FEB. 19, 2016 - FRIDAY JAM UPDATE

The proverbial "You can't have it all..." fortuitously applied last night despite a seemingly good turnout of guests and musicians in the house. It was one of those rare days. Beloved childhood friends and family from my Nichols Air Base days flocked the room, some i have not seen in ages and some actually music room first timers. Pete's Place pioneers and childhood friends Leo Diano and Red Aquino who are both stationed abroad (Australia and Macau, respectively) are timely in town. As always, they make it a point to visit whenever they are in the country. Red came with his lovely wife Portia and kids Pio & Caroline, Red's eldest sister Deana and her daughters Leslie and B. Flyboy Butch Israel, who particular came to see and welcome Leo showed up with his son Moises as well. So happy to see these guys around. God bless them all.

The band garnered a pretty awesome attendance, too. Accomplished Jazz composer Tony Razon, master lap steel guru Haro Echter and talented drummer Atty. Jj Disini were on board along with houseband honchos Tinnie Esguerra, Joaco Marco, Rick Trinidad, Dennis Espiritu, Monchie Henares and myself. Mighty good line-up indeed. Though the band did sound okay, i would say that the performance somewhat fell a tag short of it's usual fire and character. We can do a lot better. We were struggling on certain tunes a bit too long, at times on the verge of aborting it completely but managed to slowly pick up gradually in the end. Oh well! C'est la vie (pardon my French, Richard..hehe!).

Eventually, the jam breathed new life when some of the guests joined in on stage. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Deana's daughter B, surprised us and took over the vocal chores while Red's daughter Caroline accompanied her on the keyboards in one of the songs she did. Red and Leo, on the other hand, played percussions while the rest of the houseband musicians did their respective thing. Though at times we choked on what songs to do next, the jamaoke and community singing became the lifesaver. God truly works in mysterious ways!

At nearly closing time, when most of the guests had already left, Tinnie, Dennis, Monchie, Luisa Distor and myself were still on stage. Still struggling a bit to get that magic we were familiar to, we managed to jam and video a few songs till we finally had our fill at already past 5am. We'll do better next time, for sure.

Next week, our Friday Jam will be moved to Saturday (Feb. 27th) to give way to my daughter Nisee's 20th birthday celebration at the music room. So please don't forget to mark your calendars guys! See you on Saturday!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND EVERYONE! GOD BLESS US ALL!