Buhay banda - Part 6 (Full Volume)

Pardon my long break from writing this series.

Bro and I are big fans of music, and all we wanted was to form a band.

We had myself (guitar), bro (drums), and brad amet (vocals) as the core, so we thought we only needed a bassist and a keyboardist. However, when school started, Brad Amet also had to leave to study in Basa Airbase, Pampanga. It turned out we needed more members. It wasn't easy because we just moved in town.

While involved in an oral competition (as well as the school paper and the SPC underground rebellion movement =D ), Bro Jeff got acquainted with Vincent a.k.a. Vince a.k.a. Vinny, a great composer and lyricist, and Julius Tubaña a.k.a. Toby, a funny fellow who has good vocal range. Both agreed to join, and so Vince was to play bass and Toby was to do vocals. But that didn't work.

Fortunately, Toby had some experience in a marching band so he took up the drums. His drum rolls were very umm... drum and bugle-ey, but he had great speed and energy. So we went with it.

Bro moved to bass and Vince played rhythm guitar. Then Toby introduced a friend who had better vocals, Israel, and man was he good! Husky voice with suprisingly good highs. Definitely rock material.

And the first band line-up became:

• Lead Guitar - me
• Rhythm Guitar - Vince
• Bass Guitar - Bro
• Drums - Toby
• Vocals - Israel

Meanwhile, we were expecting Brad Amet to return soon and we wanted his soft, modulated high voice and boyish good looks to front us. Luckily, Israel was open to learning the keyboards and stepping down to second voice.

We practiced a lot and wrote a lot of originals. But we didn't have any gigs until Brad Amet returned.

Next up: First Battle of the Bands