Cover Kuber Cober Kuver CoversDayToday!!! Part 5

Ahhh...How time flies, it feels like it was only yesterday that I was watching this band perform live in Club Dredd or in Mayric's or in the occasional University and College venues around Manila. Anyway, this month's covers posting is a cover of a 10,000 Maniacs song...as performed by the amazing band, Color It Red way back in the year 1991. The band have had it's fair share of revolving members throughout their 17 year existence but from 1989 up to early 1992 the original line-up of the band were Cooky Chua (vocals), Barbi Cristi (rhythm guitars), Maricar Florendo (keyboards), Hank Palenzuela (Bass), Edison Jovellanos (drums), Mike Villegas (lead guitars). This makes this cover song a more enjoyable listening experience since this will be one of the few times that you can actually hear the band's original members playing live and you can hear Color It Red's tight and powerful music. I'm pretty sure there are still a lot of untapped, undiscovered bootleg tapes of demos and live materials somewhere.....most likely with their old management, friends or old band members....but I really doubt it if they'll ever re-surface for music fans to hear...by the way...listen closely at the end of the track and you'll hear CIR's current keyboardist, Sam Salazar, shouting out a song request...anyways, enjoy it...while it's still there...


Color It Red - What's The Matter Here?
(10,000 Maniacs Cover)(streaming audio)
- Live, November 1991

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Were you first in line?.....Remembering the first (or was it the second?) single of After Image

After Image came into the Manila music scene around the late 80s but they actually released their debut album around 1992. Aside from the new wave and rock covers that they played in their gigs like Bolshoi's "A Way", U2's "With or Without You" Or "Pride (in The Name Of Love)", REM's "The One I Love", The Chameleon's "Tears" even GNR's "Sweet Child Of Mine" they also played a whole bunch of original songs. One of these songs called "Next in Line" was eventually released as their first commercial single under Dyna Records. A fan favourite in their live repertoire, sometimes you can even hear an occasional version of this song with a full band setting (Yes!...with drums and loud guitars and not much synthesizers...) with matching segue into "Baba O'Reilly" or "Love Will Tear Us Apart". I also remember that radio station 99.5 RT was always playing a very early demo-sounding version of this song that was really great, mind you this was a few years before any official release from the band. The song arrangement was totally different than the commercially released single.


Aside from "Next In Line", before the hullabaloo of major label life came to the band, they were also known for playing a great, highly addictive, fast original song which, before the onset of the 90s and if there was an alternate reality or world, this would have been the band's very first single. This song was called "Let It Go". A song made with the band's original guitarist named Francis Reyes aka Francis Brew aka The Dawn's main guitarist. This song also had a lot of airplay in the radio in the late 80s and was also a fan favourite when they have their concerts. Unfortunately with the parting of the guitarist and the band due to their own reasons (band infighting or not, I don't really care much about the politics and rivalries among band members!)....all the originals were also dissolved, so songs like "Let It Go", "Dogs", "Stay/I Wanna Live"(?), etc. was scrapped and shelved into the forgotten songs bin. "Let It Go" still remains as one of my peborit After Image song...it had just the right mixture of everything that the band can offer at that time...one amazing and brilliant Pinoy p!o!p! moment!



After Image - Next In Line
(7" single/1992 /1 track Promotional Copy
/ Dypro-Dyna Records/PH)

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After Image - Let It Go (streaming audio)
(unreleased / 1988-1989)