Reunion

Sorry for not posting for the last two weeks. I had been in Manila with my wife and son to spend the holidays with my mother and siblings, the first time we’ve been together on Christmas since 1990 (or was it 1991?). With my eldest brother Arnel and his family living in Los Angeles and me and my family living in Davao City, reunions are few and far between, so we were glad when my brother scheduled a homecoming with his wife and all four boys for Christmas. Above is s a picture of the entire family, together for the very first time.

Getting back on the topic of music, Arnel co-wrote a song with his high school classmate Dodjie Simon as a surprise birthday gift to his wife Agnes. Arnel says he thought of the lyrics while driving down Santa Monica Boulevard while Dodjie came up with the tune while driving along Roxas Boulevard. The song is called “Tanging Ikaw (You Alone),” and Dodjie tapped Noel Cabangon to both sing and play guitar in the recording. My wife Dadai did the CD’s artwork, and the result was a great gift to a great woman.

Here are the lyrics, and maybe in the future my brother will allow me to post the recording here as well:

TANGING IKAW

Mula nang tayo ay nagkalayo
Namalas kong ikaw ang tanging nasa puso ko
Sa bawat oras ay ika’y laman ng isip ko
Ikaw nga ang lahat sa buhay ko.

Minsa’y nawalay sa isa’t isa
Na tila hindi na habang buhay magkikita pa
Sadyang iniwan ko’ng lahat sa aking munting mundo
Upang mapalapit lamang sa iyo

REFRAIN

Maipipinta ko ba ang buhay na wala ka
Kung bawa’t guhit ko’y mukha mo ang nakikita?
Bawa’t titik at himig ang tinig mo’ng naririnig
Pagka’t tanging ikaw ang buhay ko, Sinta.

Ako’y dayuhang naglakas-loob
Na iwanan ang ating bayang pinagmulan
Pagka’t tanging ligaya ng aking buong puso
Sadyang sa iyo ko lang matatanto.

Titik ni Arnel Joaquin
Musika at areglo ni Dodjie Simon
Inawit at ginitara ni Noel Cabangon

That Keaggy thing

After John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the person who influenced me the most as a guitar player and musician is Phil Keaggy (pictured at right, taken by my friend Sean Thomas Bickerton). And I say “after” only as a matter of chronology, because in truth Phil Keaggy has influenced me more than the two Beatles ever have.

I still remember the first time I heard his music: it was 1984, and I was at the Quezon City home of my then-new discipler Philip Tarroja (the director of Campus Crusade for Christ in UP Diliman). He put on an LP of Phil Keaggy’s “What A Day” album and went directly to the title track, and I was immediately captivated by the catchy intro, the Beatle-esque style of the song, and the McCartney-ish voice of Keaggy. Not to mention the incredible guitar playing! The lyrics were also smart and appealing, particularly the line “… and brother Tom, without a doubt” which played on the “Doubting Thomas” theme. After that song Kuya (older brother to you non-Filipinos out there) Philip played the rest of the album, and I was hooked for life.

Later on Kuya Philip lent me a tape of “What A Day” and another one of “The Master And The Musician,” Keaggy’s first instrumental album which is one of my favorites to this day. I was also able to buy a few other Keaggy albums, “Play Thru Me,” “Ph’lip Side,” and “Town To Town,” and over the next six years I played those tapes over and over and tried to copy Keaggy’s riffs and emulate his style. I finally gave up on the former and settled for the latter when I realized I wasn’t talented enough to play blazing leads and complicated fingerstyle and everything in between. All I could do was try to sound a little like him, and as many Keaggy fans say, I aspire just to be able to play his mistakes.

Because I played my five tapes practically daily for six years they literally died on me. They were in such bad shape that I wasn’t able to bring them with me when I moved to Davao City in 1990. The next decade was a drought to me Keaggy-wise, broken only when my sister in Canada sent me a couple of CDs (“Time 1” and “Time 2”). Unfortunately I didn’t have a CD player at the time and so I had to wait a little longer before I could fully enjoy them.

It wasn’t until last year that my Keaggy collection began to grow, courtesy of a friend in the US who has sent me quite a number of CDs over the past months. He also gave me the “Philly Live!” DVD and two other live DVDs, and so all in all I now have 16 albums.

I enjoy playing my Keaggy CDs and DVDs, but the greater enjoyment is in playing my guitar and realizing how much I have improved as a player as a result of listening to him. God has also used him mightily to change my life through his insightful lyrics and just by the fact that he pursues excellence as a good testimony for the Lord.

Fore more information on Phil Keaggy, the official Phil Keaggy website and the PK fans site are good places to start.

Lea!!!

My sister-in-law Nelly June, aka Shaolin aka Xtremely Sexy Lady, got a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet Lea Salonga at the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu City past midnight December 10. She had been resting in her hotel room when a co-worker called her to say Lea was at the restaurant having late dinner with her husband, so she rushed down to see if she could meet her. The long and the short of it is that she did, and she managed to blurt out that she and her siblings (my wifey Dadai included – actually she’ s an even bigger fan than any of them) were huge fans of hers since they were children. Shaolin asked if she could have a picture taken of them together, and Lea agreed – and asked her husband to snap it! Too bad it was a camera phone shot, but it’s a good memento of an incredible chance meeting with an idol.

Fronting for Ivy Violan

I’m back after fronting for the concert of Ivy Violan at NCCC Mall just a few hours ago. It was an honor for 220 to be opening for a giant in the music business, although I must admit to feeling a little intimidated at first. We played only four songs because we were given only 15 minutes: Change The World, Someday We’ll Know, Your Love Broke Through, and Go And Sin No More. It was a good gig, although we had some problems (again!) with the sound system (it felt like the sound tech wasn’t paying attention to our needs, so focused was he on Ivy Violan). But we made the most of a semi-bad situation and managed to pull off a good show.

I was Googling for Ivy Violan’s official website but couldn’t find it, so here’s a little something about her from ClickTheCity.com:

Ivy Violan started singing at age 2 with her brothers in a band called Ivy and the Velboys and hasn't rested since. She has had numerous concerts here and abroad, and her latest concert is this year’s Valentine show with Rico J. Puno at the Manila Peninsula Ballroom. Abroad, she has appeared all over the US, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. Ivy has won 11 music festival awards, a record that still has to be beaten. Among her festival awards are Grand Prize, 1991 at the 4th International Midnight Song Festival, Lahti, Finland; Grand Prize and 1st Runner-up, 1989 at the 1st ABU Golden Kite Song Festival, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Best Singer and Grand Prize, 1988 at the Asia Pacific Singing Contest, HK.

Tonight’s concert was mounted by the Asian Center for Missions (ACM), and in the first part of the show Ivy gave a testimony of how God changed her life. Powerful stuff, and she said it was the first time her family was hearing her tell the story of her life. I’ll try to secure a copy of her testimony and post it here so that you’ll hear the story straight from her.

I read the news today, oh boy...

I cried when I heard the news that John Lennon had been killed in front of his apartment building in New York. It was December 8, 1980 and I was only 14, but I was already a big Beatles fan.

I was just starting to learn to play the guitar while my older brother Arnel and my best friend Tito, two years younger than me and living right next door to us, had been playing for some time already, and we had been spending many afternoons and weekends singing Beatles songs out of the red Jingle Beatles Songbook that we had bought.

Lennon and his bandmates Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were our heroes, and in our young minds no group could hold a candle to them. We memorized their songs and Arnel and Tito could play many of them on guitar; I struggled through most of them and would not be able to play them with any proficiency until a year later when I became more serious about guitar.

I was also beginning to learn how and why the Beatles broke up, and in my mind I identified with Lennon because he seemed the most misunderstood. At 14 I was beginning to feel the confusion and alienation that many teenagers go through, and in a strange way it felt better that I could sing songs like “Imagine” – with its atheistic but ultimately optimistic lyrics – to chase my blues away. Here, I thought, was a man who understood my angst. And he was wearing glasses like me!

Ironically, Lennon died at a time when he was just getting over his “misunderstood” period and was beginning to revive his career. He had just gotten back with his wife Yoko Ono, he had just released his album “Double Fantasy,” and he was doing some more recordings. In fact, he was coming home from a recording session when Mark David Chapman came up to him and shot him…

Cheap strings for cheapskates

As I said in an earlier entry, you could buy really cheap strings here in Davao City, and here's the brand: Paramount. It's made in Korea and even comes with a free pick! And all that for only 129 pesos!

I actually made the mistake of buying the extra light gauge when I meant to buy light gauge, but I think I'll leave them on my guitar for a while. That's how cheap I am!

The non-gig

At 10 in the morning today my phone rang and I rushed to take it. Like most people I checked the screen first to see who it was, and since my phone only showed a number (meaning it wasn’t stored in my phone under a name) I hesitated to answer it (thank goodness for caller ID)…

We now pause for a little explanation: I normally don’t answer calls from strange numbers because I figure that people should send their contact number to me first before calling me so I’d at least know who’s calling. That’s what I do; I think it’s part of good cell phone etiquette.

Anyway…

I hesitated to answer the call, but then on impulse I decided to take it. The man on the other side seemed a little hesitant, then said, “Ito ba yung sa acoustic band (Is this the person with the acoustic band)?” I said yes and asked who it was, and he said he was with a certain company (which I couldn’t hear because of a bad connection) that was having a product launch at 6 tonight and needed an acoustic performer. “At the most a duet,” he said. He also said “Dave” recommended us, and I racked my brain (still racking, actually) for the identity of this Dave since I know only two people with that name, and they’re not ones who would be in a position to recommend 220 to a business group for a product launch.

I said I had to check with Ellen and Kukie, but offhand I couldn’t commit yet because I had work up to 8 p.m. We agreed to talk an hour later while I checked our schedules, so when we hung up I rushed to text Ellen and Kukie if they were available. They said they were, which left only me as the question mark. I figured I could leave the office a little earlier, but 6 p.m. just wasn’t possible, so I decided I would ask the guy if they could move our portion to about 7:30. I felt a little snug with that compromise; after all, it was a cinch the event wouldn’t start on time, giving us enough leeway to arrive a little later.

11 a.m. came but there was no call. Then 12 noon, then 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. Still no call. By 2:30 Kukie and Ellen were texting me to ask if the gig was on, and all I could text back was that the guy hadn’t contacted us yet. “Maybe they found another group when they learned we weren’t sure,” Kukie said, and I think she was right.

So here I am, gig-less. It was, in a sense, a non-gig; we were invited but we weren’t. It may be just as well since the caller mentioned they had budget for only two people at the most, meaning we would have had to split the small, unspecified amount three ways.

Oh well…

String section

If the guitar is a body then the strings are its soul. And just as the soul is what communicates with God, the strings are what the guitarist connects with; there is an intimacy in this soul-God/string-guitarist relationship that is not easy to explain, so I’m not going to try.

Strings are what a guitar player gets personal with, and they’re what actually vibrate and make the guitar resonate with music. That is why it’s important to maintain your strings and make sure they’re fresh and always in tune.

But for us guitarists on a budget, this is not so easy to do. Good/branded strings are expensive, costing an average of P500 a pop, and changing them every so often can be a pain in the pocket. Third World guitarists need to extend the life of their strings, and here are some of the things you can do to achieve that:

1. Wash your hands before playing. Most of the dirt and grime that collect on your strings come from your hands, so before you even pick up your guitar make sure your hands are clean. Some players advise against handwashing because it softens the calluses on the fretting hand and the nails on the plucking hand; for them hand sanitizer works better. I myself don’t see any problem with washing hands and have never suffered softer calluses or nails because of it. Just the same, it’s a good idea to keep a bottle of hand sanitizer inside your guitar case for those times when you don’t have the luxury of going to the sink to wash your hands.
   
2. Clean the strings often. It doesn’t matter how long or how short you play: clean your strings before you set your guitar down. A clean cotton cloth will do: first rub it throughout the length of the strings several times, using a different part of the cloth with each pass. Then using the cloth, pinch each individual string and run up and down its length several times to clean it thoroughly. This takes care of both the surface and the underside of the strings. (Note: I use a product called Googalies (pictured above), a cloth made of microfibers that works really well in cleaning not just strings but the entire guitar. My sister-in-law sent it to me from Michigan so it doesn’t come cheap peso-wise, so if you can’t afford it a clean cotton cloth will work just as well).
3. Don’t expose your guitar to the elements. An extended period on a guitar stand even inside the house can add dirt on your strings, so it’s a wise idea to keep your guitar in a cabinet or in its case if you’re not going to use it for an extended period.
4. Play your guitar often. This sounds counter-intuitive and even downright silly but it does work. I have found that leaving a guitar inside its case for a week or so makes the strings a little brittle and rough; I think it has something to do with the oils in the guitarists’ hands that make the strings slick. The more you use your guitar – provided you follow the previous tips, of course – the longer the strings will last.

Lastly, and I don’t know if this applies to those of you in places outside Davao City, you can use non-branded strings that work and sound just as well as the more expensive branded ones. Here in Davao City there are Korean-made strings that sell for about P120 per set, and they can be found at the musical instruments section of Victoria Plaza (I can’t remember the brand but I’ll take a look later and post it here). As I said, they sound the same, and the only drawback is that they’re not as slick as branded ones. But after a few days, when the strings bed in and your natural oils work their way into them, they feel the same as D’Addario or Martin strings. I used to be able to buy unmarked strings in Manila, and when I go there about two weeks from now for a short break I will see if they’re still available.

Meanwhile, keep strumming…