Casablanca or the late Club Dredd? Well, more like Weekends Live at the Atrium now, with the newly formed NIC -- for Newly Industrialized Combo, a six-piece blues act -- playing there on Saturdays. Minus the drunken encounter (none so far), the NIC at the WL reiterates the soul of the live scene that won’t go away. And NIC’s kindred blues spirits -- pianist Butch Saulog, guitarist Edsel Tolentino, bassist Bob Villegas, drummer Bob Barretto, harmonica whiz Tom Colvin and vocalist Binky Lampano -- believe that they’ll never run out of steam nor songs with the way they’re "all plugged in."

     What started out as a hastily-gathered group for Club Dredd’s goodbye show was spun off into a bold blues band that plays what someone has called "industrial-strength blues."

     The blues could unhelm those weaned on Top 49 and other pop trash. Or disappoint them, for as disciple Billie Holiday sang: "The blues ain’t nothing but rain in your heart/ when you had a bad start/ when you and your man have to part..." Or surprise them since strains of the blues can be found from Elvis (Presley) to Eric (Clapton).

     Existing primarily as unwritten folk music until 1912, when a guy named William Handy began codifying blues themes, the blues’ simple three-chord harmony ultimately lent itself to imaginative improvisations. Critic Stanley Dance said: "The lyrics were frequently invented by the singers themselves. Contrary to the popular conception, a wide range of emotions was expressed; not all blues were slow and sad."

     "I’m pushing my instrument to the limit," Colvin laughs. "These guys are pushing me, and that’s the wonderful thing about this band. We all just fall into place." Colvin, an ADB executive by day, is a true blues babe -- born and raised in North Carolina, he once played jazz drums and studied with jazz educator John Mehegan. And joining a blues band has been a long-time dream. Says Colvin, "Basically every band here plays the blues. But they play the same chord changes, same tempo and they all sound the same. Our (chord) progressions are very rich."

     Saulog, an energetic lawyer at a Makati law firm, adds: "We’re not limiting ourselves to the blues, though. But we’d like the band to have a blues-based sound. Give us a song -- any song -- and we’ll rework it." Even, uh, Eddie Peregrina’s? Saulog shrugs, throwing me that why-not look. The rock-jazz baby (who maintains an awesome record collection thereof in his house) is a keyboard magician who started with the Runaway Boys. He’s also the resident arranger (what a touch!), though the rest of the guys quickly add that Saulog’s a "director, not a dictator."

     NIC’s manager Eddie Boy Escudero, is amazed at the fortuitous events surrounding NIC’s birth. "All the good breaks have been given us," he says. "And to think the NIC’s not all about pogi jazz (e.g., Kenny G). But we believe that there are more out there who want to listen to a different kind of live music, and the NIC will try to draw them out."

     Tolentino, a graduate of the UP Conservatory of Music, is an advertising guy by day. Baretto runs a drum shop -- the first comprehensive outfit in the country -- called Drumworx. Villegas has long been a session bassist, apart from having played electric pass fulltime for the ooh-ah Grace Nono.

     Watching them rehearse at the Quezon City studio a couple of weeks before their first gig, you’d think they were already on some hospitable stage, blowing away the way they did.

     "Music," Lampano philosophizes, "unlike sex, is safe -- at least here in the Philippines." If there’s anyone who really knows, it’s Lampano, the rock and crossover music Iron John. Lampano has moved from the fringe to mainstream (if his well-attended gigs in clubs are gauge enough ) over the last two years. He’s tough, rather sweet, and somebody has described his voice as "sandpaper and honey."

     "I figured I gotta make it on my own," he says, and we believe, since Lampano’s hardly the kind of singer who’d disappear into the shadows of a yuppie bar’s stage, whining an effete Doobie Brothers remake. Thing is, Lampano melts when he hears Johnny Hartman do "My One and Only Love."

     "Do you see, I don’t think I’ll do the song the way he does it. For that matter I always do songs differently, even if I’ve done them before," he says.

     Lampano, who once dawdled with computers, adds that he’s throwing himself to music this time. "I have been given a choice between compulsion and devotion -- I’ve chosen the latter."

     Lampano thought up the band’s name; someone supplied the combo part. Now the guys think that fans should be called Newly Industrialized Citizens. The group’s so fluid that they’ve welcomed contributions from friends (whether lyrics or music) for possible inclusion in their repertoire. There’s one called "Weakness" (lyrics by writer Jessica Zafra); another’s called "Soundcheck" (a guide for the sound technicians before sets concocted by Colvin); I have yet to write the lyrics to a song they’ll probably call "We Met at the Top of the Stairs."

     "The time is right for NIC," says Escudero. "The band’s new but very accessible. And one day we’d like to play with top musicians, old and new, here or abroad."

     And whether the NIC’s records (or Cds) overtake the Philippine goal of becoming an NIC by the turn of the centjry, oh please, let me be among the NIC -- whichever comes first.