“BABYBABYBABYBABYBABYBABYBABYBABY!!! OWOOOAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRR!!!

     Eddie Boy Escudero, Lampano’s manager and the impressario behind the newly-formed PotatoE (note the E) Productions, shakes his head and asks: “Is Manila ready for this?”

     Good question. Filipino music lovers have always been quick to embrace the latest Western musical trend, whether it be rap and hip-hop or garage grunge and heavy metal. Although well-groomed pop bands like Side A reign supreme in the club scene, scores of less commercial (and less manicured) bands playing everything from punk to reggae to fusion have sprouted from Manila’s musical underbelly like psychedelic mushrooms -- outfits with names like Advent Call, the Jerks, the Skavengers, Color It Red, Heavy Weather and Feet Like Fins.

     None of them, however, mine the particular musical territory that Lampano and his new band, the NIC (short for Newly Industrialized Combo), have chosen to stake out for themselves.

     “We play industrial-strength blues,” says Lampano.

     To be more precise, the band inhabits that seldom-explored border area where the blues meets soul and soul meets jazz. Judging from audience reactions to sneak previews of the band’s blistering set of funky soul and jazz standards, Manila is ready for the blues.

     The blues. Da blooze. As in “my woman (man) done gone away and left me” blues. But what exactly is the blues?

     In the movie Crossroads:, the grizzled blues musician Blind Boy Fulton says to Ralph Macchio: “The blues ain’t nothing but a good man feeling bad.” Burt there’s more to the blues than feeling down and out.

     Music historian Peter Guralnick writes: “It’s a lot easier to keep on saying what the blues is not. It isn’t necessarily sad music. It doesn’t tell a story. It neither makes nor alludes to minor chords. . . In the end you come back to the familiar conundrum: if you have to ask, well then you’re just not going to understand. Because blues after all is little more than a feeling. And what could be more durable or more fleeting and ephemeral than that?

     Filipinos don’t need to ask; they respond immediately to the blues. In any concert, there’s always some guy in the back shouting the perennial cry: “Blues!”

     And why not? If anyone has a right to sing the blues, we do.

     Although he earned his spurs fronting the new wave rock outfit, Dean’s December, Lampano has always been a bluesman at heart. Blessed with what one critic described as a “honey-and-sandpaper” voice, he has always had an affinity for soul shouting. An inkling of his blues leanings might be gleaned from his post-Dean’s December works. In his first solo album (I Read the News on Dyna), he had the temerity to cover Ray Charles’ classic “Hallelujah I Love Her So.” Lampano’s soulful growling landed him a vocal spot in a television ad, singing Louis Armstong’s “What a Wonderful World.”

     Making the leap from punk poseur to bluesman came naturally to Lampano, a retired policeman’s son who grew up in tough Pasay City neighborhoods.

     “It was really a leap from posturing to devotion,” he says. “I just woke up one morning and realized that I was thinking differently already. It was an acceptance of age.”

     And of human frailty. Years spent playing loud, heavily amplified rock music have left Lampano with tinnitus, an irreversible affliction of the ear that could lead to hearing loss.

     “I have static in my ears. I should be wearing earplugs, but it’s hard to feel the music when you’re wearing earplugs,” he says. And feeling, as far as Lampano’s music is concerned, is all.

     Lampano wears his influences on his sleeve: Ray Charles, James Brown, Miles Davis, John Coltrane.

     “My philosophy at the moment is to listen to as much good music as I can for as long as I can. I don’t want to waste my time trying to find out the latest hip thing.”

     Ironically, with the NIC, Lampano might just have stumbled onto “the latest hip thing.”

     The Newly-Industrialized Combo is an example of what happens when musicians grow up and finally start working at “real” jobs.

     Tom Colvin, who plays a smoking blues harmonica, is an executive of the Asian Development Bank by day. Guitarist Edsel Tolentino is an advertising copywriter for Ace Saatchi & Saatchi. Pianist Butch Saulog is a junior associate at the Gozon, Defensor and Parel law office. Bassist Bob Villegas recently returned to full-time musicianship after years spent running a boutique. And Bob Barretto is a mechanical engineer, although he prefers to call himself a “drum doctor” -- he makes, repairs and sells drums for a living.

     While none of the guys are about to give up their day jobs, they are not exactly amateurs either. Colvin began as a jazz drummer, switched to harmonica after hearing Paul Butterfield, and studied with jazz educator John Mehegan. Saulog honed his pianistic skills playing with the rockabilly band Runaway Boys. Villegas started playing bass with Pinoy rock pioneers such as the T. Tinio Band, and has recorded with Grace Nono and Lolita Carbon. Tolentino and Barretto both play in the jazz fusion group Heavy Weather.

     “This band plays blues, but it goes beyond blues,” says Colvin. “The music has the blues feeling but it goes beyond the blues structure. The chord progressions are very rich. It’s more jazz than blues, but a very funky jazz, a soul-drenched jazz.”

     The band’s repertoire consists mostly of soul and rhythm and blues standards such as James Brown’s “Cold Sweat,” Albert King’s “Born Under a Bad Sign,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” the Billie Holliday standard “God Bless the Child,” Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” But rather than turning our record-perfect covers, the NIC uses these songs as platforms for improvisations.

     “What’s refreshing about this band is the maturity of the musicians,” says Villegas. “Everybody’s listening to each other, playing together, creating something from what we know.”

     “This is not a chops-oriented group,” agrees Saulog, “chops” being the jazz term for improvisional skill. “It’s more the feeling that we’re after. We play what the heart dictates.”

     Will Binky Lampano and the NIC be The Next Big Thing, or just the next flavor of the month? Audiences will have a chance to find out when the band takes the stage at Weekends Live at the Atrium in Makati, starting the first Saturday of April.

      “I think my nagging fear at the moment is that I won’t be able to juice enough emotion from my soul,” confides Lampano.

     Whatever the case may be, the guys of the NIC promise to play their hearts out.

     “Our goal is to play, perchance to entertain,” Lampano adds. “Not to entertain, perchance to play.”

Punks, Poets, Poseurs:  Reportage on Pinoy Rock & Roll, by Eric S. Caruncho, Anvil Publishing, 1996.

In the only book profiling Filipino alternative music, Eric Caruncho includes his Inquirer Sunday Magazine cover story about Binky and his Newly Industrialized Combo, the country's pioneering blues band which sparked a blues explosion in the country.

"...the band inhabits that seldom-explored border area where the blues meets soul and soul meets jazz. Judging from audience reactions to sneak previews of the band’s blistering set of funky soul and jazz standards, Manila is ready for the blues."

photo: R. del Rosario

Tomcat and Binky at the Club Dredd concert that launched the Newly Industrialized Combo -- and the subsequent blues explosion in the Philippines.

"...Lampano has always been a bluesman at heart. Blessed with what one critic described as a “honey-and-sandpaper” voice, he has always had an affinity for soul shouting."

"American expat and Asian Development Bank executive Tom Colvin, the man credited by Lampano as 'the one largely responsible for the NIC concept,' plays the harmonica like his daily meals depended on it."

Edwin P Sallan, Philippine Inquirer, May 1993