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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I WAS once gifted with a T-shirt from Tower Records that says, “Know Music, Know Life.”

Perhaps that was one of the best birthday gifts I’ve received. It was simple and yet it captured what I thought was my own view on music.

You see, before I decided to turn to the pen, I was, ehem, a musician. I studied music because I admired people who could stand in front of millions of fans and mesmerize them with their music.

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I NEARLY lost my faith in radio not too long ago. That probably began when I got an iPod, and my mornings were never the same from thereon. Radio used to be my music fix in the pre-iPod era: wake up and set the dial to 107.5.

But the digital age caught up with me and I slowly began lending an ear more to the Internet — even when I could listen to radio on the Web. It fed my hunger for music that sounded good to me, to know about up-and-coming bands and artists.

Slowly, radio wasn’t enough anymore, especially when I started to hear the same kind of music over and over again. That void was filled up by the Internet, audio blogs in particular.

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