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Saturday, March 10, 2018

MARCH 9, 2018 - FRIDAY JAM UPDATE AND PHOTOS

If there was a phrase to describe last night’s account, “delightfully full of surprises” might be a fair description. The festivity began to show signs of auspiciousness with the early arrival of first-rate musicians and a childhood good buddy who just flew in from abroad and some other special guests towards the end to complete the night.
Top notch musicians Anton Atengco, Dolf Cruz, Tinnie Esguerra along with Xtine Mercado of the famed Brat Pack arrived early. House band bassist Rick Trinidad, vocalist Monchie Henares and percussionist Vincent Garrucho were in the house as well.
Toronto based Air Force brat Freddie Gabor, whom I have not seen in years, made a brief surprise visit along with other childhood contemporaries from Nichols Air Base, namely: Aseana Captain Jet Bueno, Gen. Henry Zabarre (ret.), Deana Aquino and some other ladies from Basa Air Base. Unfortunately, Freddie and group could not stay very late and had to leave prematurely at past 1am to recoup with all the other pressing activities lined up for him for his short stay.
At the jam, the musicians got their precious stage time with Anton manning the guitar and Tinnie on keyboards while Jet took charge of the drumming chores. Unfortunately, Xtine, who is an exceptional vocalist and bassist, got too little of playing time before Rick jumped in to take over. Personally, I would’ve wanted to see her on stage longer as she is awesome to watch and rarely finds time to come to jam with her busy gig commitments. We’ll surely make up for it next time for Xtine.
The first wave of the jam was relatively short-lived, too, with the band opting to step down after the break to give way to the new set of musicians who just arrived. “Carousel”, spearheaded by a youthful guitarist /vocalist Pau Villanueva was the name of the band to perform next. A young and aspiring band that had placed second at the prestigious Wanderland music competition early this year, they came over straight from a previous gig engagement in Laguna just to visit and perform for us. They are billed to perform again today at the Wanderland Music Festival, a two-day/ whole day affair, scheduled this weekend. More power to these young breed of musicians.
It was only 2:30am when Carousel finished, comparatively much earlier as compared to the previous lackluster weekends we experienced. Was it going to be another early night? Well, not if we can help it.
After the guest musicians had left and still being much too early to close up, We needed to be creative to keep on going. With just us around, Vincent decided to take his new kazoos collection out of the bag, secured his and handed another to Monchie to try out. Disclosing to have the experience playing it in the past, Monchie was indeed a natural. As always adaptive, Vincent came to his own as well. It was then time to jam.
I played the bass, Dondon played rhythm guitar, Vincent and Monchie played the kazoo with both simultaneously playing percussions and drums respectively. It was dubbed as our kazoo version of the Magic Hour. The result was totally fun and hilarious. Watch out for the videos..Hahaha!
Special thanks to my wife Vicky, sis-in-law Ana Mara, Cali Tiansay, Luisa Distor, Arabelle Jimenez, Jun Bediones, Marc de Asis and Kikoy Ventura for joining.
And so we look forward to next week’s festivity. More surprises in the offing for sure.
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND EVERYONE! GOD BLESS US ALL!

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