Birthday Celebration in BigSkyMind...

Briggs (my band's vocalist/guitarist) and I threw a party at BigSkyMind to celebrate our birthdays, last Saturday, February 16, 2008. Just don't ask hold old we are. And if you have to ask, it's better answered in private and over a beer. ;)

Most of the pictures in this post were taken by my good friend Jan Gabriel (Thanks Jan!). I thought I'd give her credit for it just to be fair. The rest of the pictures came from my crappy camera on my Treo 650.

We had an open bar, pica-pica, and an interesting dessert (ehem). It was an invite only party for our good friends, with my good man Dennis manning the door, with a guest list and a stamp pad. The stamp is the key to food and booze that night. No stamp on your wrist, nothing is free.

We had some of our friends' bands who play good music perform that night as well. Some of which I'll be putting up pictures of and talk about in this post. The bands that played that night were Liquid Jane, Sidhi, Coffeeshop Conspiracies, SunDownMuse (of course our band had to play at our party), Milagros Dancehall Collective, and Mobster Manila.

Liquid Jane


Chad Rialp, the vocalist/bassist, has been a friend of mine since highschool. And I've been watching Chad play his music eversince they were an acoustic duo called "The Sims", through an acoustic trio as "Liquid Jane", until the full band set-up that it is currently. Highlight of the set for me was, of course, "Hollow Tree", which is my all-time favorite Liquid Jane song. Sorry Chad, I know you invited me to jam Hollow Tree with you guys. I was too zonked to go get my gear from the car and set-up so early in the night. There will be a next time for sure.


A line from one of the songs they played that night stuck in my head; "You're halfway human! You're halfway animal!". So much hatred (lol!). A few thoughts and emotions welled up when I heard Chad sing those lines. But that's probably best left for a whole different other post. ;)

They currently have an album out titled "Newspaper, Bottle". A very well made indie effort.

Sidhi


Sidhi is by far one of my most favorite local bands. I stack them up there with the likes of Urbandub in how entertaining they are. These guys don't even know how good they are. The band is a 4-piece band with a hebrew/reggae/rap style. One of the bigger influences is Matisyahu. But the vocalist's style seems to have a more persian/hebrew accent. And that on its own makes their music sound great. Highlight of their set is my favorite song called "Move On". Listen to the song on their Friendster account. It's really good and it seems to be so relevant to my current situation.

They're coming out with their first album soon. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.

Coffeeshop Conspiracies


Coffeeshop Conspiracies was named so because of the musings of my good highschool friends Paolo Rodriguez (Coffeeshop vocalist/guitarist) and Benito Gonzalez (previous guitarist of Liquid Jane), while hanging out countless times in Starbucks in Alabang Town Center. The band's music sounds very much like Dave Matthews (one of Pao's biggest influences), fused with jazz and blues elements from Paolo's collective guitar playing experience. They are a 5 piece band, inclusive of a saxophone and keyboards player. I must admit that the added keyboards and saxophone in the music really fills in the gaps of their songs. Like I said before, it makes light-hearted songs sound not so cheesy. They have a crazy-ass drummer named Paolo as well. They just finished their 3 song demo which sounds awesome. So watch out for these guys.

SunDownMuse


This is a band that I'm a part of. So I won't bother giving too much background information on this band. We were missing our lead guitarist, Charles, that night. So we enlisted the guitar expertise of Gino, the guitarist for Liquid Jane. Gino sessioned for us for two gigs late last year. So the impromptu jam session with him that night was loose but not too unfamiliar fortunately.

To be honest, I felt it wasn't one of our better sets; especially since we screwed up the intro of our first song twice. Heck, it was our party anyway and it made for a good laugh. I was slightly disappointed that a lot of my friends left before we got to play. But the people who did stay said we played well. I suppose that was the booze talking (lol!).

Milgaros Dancehall Collective

Milagros Dancehall Collective or MDC are Manila's Dancehall authority, and rightfully so. MDC's music is a little hard to describe without immediately relagating it to the gazillion reggae acts in the scene. When the band is asked how to describe their music, the easiest thing to say is that "it's similar to Sean Paul". It's that kind of reggae/rap music that is easy to groove to and is always an instant crowd favorite. They were missing Sappy, their lead guitarist and co-vocalist, that night. So there was this Shaggy-esque reggae/rap sound that was missing in their sound. It was still good nonetheless and very entertaining.

Mobster Manila

We almost thought these guys weren't going to show up to play anymore that night. But we were glad that they did. Mobster Manila is known to be as entertaining with their look and clothing as it is with their music. It's nice to see a band have a lot of character behind their music, and actually pull out very nice sounding Ska music without a horn section.

Considering that I was recovering from a severe stomach ache, and a number of disappointments of certain people not going to my party, that night was a blast. The free-flowing booze, good food, awesome music, and great friends all around. It was definitely one of my better birthdays. The party ended at around 4:00-5:00AM in traditional BigSkyMind fashion. It definitely got me out of the rut I was in. I'm still riding the feel-good wave from my party. I hope this lasts me for a while. Until the next post....

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