SOUNDS FAMILIAR - Baby A. Gil - The Philippine Star
July 7, 2023 | 12:00am
What a coincidence. As Can We Just Stop and Talk a While was playing on the car radio, I saw a huge Jose Mari Chan on the back of a bus hawking insurance, in front of me. It was a nice picture showing a man of a sunshiny personality. It is just what you would expect somebody who has become an enduring symbol of the Filipino-Christmas celebration to look like.
2023 is halfway over. It is now July. Soon JMC will be heard again singing his Christmas in Our Hearts, which has become so much a part of our lives. I like it that a Christmas pop song by a Filipino artist has won popular acceptance and now stands toe to toe with modern foreign carols.
I also like it that Can We Just Stop and Talk a While still gets radio airplay. Would you believe that the recording was released in 1973? That means that the song is now 50 years old. Its message remains timely and its sparkling arrangement still sounds great.
After the success of his early recordings like Afterglow and Deep in My Heart in 1969, JMC took a break from his music career. It was only in 1973 that he was entice to record again. The song he did was Can We Just Stop and Talk a While.
The lead cut in the album of the same title, which by the way, also had the beautiful Refrain, Can We Just Stop and Talk a While became a finalist at Tokyo’s Yamaha Popular Song Festival and one of the year’s biggest hits. It was also the beginning of a new phase in JMC’s singing career that would later include big sellers like Beautiful Girl and Constant Change.
I see 1973 as a year of transition for the local music industry. It was on the verge of a massive uprising. The few years before had the Nora Aunor phenomenon, the young combos like RJ and the Riots and the jukebox kings like Eddie Peregrina and Victor Wood.
The first game changers were the young showband The New Minstrels, which scored a big hit out of an old Tagalog song, Buhat. Then, the Spanish and Cebuano speaking mestiza Pilita Corrales followed suit with Kapantay ay Langit.
With such sounds in the air, music lovers became most receptive to the new sounds themselves. In fact, they were eager to embrace the changes that were afoot in 1973.
A trio of rockers took it upon themselves to record something different, the bluesy ballad Himig Natin. With this song, Mike Hanopol, Wally Gonzales and Joey “Pepe” Smith as the Juan de la Cruz Band introduced Pinoy Rock.
A group of talented young musicians got together to form the Circus Band. Among them were soon to be big stars Basil Valdez, Hajji Alejandro, Pat Castillo, Pabs Dadivas, Tillie Moreno and instrumentalists Gerry Paraiso, Menchu Apostol, Atek Jacinto and Rudy Lozano.
The campus idols Apolinario Hiking Society staged a farewell concert in preparation to joining the corporate world. Some of them did. Three, however, stayed to join showbusiness and became the APO Hiking Society, Jim Paredes, Danny Javier and Boboy Garrovillo. It was the beginning of a hitmaking career that is still going great after 50 years.
Elsewhere, Dennis Garcia, frontman of a band that he named Hotdog, gave a young Assumptionista named Ella del Rosario a sweet ballad titled Pers Lab to record. That song would usher in a revolution that came to be known as the Manila Sound. It was the beginning of the golden age of Filipino pop music.
It feels unbelievable that all these great sounds happened 50 years ago and are still as popular as ever.
And I got to thinking. Which one among today’s hit songs will the people of 50 years in the future be listening to? Hopefully to many of them. What I am sure of though is they will still do their Christmas shopping to the tune of Christmas in our Hearts.
