Aruba

My very good friend Ria Mariano has been performing in Aruba Bar & Restaurant for about three years now and I've only missed a handful of her Monday night gigs. I've been listening to Ria ever since our UP days (that was in the early '90's Hahaha!) where she would sing at Gen-meets and other school activities and comments like "Hayop sa boses!" were all you could hear from our org-mates. I still remember her first acoustic gig in January of 1998 at Freedom Bar. She had master (master?) keyboard player Nikki Cabardo (now with Freestyle and Sino Si-Kat?) backing her up. The stress-filled band scene which she was part of for four years (with bands UsPlus, Souled Out, Odd Man Out and Ybarra, hehe, banggitin ba?) probably tired her out. She has since had several acoustic "partners" namely writer-musician Lionel Valdellon, keyboard wiz Ria Villena-Osorio and Tuloy Pa Rin composer and session guitar player Janu Villanueva. Ria!!! Here's our Aruba picture. That's me on the right singing back-up. At some point, I got tired of watching and wanted in on some action (hahaha!) This picture was taken at Aruba in Metrowalk during one of OUR gigs. Hahaha! Ria and I were probably laughing at guitarman, boy in the mirror, Paolo Tiongson while he was having one of his tantrums.