Monday, December 1, 2008

Daily Report: Between The Moon & New York City


Cagayan De Oro may never find itself upon the shining path which big music stars tread at the heights of their careers. But, if the present is any indication, we can look forward to seeing Britney and Justin performing for us in, oh, 2038 or so.

If there is one thing that Filipinos love, it is 70's and 80's soft rock music. It's all they listen to. Fortunately, aging stars have become hip to this fact, and now Cagayan De Oro regularly sees once-top-shelf music acts come and perform.

So far, in the 8 months I've been here, Earth Wind and Fire has played, Toto was here last month, and tonight was Christopher Cross, playing at the Limketkai Atrium.

Now, I won't go so far as to say I would prefer to see "Ride Like The Wind" performed live over "Hit Me Baby One More Time", but the price is right ($36 for both of us), and you can bring in your own food. Britney can't touch that with her two-hundred-dollar tickets.

Christopher is obviously getting on in years at 57 (but lordy, he's aged well), and his voice has lost most of his trademark bouncy countertenor and now sounds stretched and hollow. But, I was told by Epril that Christopher had mentioned at a press conference earlier today that he wasn't feeling well, so that may be it. But, the crowd, Epril and me included, enjoyed the music, our old favorites, discovered a couple of new songs we liked, and all in all thought it was a great deal.

So, if you are a semi-retired 70's superstar who wants to find the glory of yesteryear again (Hall and Oates, I'm looking at you), I'd like to let you know that The Philippines hasn't forgotten you. (Where do you think those royalty checks are coming from anyway?) Stop by when you get the time. We'll love you for it.

(And if you're wondering, yes I recorded a video of "Sailing", and no you can't hear it... mostly because of the crap sound the camera records. It doesn't sound as bad as the video from the beauty pagaent, but it's certainly not good enough to bother putting a bit of it up on YouTube.)

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