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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By Marjorie Gorospe

Filipino indie rock group Menaya has some news.

Having had its share of radio airplay, Menaya’s second album ominously titled, “The Worst News,” is by far delivering good news for the group.

One of their songs “Safer” has topped the charts of NU Rock 107 for five weeks, while another song “Favorite Sin” is climbing, according to Brian Sombero, vocalist of the group. You can listen to theirs songs from their MySpace profile or view a music video of “Safe” on YouTube.

Menaya is composed of Brian Sombero on the guitar and vocals, Hepe Lavador on Drums, Mike Bacalzo in guitars and Gil Olivar on Bass.

The group’s major influences include Mafia, Myriads and The Stills, which are foreign acts playing different genres of indie, post-punk, alternative to heavy metal music, depending on your taste.

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By Clarence Yu
Contributor

BEING a club show band is a delicate act, and in most cases, we only see the performances of these bands, but we never get to know them in depth.

In most situations, audiences like them for what they play on stage and, after awhile, start to slowly think no more of these bands than just mere entertainment.

These bands, and their collective members usually play for a living, and it’s easy to discount the fact that they have their own lives, experience, frustrations, and most of all, opinions.

Meet Shayne and Brown Union. Think of the real Rhythm and Blues, Pop, Motown and Funk. Hark back to Chaka Khan, Diana Ross, Earth Wind and Fire and Angela Boefill. Led by lead vocalist Shayne, the band performs to standing crowds regularly at Aruba Metrowalk, Tropezz at Greenbelt, and the recently closed Bagaberde in Pasig. Rarely will you see such an excellent caliber of musicianship since the days of Music Hall in Greenhills in the 1990’s.

Highlights of their set include cool renditions of 70’s and 80’s standards. “We usually play Top 40 music,” says male vocalist Tobey Padilla. “We call it ‘Chopsuey’ in short,” he adds.

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By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

I RECENTLY got this e-mail message that says Odysseylive.net is live. Labeled as a “social music network.” So I went to check it out. First impressions: Odysseylive.net seems to have covered all bases. It has streaming music, featured blogs, news about gigs, and classified ads. For artists (or those who want to be a rock star), you can register and upload some of your music. You can also invite friends to join this social music network. It was also quite easy to set up a profile.

The service is still in “super beta.” I am not sure what that means. But I did notice some bugs as I went in to check out the service. You don’t have to register though to listen to the streaming music of featured Pinoy artists on the homepage. What’s interesting here is that you can also upload up to 10 megabytes of data (photos, music, etc.) to your own profile. Personally, I don’t think that’s enough. But this is still the super beta version, hehe.

As I went in to check some of the streaming music available, I found this interesting collection of Filipino bands compiled in an album called Bandtrip2. You can listen to at least 12 of the songs in the album. I thought, “What if you want to download the music you’re listening to?” Hmmm. Currently, you can only listen to the music available online but there are no indications if the music is for sale or available for download.

Here’s another discovery: Beach Head with their chillout (with a mix of hip hop) song called “Freestyle.” According to the group’s profile, “Beach Head is a project band that writes, records and shoots video’s during the songs composition. ” A quick check reveals that Beach Head is apparently a side project of Urbandub’s Gabbie Alipe together with the Kerplunk boys. Beach Head also has a nice video available on YouTube.

By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

FILIPINOS overseas who long to listen to the sounds of home can access a new online music site and download an entire library of Filipino music.

PinoyTunes.net has over 3,000 all-Filipino songs ranging from the latest pop and rocks songs to classics of the 80s and 90s, as well as hard-to-find songs released during the 60s and 70s.

The songs are encoded in high-quality MP3 format and have been encoded with digital rights management security. which allows the copying of the downloaded songs up to five times.

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