others, having to buy "Sgt. Pepper" and "Electric Ladyland" all over again, bedazzled by the new medium's crystalline sound and convenience. Even with the opening of Tower Records, however, finding new music was still a challenge, not having unlimited funds. The game was now how to get your hands on that rare import CD without having to pay the ridiculous amount Tower was charging for it. With patience, fortitude and a keen nose, it could still be done. The advent of the CD burner also revolutionized music collecting. Tapes were unwieldy, noisy and sonically inferior to the original LP, but a CD copy was sonically identical to the original. Of course, none of that matters now. Technology has overtaken the CD, and the format appears to be on its last legs—at least as the chief medium for mass marketing music. In only a few years, MP3 music downloads have become the dominant format for distributing new music. The advent of peer-to-peer networks and torrent sites on the Internet has become the bane of the music business and a boon for music hounds, opening a virtual cornucopia of music to anyone with a fast connection. The downside is that finding music is no longer the adventure that it used to be, and without the thrill of the chase, catching the prize often feels like a hollow triumph.

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. David is also acknowledged by most informed sources as being the first DJ to play punk rock on local radio in the late 1970s and early 1980s, also on DZRJ. It was on his program that the future members of the Wuds, Betrayed, George Imbecile and the Idiots and the first Pinoy punk generation were introduced to the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees: influences that would change the course of Pinoy rock forever. Above all, David was a true believer in the music. As hard as it might be to imagine today, 30 years after its birth, punk was considered too radical (and unmusical) by many of David's fellow rock jocks -- most of whom were into the mellow sounds of Firefall, the Marshall Tucker Band and Fleetwood Mac. It is thanks to Howlin' Dave's stubborn persistence that the local punk and hardcore scene was jump-started. As he once lamented: "Lagi na lang ba ganito? Palagi akong kailangang makipaglaban para sa music ko? (Does it always have to be like this? Do I always have to fight for the music I like?)" But he also added, with some satisfaction: "What we fought for, at least ngayon cool na. Kahit na baduy yung Parokya ni Edgar at Kamikazee, yung style nila na-a-appreciate na ng maraming tao. Naisip ko: eto yung efforts namin noon, ngayon mainstream na." Eventually, David got his due when NU 107 FM gave him a "Lifetime Achievement Award" for his contributions to the local rock scene. David had been in poor health after surgery for a brain tumor in the late 1980s. By his own admission, he suffered from diabetes, hypertension, rheumatism and arthritis -- "Pare, AIDS na lang ang kulang (except AIDS)!" he would joke. He also suffered long periods of unemployment, unable to fit into the new radio environment with its tightly-regimented playlists and strict music formatting. In 2006, after a long hiatus, he shared a stint on the short-lived AM station Rock 990 with fellow RJ veterans. More recently, he was on the RJ-owned UR 105.9 FM station, until he walked out of the booth and his job due to musical differences with the station management. That was typical of Howlin' Dave: putting the music first above his own job security. Apparently he was still too underground for the self-proclaimed "Underground Radio" station. For more on the life and checkered career of radio maverick Howlin' Dave, check out "The Last of the Singing Cowboys," which came out in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine's March 4, 2007 issue.

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. Joy of Cooking was led by two women but had male members. But Fanny was really an all-female band. Fanny had been signed to a major label (Reprise Records) and released an album first (Fanny, in 1970). More importantly, it had been started by two Filipino-American sisters, June and Jean Millington, who had grown up in Manila. Now, we Filipinos pride ourselves on our supposedly native musical talent. Pinoy breasts swell with pride whenever one of our own makes it on the world stage: witness Lea Salonga in "Miss Saigon," and more recently Charisse, Madonna Decena, and Arnel Pineda. Strangely, the local press didn't catch on to Fanny, despite it having two certifiably brown members. There were a few articles in music magazines, and local rock radio did play some of their songs on the air, but the local record subsidiary never even released their albums here. They did release a single, the A-side of which was a rock ballad titled "Beside Myself," on which Jean Millington sang and June Millington played a memorable guitar solo. I was frantically sorting through my old vinyl looking for that 45, and an import copy of "Fanny Hill," the band’s third (and many say, best) album from 1973, the night I was supposed to interview June Millington. I had gotten in touch with the good people at Lunduyan ng Sining (keep on rocking, girls!) and they had informed me that she was going to be playing at Kublai's on Katipunan Ave. When I got there June was going through her sound check, playing a nice ESP guitar through a Fender amp. She still had the long, untamed hair she had in Fanny, only now it was stark white. She was with her uncle and aunt, also visiting from the States, from whom I learned that her mother was a Limjoco from Lian, Batangas, and that her father had been the US Navy’s flag officer after the war. Presently, June finished her sound check. I found out that this was her first time back since she left for the US in 1961, at age 13. Kublai's was starting to fill up with girls (me, her uncle and the sound technician seemed to be the only men in the room) and she marveled at how everybody was on their mobile phones texting. June was very open and refreshingly frank in sharing her vast and unique experience in the music business. I asked her, as one of the pioneers of women in rock, how much had changed for women in what is still largely a male arena. Following are some excerpts from our interview (see also my article in the May 11 issue of SIM). On her work: That's why I am part of the Institute for the Musical Arts (an NGO for female musicians she co-founded based in Massachusetts), because we want to change the infrastructure. The fact is, if you make it as an artist and you’re a woman, you still have to deal with a lot of issues, issues of body image and that’s a problem. It’s causing a lot of girls to have serious mental problems. I don't mean that facetiously -- it’s true. And so they develop these phobias, no matter how good they are, and it's hard because there are a lot of talented girls. You have to change the infrastructure in order to change that. You can be attractive, you can be talented but still there's that one way they want you to look. It's a huge problem. Men have space provided for them to be in positions of power whereas women aren't. It's just expected. Just being a man you're in a position of power. Whereas as a woman, you're talked down to. Guys can walk onstage and they can look homeless, but a woman can't. Fortunately we (Fanny) handled that ourselves for a while. We took make up lessons, we learned certain things that had to do with being an entertainer. You can't really resist certain things if you're in the entertainment industry. You really do have to think of yourself as a commodity, you have to think of how you look onstage and be professional, and your sound and all that. On being Pinoy: Most people didn't know where the Philippines was. Whether or not we were Filipino was beside the point. Ringo Starr, when we recorded at Apple Studios and they said these girls are going to record, said 'Oh, the oriental girls.' He wasn’t being racist about it. I like Ringo. That was just his context, "the oriental girls." On learning the ropes: We felt like we were musicians from the time we were playing ukuleles. It was just a matter of how to access what was popular, how to catch the wave to use the California parlance. Part of it was luck, the fact that we were in California, and I was very shy but very aggressive about getting information from the guys my age who knew. And then we started to play with really big bands so I could ask these guys who were totally amazing. And don’t forget our recording techniques got better and better because we had great producers and we worked at amazing studios. When we were recording at Apple you can bet I asked a lot of questions about how the Beatles got their sound and how George Harrison (did), you know, that kind of stuff. They were very nice to me so I learned a lot and you can’t recreate that. I was really lucky in that I was able to interface with a lot of great recording engineers and they liked it that a girl was asking them. On 'women In rock': It's complete bullshit. They don't even know what they're talking about. It's all corporate marketing. They give women the title women in rock (when they) don't even play. It's all become corporate marketing. And it's gone way off the scale, it has nothing to do with reality anymore. This is what we do -- we analyze, we teach, we have women working with us who are in positions of power -- one of the women who teaches in our recording camps runs George Lucas' Skywalker Studios. We have our fingers in the industry and we are consciously trying to make things change and part of it is the fact that we have a history behind us, the fact that Jean and I were Fanny, we're in the history books, people learn about us in college, in social studies, in feminist classes. We fit into every niche because we're women, we're half-Filipino, we're this and that. On the rock'n'roll lifestyle Sex and drugs? No. We were very disciplined. Come on, we experimented, but we never got completely out of control. We were disciplined because it was really what we wanted to do before we got to LA, and we knew how hard we had to work. Why squander it? We were just a very hardworking band. If we weren't performing we were rehearsing, or we were in the studio. That's all we did, 24/7. It was full time. On playing guitar: I would go see other bands and talk to the guitarist, playing with them and figuring out new sounds or guitar positions. I never let any grass grow under my feet, I can tell you that. No. There were no role models. They just didn't exist. We created it. Jimi Hendrix and Wes Montgomery would be way up on the top of my list. I listened to everything. It's not just the fact that I played lead guitar but we also hung out in LA with all the greats, so I understand what it means to create an electric guitar tone. It's an art form, and the guys that I hung out with were the best. We all did it together. I wasn't separate from them, and they loved having a girl who was just as interested in guitar and the techniques of guitar and the actual equipment. I worked as hard on my guitar sound as on my guitar chops. People who understand guitar know that about me, they appreciate my tone and miss it. It’s nice to hear that because I worked as hard on that as on my guitar technique. June and Jean Millington still play together in a band called the Slammin’ Babes. Check out the Fanny fan site at www.fannyrocks.com. Read the Sunday Inquirer Magazine's May 11 issue.