By Agence France-Presse

LOS ANGELES — Lynyrd Skynyrd pianist Billy Powell, one of the longest-serving members of the 1970s supergroup, has died aged 56, the band announced on its website Wednesday.

Powell, a survivor of the 1977 plane crash in Mississippi that claimed the lives of six people including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, died on Tuesday, the statement said without giving further details.

“Beloved pianist for the Lynyrd Skynyrd Band, Billy Powell, passed away last night,” the statement said. “The family and band request your respect and understanding during this difficult time. Thank you.”

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WHO says students and teachers cannot jam together? In fact, some have decided to form a band.

Known as Jeez!, this band was formerly called “The Faculty of JLDDG.” It is composed of Reagan Maiquez, Giselle Hernandez, and Nicolo Masakayan –instructors from the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), Paul Fonte, an alumnus of UPLB and Kit Manlangit, a UPLB Civil Engineering student.

Maiquez started the band in September 2007 with Hernandez, Masakayan and Manlangit after being inspired by the song “Pero,” which Hernandez sang for him.

“Pero,” which Maiquez wrote, immediately became the band’s first song.

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THEY formed around the time the Eraserheads disbanded. Thus, they christened themselves after one of Ely’s female characters.

Ang Bandang Shirley, however, is no E-Heads tribute band. They were brought together by a common love for Canadian indie supergroup Broken Social Scene.

But they do love Ely, Marcus, Buddy and Raimund.

In MySpace, they likened themselves to BSS “if they listened to the E-Heads, a happier Jeff Buckley with Dong Abay’s street smarts, Sugarfree’s heart inside the baby of Radiohead and Feist.”

They do channel that BSS spirit and vibe. Fortunately for us, though, not all eight of them came to our acoustic session or else we would have been scratching our heads figuring out how to fit them in our tiny studio.

Here’s Owel, Selena, Ean and Joe singing a few songs from their recently-released album “Themesongs”

Check out more stuff about the band (including Ean jamming with +/- (Plus/Minus)) on their Multiply page. Also, here’s the video for the first single off the album “Themesong”.

By Marjorie Gorospe

“Friendship is the secret why we’ve come up with good music,” Filipino rock band BOK76 says.

Calling each other “bok,” which means “brother,” the band’s members have been together for at least nine years – all in the name of music.

Also known as “Bonded on Kinship,” this Filipino band is composed of Erwin Bautista (vocals), Donini Montealegre (guitars/vocals), Jay Castelo (drums/percussion), Owee Nicolas Paz (bass) and Elwynn Dayrit (guitars).

Bautista and Montealegre have been together since grade school. The two had been “rivals” in many competitions but eventually they became friends.

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JUST like Charice Pempengco and Arnel Pineda, Filipino indie band Workshop is making waves on YouTube, a popular online video sharing website.

Apparently, American rock band Firehouse — yup, that 80s rock group that popularized songs like “I Live My Life For You” and “Love of a Lifetime” — has noticed a Workshop cover of their song “I Live my Life for You” on YouTube.

In this video interview with INQUIRER.net executive editor Leo Magno, Workshop recalls the story of how Firehouse discovered and even acknowledged their performance, as the American rock band decided to embed their video on their official Firehouse MySpace page.