Text and photos by ELIZABETH LOLARGA
THE former members of Circus Band and New Minstrels, no matter what batch they came from, have tapped into the mother lode that will keep them grooving onstage for more Valentines to come: equally maturing Baby Boomers and martial-law babies who aren’t quite ready to ride into the sunset and who still want to shimmy and shake to their songs.
From the rousing opening number to the encores (a medley of ’70s tunes that had the entire audience at the Museum Music standing, applauding, singing along and dancing), each song was met with a cheer of recognition.
That was the appeal of “All for Love”, the limited concert run of reunited alumni of Circus and Minstrels: Joey Albert, Pat Castillo, Jacqui Magno, Louie Reyes, Chad Borja, Ray-an Fuentes, Ding Mercado and Eugene Villaluz.
Each is an able soloist in his/her own right, giving a definitely unique stamp to a pop hit without sounding plakadong-plakado. No Barry Manilow of the Philippines among the guys, even if it was his hits they had sung (“One Voice,” “I Write the Songs,” “Copacabana,” “Ready to Take a Chance Again”).
The four guys, especially Mercado, sounded very suave in their ballads. Villaruz quipped they may be mistaken for the famous trio, the Tiongco brothers. Mercado could still draw out an audible collective sigh from the audience with “Lady”; his presence, his voice combined are what’s known as kilabot ng mga matrona in local parlance.
The ladies, when it was their turn to sing as a quartet, were all girlishly giggly as girls should be, no matter their stature and phase in the age demographics.
The boys and girls were also paired off, Castillo and Fuentes putting heart and soul into the James Ingram hit, “Baby, Come to Me.” Magno’s little slips of memory in her love duets were forgivable because she right away redeemed herself in her solo numbers, particularly “Wind Beneath My Wings.” Her voice has deepened with age, but her range remains wide–she still can go soprano when a song calls for it.
Thinning hairlines, bald patches, “senior monuments” (Magno’s endearing term for moments of forgetfulness in her Beegees duet “Guilty”) be damned. Even Barbra Streisand forgot some lyrics of “Stony End” at a live concert, in the ’70s, fueling her fears of ever doing live shows again. It would be decades before Streisand faced a live audience again, but by that time, teleprompters were in vogue.
There was never a moment of dead air or of dullness in the non-stop program that had no interval or intermission (a bit unkind for people of a certain age who have problems with water retention).
But then this occasion was more party than concert. The audience, with or without much prodding from the performers, sang or expressed themselves with the same ebullience and joy that the eight singers did, with none of the mosh-pit “non-dancing” that marks a younger generation.
The friendly banter among the singers was relaxed, unscripted. Much of that easiness comes from decades of singing as a group in the flower-power and activist years, going it alone or in pairs, then reuniting again in their middle years.
Even if Villaluz confessed that he couldn’t find a more current Broadway or West End song to suit his age (not Les Miz, not Phantom of the Opera), a Jersey Boys number was up his alley (Jersey Boys being a latter-day musical based on jukebox hits): “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” An oldie but goodie, it resurrected in the Mel Gibson-Julia Roberts movie Conspiracy Theory where the actress exercised on her treadmill to that song.
Reyes showed why she was among the original birit queens, a belter long before Charice Pempengco was a gleam in her parents’ eyes in “Mr. Melody” when she reached the part where she had to scat. The thing with birit or, as former music reviewer Anna Leah Sarabia defined it, going todo or to the max, is it can be impressive or it can be unpleasant to the ears.
Her duet with Villaruz, “Magkakapatid”, proved that they had the “k” or right to represent the country at an international pop song festival back in the year no one could precisely recall anymore. The revelation was National Artist Rolando Tinio had a hand in translating the lyrics of the OPM song into English for the benefit of the judges and audience.
The superb eight never lost their following among former college kids who’re now at the prime of their lives and have the wherewithal to throw for an evening of well-earned nostalgie, as those inclined to throw in their college-learned French would put it. They made everyone feel that each day could be Valentine’s day.