Bands War: Poor Side A, Powerful Free Style

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

The last time I saw pop, ballad, soul, and rhythm & blues bands Side A and Free Style strutted their music prowess were in the late 1990s at the air conditioned Dagupan City’s government owned Astrodome.

The second time I saw them up close was in a twin-header concert last Valentine’s Day Party at 9 pm to midnight at the sprawling world class CSI’s Stadia owned by the family of Dagupan City’s Mayor Belen T. Fernandez.

“It surprised us when we first saw the Stadia, we thought it was an airport terminal,” declared by Side A’s new lead singer and guitarist Yubs Esperat to the more than a thousands of crowd who were a mixed of executives, professionals and youngsters.

“Where’s the shrilling voiced Joey Generoso, the guy whose voice ranges could whip base G# to tenor of high E5?,” I posed to myself when I saw a lead singer belting the band songs who was not as tall as the six –foot tall long haired Generoso, the front man of the band.

When I Goggle searched him on my IPhone, the online info told me:

“He left the band in 2015 for a solo career. Joey Benin, composer of top songs like Forevermore, left too in 2008 and went to Negros Occidental to tend his fish farm and teach poor kids in his organizations Tapulanga and Kalipay”.
"Kasimanwa gali ining lininti-an," I muttered.

Here’s what I posted at Face Book when I saw the new batch of Side A dishing out their songs Set You Free, So Many Questions, and Foolish Heart.

 “Parang kumakain tayo ng tinola nito na walang halong dahon ng siling pula at bungang siling green. It’s really silly!” On the absence of a bite as I told Reverend Doctor Gilbert Montecastro of Baguio City in one of our series of text messages at Messenger as I preoccupied myself on the ho-hum rendition.

 Parang Commodore, noong iniwanan ni Lionel Richie noong 1982 na laos na from superstardom! Parang Queens noong nawala si Freddie Mercury na wala na ang linamnam,” I continued in the vernacular.

It’s like Rod Stewart singing “You're In My Heart” without the stagewalks that erupted the crowd into rapture when the song hit the lyrics “I didn't know what day it was / When you walked into the room” and other styles of choreography just to compensate the absence of the distinctive voiced and high toned Generoso.

                                     What Salvaged the Night

But what salvaged the night’s ticket price was when Free Style, a pop-soul-jazz-R&B group, wowed the thousands of crowd with their songs

Before I let you go, Half Crazy, So Slow despite the absence of its lead singers Top Suzara and Jinky Vidal.

Suzara, who composed 80 percent of its songs, broke out for a solo career in 2006   after a tiff with lead singer the deep, throaty, and flirty voiced Jinky Vidal who also left in 2011 for a solo career.

But despite the absence of the two icons, Free Style still carry the crowd on the crest of waves with songs like When I Met You (by Apo Hiking Society), Bakit Ngayon Ka Lang (by Ogie Alcasid) sang by new front singers Joshua Desiderio and Ava Santos.  Desiderio sings better than Suzara (Singing is about Dan Henley’s voice and not Don Felder who composed the hits Hotel California) while Santos had her own powerful voice, gyrating, and dancing skills that could compensate Vidal’s absence.

Oh, they had another short stout third guy Mike Luis whose high range of voice I heard from those tenors in the choir or in some college singing contests but not near the R&B voices of Joe, Brian McKnight, Ne-Yo, and others.

As a wannabe pasaway critique: I think the polished Free Style has future than the new Side A in chalking up concerts and dough in the provinces and even in Imperial Manila.

READ MY OTHER ARTICLES:

Mitoy Dreams Joining Queen

The anatomy of a Filipino folk-rock singer

My Mental Orgasm When I First Heard “Come Together”

(You can read my selected columns at mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)