| March
19, 2002 San Pedro, Laguna Philippines It started out on a good note, 2002. The HOWLER got the Lifetime Achievement Award at the NU ROCK AWARDS, the Philippines equivalent of the Grammy's as far as it's rock population is concerned. The Howler I am referring to, is of course my brother in rock radio, DANTE DAVID aka "Howlin' Dave". We were together a great deal of our years in radio at what is now RJFM 100.3. We did flock to 99.5RT when The Rock Of Manila crumbled, right before the 1986 revolution that toppled Ferdinand Marcos. I went to it's FM station and Howler was assigned to head it's short-lived AM Rock Station, 99ROCK. After that, we were together on and off at the new RJ that was reclaimed by it's original owner, RAMON "RJ" JACINTO. The DZRJ format was innovative and daring. All Rockjocks have at one time or the other contributed to the many ideas that put everything in place. But the one person who deserves most of the credit is ALAN "Double A" AUSTRIA. During my time other major figures in DZRJ's programming were MIKE "Stoney Burke" LLAMAS, the late SONNY "Little Rock" PECKSON, Ronnie "Baby John" De Asis, and "Brother Wayne" Enaje. Almost all Rockjocks had to know the music they were playing, in most cases down to who was the recording engineer of a particular album. Some ROCKJOCKS, I may add, were mostly frustrated (except AA) musicians, so the "FEEL" was there. The flow of the music. That was the most important key to a good show, the FLOW. Enough of that, back now to what I was saying before my mind rudely interrupted me. Let me go back in time here... It was the early 70's right after the declaration of Martial Law by President Ferdinand Marcos. Imagine just before a volcano erupts, the magma, lava, whatever, and the pressure builds up. Compare that to the many musical ideas and the musicians, coupled with the political activism that had naturally flowed into many a composition. The eruption that came from that was PINOY ROCK, a kind spontaneous eruption...COMBUSTION? Around 1974, thereabouts...A young and extremely confident, Philippine Women's University, Fine Arts student, tall, dark and skinny, walks into the Rajah Broadcasting Network office together with then girlfriend, Imelda. His name was DANTE DAVID, son of a well known radio commentator, NIC DAVID. It was at that time that the ON-AIR staff was in different states of disbelief, awe, excitement and confusion over our relatively young show featuring local rock bands and soloists doing original material which was a first in local radio. But in the mayhem, the programming staff was in agreement with one thing, the baby needed a new nanny. The baby was our radio program which was at first called PINOY ROCK. But due to the paranoia of our sales department with the word rock, we had decided to add Rhythm. Thus was born PINOY ROCK and RHYTHM, the radio show that launched many careers in local music. MARIA CAFRA, JUAN DeLa CRUZ, FLORANTE, BANYUHAY, SAMPAGUITA, to name a few. I was at the time host of the show, but my Pilipino was very choppy to say the least. It was decided that someone with a good delivery in tagalog was needed to make the show more...uh, PINOY. So HOWLER came at the right time, and he fitted into the show to a tee!. I often felt uneasy when doing the show with my lousy tagalog, but I really loved and believed in PINOY ROCK. I would be lying if I said that I gladly handed over the hosting duties to someone else, and a rookie at that!. But the pain faded away when I realized just how great PINOY ROCK and RHYTHM sounded on air, when DANTE started to connect to the listeners. He was responsible for making it into one of the most listened-to music radio programs in Philippine radio history. You deserve the award buddy! It's just sad that the radio station you did it for, was the last one to recognize that. BOB "Blues" MAGOO Updated June 3, 2003 |
| The Credit for convincing me to revive my blues radio show goes to the two most energetic supporters of the blues here in the Philippines, Lightning Calix and Rudy Lamco of THE SAN JUAN BLUES CLUB. Calix is an outstanding blues guitar player who I hope to recruit as my lead guitarist for the blues band I am forming. When Eddie Formoso and Manolet Rodrigo, head honchos of LA105.9 gave the green light, the program title had to be changed. |
| To my surprise I began to receive C.D.'s and cassettes from unknown blues bands and soloists from the U.S., The Netherlands, Britain, Belgium, and even Hongkong! I not only got great material but also made great friends like Jimmy Peyton and his band, Midnite Blues from Phoenix, Greg Pasenko and his band, William Tang who plays outstanding bluesharp and has some great original chinese blues of Hongkong, the band BE CAREFUL, SACRED MUSHROOMS, a Filipino-Canadian band, also I made friends with a fellow blues radio jock from the Netherlands, whose blues show is called "BLUES TRAIN". |
| And so THE BLUES SESSIONS came to be. I named it after the MIKE BLOOMFIELD and AL KOOPER album which interestingly, also featured STEPHEN STILLS of Crosby, Stills and Nash fame. Aside from the regular playlist, I had planned to open the program to home-grown local bands who could send in original blues and / or original adaptations. But due to the small following for blues at the time, nothing happened. Then a month or two into the show I developed an interest in the WorldWideWeb, inspired by CURTIS HEWSTON's The Blue Highway. I started with a basic webpage with no pictures just text, it was named after the show and as I remember, I jokingly put out calls for any blues band or musician of any nationality, to send me original material, very sure I would not be taken seriously, or if I was, get at the most 2 bands or worse just inquiries on the show. Also I remember thinking, foreign bands would maybe react like, "The Philippines? where's that?". |
| However, our hopes and plans for further promoting
the blues soon suffered another setback. In 1998, LA-FM changed it's
programming and the show once again was without a station. With some
pushing from good friend and fellow rockjock, Ramon "THE DOCTOR"
Zialcita, the year 2000 saw the radio program take on a
totally different form, in LIVE club presentations. That is the BLUES
SESSIONS thrust going into the year 2001.
I've got quite a lot to talk about from my past, if and when my memory banks are in the mood for recollection. Also I will inject info with the help of JIM AYSON and PHILMUSIC.COM since a lot of new stuff is happening in the music scene here in Manila. I have planned to feature a columm by Mr. Joon Clement of the Sacred Mushrooms of Canada. Joon will update us from time to time on the pinoy music scene over there as well as human interest stuff or whatever he can con us into reading. My partner in producing our LIVE shows, Ramon "The DOCTOR" Zialcita will have his own section called WARD 13, whenever his busy schedule will allow him to. This website is a continuing process. And the most important, as always our ears are listening very intently for the next radio station that have the honor of helping us in the BLUEROCK UNION, continue this very honorable task, of helping spread the gospel of the BLUES. Any rich retired hippie out there? May the blues be with you....BOB "blues" MAGOO |
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| TALKIN' BLUES with MAGOO INTRODUCTION TO The Blues Sessions |
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| Binky Lampano |
| LOLITA CARBON |
| ROBERT JOHNSON |
| Joey "PEPE" Smith |
| Talkin' Blues talks Radio! |
| This is the new home for my currently "off-the-air"
radio program, THE BLUES SESSIONS, something I can rightfully
claim to be the pioneering radio show in the Philippines devoted solely to
that jewel of African-American music, which we all know as theBLUES.
I am still at the present, searching (hopefully not in vain) for that
radio station, that would welcome with open arms this genre of music. It
is no easy task considering the proliferation of Pop and Mellow program
formats that continue to be presented by today's radio stations here in
the Philippines. Music as an Art form, it seems, is not the main concern anymore of the radio listener or the concert-goer, in these beginnings of the twenty first century. The once-a-week 60-minute program was launched in the late 1970s ( I can't exactly recall when in the late seventies, what with all the hazy trips that went on during those care-free times ) as "THE BLUES HOUR" on DZRJ-AM 810, the legendary Album-Oriented Rock (AOR) radio station also referred to as The Rock of Manila. The ROCK was the original breeding ground that produced the best rock jocks and prior to that, as BOSSRADIO, the first wave of blue-chip Top40 on-air personalities, a program format the station introduced on local airspace. |
Eventually, the Top40 programming approach underwent a name transplant to Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR). The torch was passed on to the Mike Pedero-led DWRT-FM 99.5, the forerunners of the dynamic-designed CHR concept. The Blues Hour went off the airwaves when DZRJ changed format right before the People Power revolution in 1986, but was back during the short-lived return of The Rock Of Manila in 1987, only to dissapear a year later.During the time of this writing, the management had reportedly toyed with with the idea of reviving the ROCK's format, in albeit, different washed-down mutated forms, but alas, they just won't be able to recapture the magic. It takes a real ROCKJOCK to be able to segue from say, a hard rockin' "Beep Beep" by the Juan De La Cruz Band to a soft folk rock number like "Damdamin Nakabitin" by ASIN, without seriously jolting the listener out of cloud 9. |
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| CHECK THIS OUT!!! Our man in Canada, Joon Clements tells us what's happenin' way up yonder in CANAPINOYBLUES! talkin'blues goes to Canada, click here |
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