| The Legendary Bob"The Bear"Hite of CANNED HEAT, goes ON-AIR at DZRJ !!! The Miss Universe pageant of 1975 held here in the Philippines was the catalyst for a number of great concerts by foreign acts that Filipinos were to experience for the next few years. The more notable ones as far as DZRJ was concerned were the DEODATO concerts at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. The TEMPTATIONS, B.B. KING, CHUCK BERRY and The GILLAN BAND at the Folk Arts Theatre, and at the ARANETA Coliseum it was BLOOD, SWEAT and TEARS, CANNED HEAT, ERIC CLAPTON and SANTANA. Of particular closeness to my blue soul was CANNED HEAT. The band happened to be doing a USO tour of U.S. Bases and were scheduled to play at SUBIC NAVAL BASE and CLARK AIR BASE. In those days we were blessed with our very own Filipino Bill Graham in the person of Mr. NILO SANTOS, legendary concert producer/manager/musician (also Sampaguita's ex-husband and creator of her Rock Queen persona). Nilo saw the opening and quickly inked a deal for CANNED HEAT to do a one-night stand at the Big Dome, the Araneta Coliseum. We were the official concert station for the concert. The only sad thing about it was the timing. It was held just a few weeks after the tragic RIZAL MEMORIAL Coliseum concert wherein there was a stampede that resulted in the death of five concertgoers. This would result in the low turnout during the Canned Heat concert. The band was billeted at the Sheraton Hotel and we were given access to their rooms for an interview and privilege of getting to meet the band personally. I was with Little Rock, Howlin' Dave and Raffy ¡°Raffy Bull¡± Rebullida who also provided the car and driver for the night. When we got to what was BOB ¡°The Bear¡± HITE's room, we were greeted with the sweet smell of you-know-what. We were surprised to see ¡°Juancho¡±, the neighborhood supplier in the room; no wonder the smell of ¡°Lagkitan¡±. Apparently someone in the production had tipped him off, so we finally got to meet up-close BOB¡±The Bear¡± HITE, vocalist and blues harp player of the band. Bob's hair went down to his waist and he showed us a couple of shampoo and conditioner bottles that he regularly used. He was very touchy with his hair, always stroking it. I noticed around six Pepsi bottles and found out that that was all he drank while in the country. He did not trust the local H2O. Another thing about The Bear was boy, did the guy toke like hell! One by one, the other band members came into the room and I also got to meet original members, ¡°FITO¡± DE LA PARRA, an underrated drummer, and the eccentric HENRY VESTINE, and the rest. Amid all the haze and chatter going on in the room, a great idea came out. We asked Bob Hite to come with us to the station and we would do the interview ¡°LIVE¡± on the air. He was more than glad to go cause he told us that he had some of his classic blues LPs collection with him, records he brings along on tours and those that he buys along the way. I was to learn later in the future from articles I read about Bob Hite, that he had one of the most extensive personal collections of rare and classic blues albums. He was known to always bring along part of his record collection with him whenever he was on tour. Seeing The Bear with his LPs tucked under his arm, we unanimously said, ¡°What the heck¡¦ we might as well let him go on board!!!¡± And so you can say BOB ¡°The Bear¡± HITE, that evening officially became an honorary DZRJ Rockjock! I'm sure there is a lot of our RJ followers out there who were able to tune in to that broadcast, maybe you can write in Bullboard if you were one of them. One thing that still makes me knock my head to this day, is that there were not any photos that were taken of that historic DZRJ event with CANNED HEAT!. I hope I'm wrong and somehow, someway, someone took pictures of what transpired at the Sheraton and the RJ Tower in Sta. Mesa. Some other notable things that evening were the size and weight of Bob ¡°THE BEAR¡± Hite which almost prevented him from going on air. The spiral staircase leading to the tower studios got to be a problem for the Bear, He almost did not fit the spiral staircase! he had to inhale as deep as he could and hold it, before he was able to go up and even then, his sides were scraping the railings!. Also, he was super friendly and had none of that ¡°Hey man I'm a Rock star¡± ego trip in the way he acted. While in the car on our way to the station, we had to pass a long row of squatter shacks as we got down Nagtahan Bridge near the Malacanang Palace. That scene of run-down shanties and the downtrodden did not escape Bob Hite's attention. He said, ¡°Now this is the real stuff I want to see¡±. ?These events happened in 1980, and just a few months after we met this really great human being, he was gone. BOB HITE passed away April 5, 1981 from a heart attack. Oh yeah, the CANNED HEAT concert? It was more than I had hoped for! Mind-blowing blues I'll never forget, played by that great and legendary (boogie) blues ?band whom we had the privilege and honor of getting to know up close and in person, the CANNED HEAT! Bob ¡°BLUES¡± Magoo March 9, 2004, Laguna, Philippines |
| Mid-70's, at the height of Pinoy Rock's glorious days... It was a fantastic concept at the time, a concert held at a man-made lake with a boat with a deck large enough to hold a whole band. This was at YAP Park in Angeles City, home to Clark Air Base, largest U.S. Air Force Base in the Pacific at the time, way before Mt. Pinatubo changed all that. It was a rather large lake, so the best way for one to get a front-view seat of the performers was to rent a small boat and paddle to the bigger boat-stage. I was emcee to the show. The band line-up was a who's-who in Pinoy Rock at the time. Maria Cafra, Petrified Anthem, Florante, Aunt Irma and bands from Angeles and Olongapo City. Being a kilometer or so from Clark Air Base, there were a lot of servicemen in the crowd aside from the locals and those who trekked from Manila and neighboring provinces. I was with good friend Ronald Creutz and we were in the company of daughters of American servicemen from the base making us extra busy. As was usual in local concerts at the time, security was lax. Going into the last band of the night, which was Petrified Anthem. The stage started to get extra heavy from people who did not belong there. A lot of kids were able to get up on it, and that was eventually disturbing it's balance though it seemed none of the organizers seemed to be doing anything about it. Petrified Anthem was into their last song of their set which was their signature song, "Let Down Lady". Being the emcee, I knew that and so had to get ready to go up stage. I was on land behind the boat-stage as the band was hitting the finale of the song. Just as I stood up to go on board, I looked at the boat at the same moment they were hitting the last note and beat ("bagsakan" in pinoy). Right there and then, the boat tilted, slow-motion like, to one side because of the extra weight. Into the water went a huge brand-new Fender Showman Amp, one that the owner, Lito Benavidez, had been proudly talking about earlier, as his new acquisitions to his arsenal. I freaked out cause I had been the one who convinced Lito to give the organizers a good price in the rental of his instruments. I never did get to know how that was fixed up. The crowd was only able to leave Yap Park after 4:00 am. Since curfew was still in effect in the Philippines at the time since it was still Martial Law. I was with Little Rock and Aunt Irma aboard LittleRock's Chevy truck which somehow, was able to fit everyone. We were with Tonette Luciano (Big Mama Boogie) whose family was well-known in Magalang, Pampanga, a neighboring town and we spent the next day at her place there. It was a turn of the century mansion, which at night looked very much like a haunted house. The bathroom fixtures were so old, the type that sat next to your bed. Spiral staircases leading up to the attic rooms, where we all sat outside on the roof overlooking the lights of Clark Air Base in the distance. In the morning, we woke up to an amazing sight of Mt. Arayat staring us right in the face. Magalang Town rested at it's foot. Just another amazing experience in those early days of promoting Pinoy Rock, one that no one tends to forget easily. Bob Magoo - March 23, 2003 Laguna, Philippines |
Remembering the ANTIPOLO ROCK FESTIVAL in Dec. 1970 ( This little story first saw light in the PHILMUSIC mailing list, then found it's way to The Rock Of Manila Website. In this updated version, I added a few more things that I recalled about that unforgettable day in the history of PINOY ROCK ) Yes, that was the Pinoy Rock concert of all time, the ANTIPOLO ROCK FESTIVAL. I was a young 14 years old, "buntot ako ng buntot sa barkada ng kuya ko, The STONES ang tawag nila sa grupo nila" (I used to tag along all the time with my older brother's group, they called themselves The STONES). "Usong-uso yung mga gangs noon katulad ng Tinstones, Blackhawks, Cossacks, etc." ( The in-thing then were gangs like the...) I remember that excitement leading up to concert day, there was so much talk about it that I knew that I had to go, and for a kid of 14, this was just another big adventure, or so I thought, cause little did I know the concert would completely change the course my life would take. There was gonna be no way my big brother and the Stones could keep me from going (making "buntot") with them. So on concert day, I found myself squeezed into an old beat-up Ford? or was it a Chevy?, a early 60's model, in-between around 8 big dudes in a car that could fit 5 comfortably. On the car going up along what is now Ortigas, close to the Antipolo hills (Ortigas pa ba yun?), you could feel the "Love and Peace" vibes ( something you only saw in the woodstock movie, or read in the news) with lots and lots of cars and their hippie-passengers, long-haired guy and their girls on the roadside. A lot of them were flashing the PEACE sign, though I remember in stark contrast, Ronnie "Baby John" De Asis (now SM of 105.1 CROSSOVER), then of the legendary underground rock station DZUW, cursing the peace freaks, He was in a war-freak mood, I just couldn't understand why. You see, one of my brother's group-mates then, MIKE, was a rookie jock at DZUW-AM named STONEY BURKE. Ronnie came along for the ride with Mike from Channel 7, where the one-kilowatt station was then located. A few months after, when I was 15, Mike would be my ticket into the world of Radio. But that's a whole different story. The concert site was bulldozed out of the side of one of the hills in Antipolo overlooking Manila, so everyone had a view of the stage, like a theatre. Sonny Peckson, was the one who drove all the way up and he had some of the guys take out the back seat of the car and carry it to where we had a great center view of the stage. I remember our distance from the stage was like the view from the lodge seats of Rizal Theatre (the only theatre in the Makati Commercial Center at the time), minus the comfortable seats and air-conditioning! I remember a huge tent at the top which I heard was later in the night, raided by the Narcs. Who can forget the nice chick, she had long black hair, brown skin, who went topless on stage around sunset, tits juggling while she danced. She was mobbed when she went down the stage to a standing ovation. Who can forget the T. Tinio Band, who I learned in my later years were actually composed of Jimmy Joseph, Anthony Borromeo, the late great Bing Labrador, etc. ...there was a guy with long hair and who really resembled the late great, Edmond "Bosyo" Fortuno, who did a drum solo in the afternoon before the start, because everyone was hooting for the show to begin and I think there was no electricity yet at the time. In the future I would ask the late Edmond "Bosyo" Fortuno if he was the one who did that solo but he said no. Then there was this tense moment while one of the bands were performing that we noticed the crowd starting to boo and wail. The spotlight was then pointing and following two policemen who were walking away from what was a group of guys smoking grass, the two cops were being pelted with little pebbles and paper, things that couldn't hurt them. It was like drizzling rain in the silhouette of the spotlight. The cops couldn't touch them! The music was great, even though I did hear, was it three?, different bands play "Soul Sacrifice" by Santana. Anyway, I would have to say that after hearing almost every band do covers of songs from the movie WOODSTOCK, did kinda make the group decide to pack up and head home ( bands during those days rarely had an original song ).. That unforgettable experience on that ANTIPOLO hillside was the pinoy's own little successful version of LOVE, PEACE and MUSIC. And as for me, after that day, I was hooked for life to Rock and Roll. Bob Magoo - July, 2002 Laguna, Philippines * courtesy of PinoyClassicRock.com |
| CROSS-EYED STONEY + As everyone knows, a radio station's life depends on its commercials. During the peak of DZRJ The Rock of Manila's popularity, we had at least 12 minutes of ads per hour. I remember Marcia of our sales team hitting millions in sales, always with her wide smile and she was almost always packing chocolates and magazines to sell to the announcers. Well, our commercials were recorded onto tape cartridges where we would stick masking tape in front and write in the product/promo name and it's total time length. We would use pentel pens for this, usually black and/or red. I was always into drawing ever since I was in grade school and was quite good if I may say so. So even in my grown years the urge to doodle and draw, paint or color would creep up on me once in a while, but when I was stoned it was magnified tenfold. I usually had a couple of pentel pens of different colors in my bag. During one of my particularly trippy boardworks, I got to focusing on the cartridges and thinking how dull they looked. So I proceeded to color each and everyone of those that were positioned in front of the announcer, and finally when I was done, I really thought they were pretty colorful, really psychedelic! But whoa!...the next jock on board is none other than the station manager, Mr. Stoney Burke. The minute Stoney enters the booth and sees all the colors, it's shiiiiieeett Magoo! What the hell did you do? Now I can't even find the commercial I'm suppose to air! Nakakaduling!!! Take that all off and don't do that again! I also then realized that he was right, it really makes you cross-eyed, all those swirling colors! so much for being a Picasso....Ohhhh Magoo! You've done it again! - BOB MAGOO 20 JUNE 2001, Laguna, Philippines |
| It was the early 80s and it's been quite a spell since our last concert so naturally everyone was excited about this one. It was titled "DZRJ Music Festival". Weeks prior to the concert, Little Rock and myself were tasked to convince Pinoy Rock icon Resty Fabunan of the band Maria Cafra to dust off his guitar and join our line-up. Resty had semi-retired from the music scene and was by then running his own businesses which included a music bar which featured young bands. This was in OlongapoCity, home to the Subic Naval Base of the U.S. , prior to Mt Pinatubo forcing its total withdrawal. |
| By the time we got there, Little Rock, myself and our road crew had 2 "lapads" (12 ounce bottles of Tanduay Rum) while on the road. Our talk went smoothly, Resty being hesitant at first, due to his long hiatus from playing guitar. But being the nice and approachable fellow that he was, it didn't take long for us to get his OK. I guess another thing that helped was the Filipino tradition of "utang ng loob", something like - you helped me before, now it's my turn. The deal closed, it was Resty who now showed us Olongapo hospitality and promptly got us plastered with good mojo juice. Little Rock ended up in the back seat of his own car, out cold, and a friend drove us back to Manila. |
| Fast forward to concert night: Resty and his band Maria Cafra were up next on the line-up and there was no sign of them yet. I believe it was Sampaguita who played before Resty's set so after Sam's set was done, the crowd had started getting restless when Resty hadn't showed up yet. In situations like that, it was Howlin' Dave who we usually threw into the lions' den, the guy who had to pacify the crowd by confusing them with his play with words. Out of the blue, someone mentioned to us that Maria Cafra had arrived earlier. Wondering why they were not backstage, Little Rock and I decided to wade thru the jampacked crowd to look for the band. When we got outside the building, somewhere near the concert gates, we spotted something that stuck out like a sore thumb: a Fender Telecaster stuck between the knees of a guy who appeared to be sleeping, his head bowed on the guitar neck. Only one guy in local rock played that trademark Tele: Resty. As we shook him to wake him up, the first thing he said was "Saan yung stage pare?" (Where is the stage, friend?). The guy had gotten plastered while on the drive down from Subic. We started to worry. I don't remember if we gave him coffee but when he was introduced to the crowd by Howlin' Dave, he smiled, raised his guitar and shouted "Kumusta na kayo!!!" (How's everybody!!!). Then he struck the first chord of his hit "Kumusta mga kaibigan"(How are you, my friends), and the crowd went wild. That moment was pure magic. - BOB MAGOO Feb 1, 2001 Laguna, Philippines |
| SOMETHING'S IN THE AIR + Being a rookie, I was handling the graveyard shift on DZUW-AM 1310 which had just been bought by DZRJ BossRadio. It was another regular September day, this was a little after 1 AM. UW was one flight of stairs down from DZRJ at the Tower. I was stoned with some good weed and getting carried away with "Hill where the Lord hides" by Chuck Mangione. Suddenly loud knocks on the studio glass to my left. Hassled, I turned my head to see, and armed to the teeth a Philippine marine gesturing for me to open the door of the announcer's booth. Kinda shocked and puzzled why it was soldiers and not cops who were gonna bust me for the first time. I kinda raised my arm to also gesture to him to wait as I was about to adlib. Then I stood slowly on purpose to open the door, my mind and insides were shaking in fear because the ashtray was filled with roaches from the other announcers who were on air earlier in the day. As I slowly stood to turn and open the door behind me, I was trying to figure out how to get rid of the weed. I opened the door just a little enough to stick my face out and ask him what he was doing in a rock station. He handed me a letter which had the seal of the President of the Philippines. I had no time to read what was below that or it just wasn't registering in my mind because of my immediate problem. He then said to turn off all the equipment and come with him, then turned to inspect the visitors' lounge as there was a visitor sleeping in one of the couches. Poor guy was so freaked when the marine woke him up that his first reaction was to throw up his hands and shield himself from the armed soldier. Poor guy must have had a bad trip....when he told me to shut down and turned. I had quickly but calmly (again, to my surprise!) reached for the ashtray and dumped it in the trashcan, shaking then kicking it a little so the roaches would go down and blend with the trash, We were then brought downstairs and told to relax and wait. At around 7 AM, we were told we could leave and sorry for the inconvenience. Too busy worrying about those roaches, I never got to read the letter from the marine. I finally realized the gravity of the letter's contents. It was the day Martial Law was declared by President Ferdinand Marcos. - BOB MAGOO January 1, 2001 Laguna, Philippines |
| Olongapo's Best + |
| My corner of The White Room |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
| * ticketstub from Antipolo Rockfest courtesy of Baby V. & Pinoyclassicrock.com |
| * |
 |
|
|
|
| + edited by Double A |
|
| PINOY ROCK's ARK |
 |
 |
|
| All the above stories first appeared in The WHITE ROOM of? WWW.THEROCKOFMANILA.COM |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|