Reliving our stories with Circus Band & New Minstrels

Eugene Villaluz hoped members of the audience at the Circus Band/New Minstrels Greatest Hits reunion concert at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) would get to relive “their own stories of those times (the ’70s and ’80s) as we value ours.” He did not sing his tear-jerking soap opera theme song Gulong ng Palad, but the packed PICC crowd of graying hair and dimming eye sight was thinking about that wheel of fortune in the days of their lives, especially their halcyon prime with ambivalence, and most seem to be asking: Where did our youth go?

Ding Marcelo of the New Minstrels, who directed the nostalgic extravaganza of pop, funk, jazz and rhythm and blues, claimed that everyone in the show, including the audience, is leveling up — not only in terms of their life’s significance, but also in their uric acid, blood pressure and sugar levels and thanked the spectators who came with their children, grandchildren and caregivers. Everyone laughed both with derision and delight, recalling stories inscribed in their memories and etched in their hearts — in particular 15 high school classmates who came to resonate the narratives of their youth in a book titled #40K or 40 Kwento sa 40 Taon, a celebration of their ruby jubilee.

The two decades, which saw the rise of these two bands, were a time of danger and disco, with Martial Law hot on the heels of boys with long hair and girls with short skirts, who in the daytime marched on the streets shouting Huwag Matakot, Makibaka! and in the night time danced their angst away with Donna Summer hits like Last Dance (which Jacqui Magno, Pat Castillo, Louie Reyes, Tillie Moreno and Joey Albert sang) at Wells Fargo, Where Else, Discovery and such watering holes, as recalled by Hajji Alejandro, who reminisced first performing professionally in 1973 at the then Dewey strip, now Roxas Blvd.  

People Power would turn the tide against the dictatorship in 1986, when these same boys and girls were starting their own families and humming their children to sleep with Barry Manilow chart-toppers like I Write the Songs and Even Now, which Eugene, Chad Borja and Basil Valdez sang.

From our balcony left perch, we sighed at the thinning hair of Ray-An Fuentes, but marveled that his beginnings as a dancer is a well-guarded gift, with his match-up with Hajji (who trained in tap dancing) and Ding (who studied folk dancing). He sang One in a Million, and afterwards intimated that he was extremely grateful not to have missed the high notes. For the first time in 30 years, he sang live with Tillie, the Butch Monserrate, Babes Conde, Gryk Ortaleza and Anabelle Lee the entry to the 1979 second Metro Manila Popular Music Festival, Umagang Kay Ganda, which was bested by Bulag, Pipi at Bingi (Isang Pag-aalay), Ewan and Lupa, interpreted by Freddie Aguilar, APO Hiking Society and Rico Puno, respectively.

Who is your favorite ’70s artist? The five divas asked, and there was a cacophony of answers from the crowd. They then belted the Sergio Mendez hits when the Latino singer was making waves with his Brasil 66: Put a Little Love Away, Never Gonna Let You Go and the signature Mas Que Nada. Jacqui showcased her jazz vocals and gave The Beatles’ Got To Get You Into My Life the bebop treatment.

Basil, having faced his mortality up close sometime ago, sang in memoriam for their late band member Richard Tan and composer Gerry Paraiso, the song The Harder I Try, The Bluer I Get, popularized by the sextet The Free Movement Band, formed in Los Angeles in 1970, which made the Billboard Top 5 in the US with I’ve Found Someone On My Own. This made the Calumpit Institute High School batch ’74 in the audience remember their own comrades now jamming in the pearly gates, with whom they bellowed Bee Gees, Jackson 5 and Tony Orlando tin pan alley standards.

And with the duet Nakapagtataka (composed by APO’s Jim Paredes) rendered by Hajji and Joey, they remembered the loves they sought to gain, but lost at a time now so long distant, as in the song Far Away (composed in 1971 by Carole King, and recorded with James Taylor playing the acoustic guitar) plaintively sung by Pat Castillo. Chad’s perfection of Michele Legrand’s How Do You Keep the Music Playing?, composed for the film Best Friends, reminded us of the loves we gained forever, as this became a hit the year my husband and I were married.

For the finale, the icons of the two bands, who each went their separate ways to blaze their own trails, sang That’s What Friends Are For — the 1982 Bacharach-Sager theme from the movie Nightshift, popularized by Dionne Warwick. The high school cohorts could only give the thumbs-up sign for Hajji, who confessed: “We have come full circle, and have returned to the company of beloved people with whom we came of age, chased our dreams, counted our losses and celebrated triumphs.”

As Hajji, Joey, Eugene, Tillie, Ding, Pat, Basil, Jacqui, Chad, Louie and Ray-An bade us goodbye, we sang with them the Stylistics hit of 1970 when we opened that magic portal into high school, hoping to put in our commemorative book the bittersweet 40 years hence:

We can turn the clock back, baby, and then 
We can make it, we can make it again

Remember, remember how we used to laugh together
Cried together, the crazy things we tried together

Reliving our youth and making it happen again, even only in stories that we tell and songs that we sing — that is how we will ransom the bliss which we squandered for our foolish dreams.