By Marjorie Gorospe
INQUIRER.net

THEY describe their music as “rebellious, live and organic.”

An indie garage-rock/post-punk band (yes a mouthful) with influences from the Beatles, the Libertines, The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, among others, the Charmes believes they have what it takes to stand out.

Formed in 2006, the Charmes is now working on an album. It was formed by long-time friends Brian Josef (vocals and guitars), JB Bulan (lead), Jerome Abello (drums) and Jino Manalo (bass later replaced by Jiggers Vergel de Dios). They all went to the same high school.

The Charmes disbanded but later reunited.

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Marjorie Gorospe
INQUIRER.net

MARK this date, March 7, 2009.

This is the date for the much-awaited second reunion concert of the Eraserheads –perhaps one of the most successful and revolutionary band in the history of original Pinoy music.

According to the former members of the local rock band, the concert is tentatively named “Final Set” since it is considered to be a continuation of last year’s reunion concert, which was cut short when frontman Ely Buendia was rushed to the hospital, allowing the band to finish half of their intended set.

But during Monday’s press conference, the former members stressed that the scheduled concert will be “different.”

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WATCH INQUIRER.net assistant editor Erika Tapalla’s interview with Filipino indie band Menaya for Soundtrip. Formed in 2005, Menaya makes a comeback with its second album after a three-year hiatus, Video taken by INQUIRER.net production specialist Rastle Lozano.

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”.

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.