The Howling
Everyone in the Pinoy rock world has a favorite story or two to tell of the late great disc jockey Howlin’ Dave, during his heyday in the rock of
My own brief brush with Howlin’ Dave, for I barely knew the guy except for hours listening to his program on the radio, happened in the early 1980s, when he and his fellow rock jock Stoney Burke and folksinger Ysagani Ybarra and I went to this building in Quiapo somewhere between Lerma and Quezon Boulevard where we were to talk with one of the organizers of a concert to be staged at the Rizal Memorial Stadium the following weekend. The organizer was also Pinoy, and an adherent of one of the esoteric eastern religions or movements that espouse among others vegetarianism, which Dante and Ysagani at the time were great followers of. Dante had also just had himself tattooed, as was the punk fashion of the day, and Stoney Burke ribbed him that he should become a punk rocker since he “was dressed up for it anyway.” The older disc jock had confessed that given the choice between punk and Frank Sinatra, he would choose Ol’ Blue Eyes.
As it turned out, four or five people would die in a stampede during the weekend concert at Rizal Stadium, which tragedy I had read about the following day in the papers, and the group that visited the abode of the eastern concert promoter in Quiapo Lerma drifted their separate ways. Well, maybe except for Dante, who however kept in touch through radio through his endless rhapsodies on any subject under the sun or moon, rain or shine, almost like a version of Pilosopong Tasyo at the corner transcendental sari-sari store.
Little is known about the fact that Howlin’ also had his own quasi-acoustic band in the mid ’70s that played in the RJ parking lot concerts in old Sta. Mesa, I forget now the band’s name but it could have started with a letter D, and Dante handled the acoustic rhythm guitar as if he had just learned to play by reading Jingle magazine. In that manner one could say that he sort of idolized his fellow DJ Little Rock, aka Sonny Pecson also since departed to that great disc jockey’s booth in the sky, who played lead guitar for Aunt Irma.
It is also highly possible that the Howlin’ made it to the cover of Who magazine along with his partner Delilah, featured in all their punk regalia, the first couple of the counter-culture fashion then taking the country by storm, stud and metal spike. Delilah by the way had a younger sister named Maria, an English major at the UP.
The best we can remember him by is through the songs he played whenever he was on board, a good part of it on the RJ franchise culminating with underground radio, and later segueing to the NU tapsi rock at the time of his sudden death.
When he was feeling nationalistic, wanting to integrate the music with his gift of gab, he would play a sequence of three songs: Awiting Pilipino by Mike Hanopol, Pinay by Florante, and Pilipino by Ysagani Ybarra. When jovial and lighthearted he would play versions of the same song, e.g., Tatsulok by Buklod and Bamboo and Bilog na naman ang Buwan by Ybarra and Tropical Depression.
He was a great fan, too, of guitar as shown by the airtime he gave Wally’s Blues, Maria Cafra’s Tala sa Umaga, and Petrified Anthem’s Waiting to be Found.
Not just Pinoy rock, of which he was undoubtedly a moving spirit, but he also had his favorite foreign artists and bands, not the least the certified loner, Neil Young. It was while Howlin’ Dave was on board that there was more than an even chance of hearing classic Neil Young, whether it be Cinnamon Girl from “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere,” to the extended guitar showcases Cortez the Killer and Like a Hurricane, to the artist’s more laidback collaborations with kumpare Stephen Stills, Midnight on the Bay and Long May You Run.
Whenever he would play one of these songs, immediately after he would wax rhapsodic and profound, going into one of those wild, tangential trains of thought that could have been inspired by very good substances combined with even better music. If silence followed a great song, Dante David gave words to that silence. You didn’t even have to listen to what he was saying, because the voice, deep and smoke-filled from the soul’s dark corner, was comfort enough and the perfect chaser to the music.
It was during the Howlin’ time slot that we most likely first heard Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes, The Clash’s Somebody got Murdered, Elvis Costello’s Alison, Linda Ronstadt’s version of that Costello song, Warren Zevon’s Carmelita, and Ronstadt’s version of that Zevon song:
“Carmelita, hold me tighter/ I think I’m sinking down/ And I’m all strung out on heroin/ On the outskirts of town.”
There was a tribute, we heard, a couple of days after the DJ’s death, held at My Bro’s Moustache in the Scout area, which was just as well. It was time to mark a chapter to when disc jockeys were pure disc jockeys, alone in their booths except for the intermittent lady caller, and not purveyors of sound effects for rap groups or the juggling spectacle of house music events.
