Ramon "RJ" Jacinto was only 17 when he established DZRJ with his Ateneo high school classmates on borrowed money. "I presented a feasibility study to my Dad and he helped me loan from the bank. It was a P250,000 loan to finance the radio station my friends and I had been dreaming about, a radio station that would play the latest music, even those in the states," RJ Jacinto, still very youthful-looking, enthuses.
Back then, new songs in the US would hit the Philippine airwaves six months after their release in American radio. But for an avid music lover like RJ, six months was too long.
RJ’s love affair with rock ’n roll started when he was 11. "When Li’l Richard’s Long Tall Sally sailed through the airwaves and rock and roll movies started showing in Manila, I became a true follower. I was in Grade 7 when after one school day, I was in the classroom with everybody milling around just talking. Suddenly, I found myself singing Li’l Richard’s Long Tall Sally. One of my classmates must have liked it and I was pushed to the teacher’s podium with everybody chanting, ‘sing, sing, sing!’"
Something hit him, RJ admits, and he felt as if he were transported to another dimension. "I found myself pounding at the teacher’s podium pretending it was a piano. I started to really belt out Long Tall Sally. I remember the magical feeling of the applause," RJ recalls.
There and then, he knew the rock ’n roll bug had bitten him.
Four years after he pounded on his teacher’s desk, RJ had his first public appearance at the Ateneo de Manila High School Christmas party on Dec. 5, 1960. "The whole high school population rocked to my music. I knew I hit on something. Ramon and the Riots was born. From then on, my life was strictly divided between music and studies. Girls were secondary. I preferred to stay home, play records over and over and learn them by ear," RJ says. With a big following among young people, DZRJ was the coolest radio station in town, the "Teen Station Serving the Nation."
When Martial Law was declared, RJ and his family had to go on exile. The family businesses (among them the giant Jacinto Steel Mills) and the radio station were confiscated. But poetic justice came for RJ when in 1986, DZRJ was used by June Keithley and Cardinal Sin to rally the people to EDSA and stage the peaceful revolution.
"Without me knowing it, our little radio station became the voice of democracy. I was so proud of that," RJ quips.
Today, DZRJ holds the distinction of spearheading the retro music craze. The station also led in playing the music of Pinoy bands who could not get airtime from other radio stations. DZRJ organized the monumental Pinoy Woodstock in 1989, and recently, it has been holding Guitar Nights at Dish in Rockwell.
RJ swears that rock ’n roll will never die. He will prove this in a big shebang called DZRJ at 40: The Grand Reunion at the Araneta Coliseum on Oct. 25 at 8 p.m. Presented by Globe, the show will bring together music artists whose music has graced the DZRJ airwaves through the years, among them, Jose Mari Chan, Jaya, Pepe Smith, Hotdog, Pilita Corrales, Elizabeth Ramsey, Sampaguita and Cowboy, Andrew E, Asin, Barbie’s Cradle, Moonstar 88, Rage Band, Janet Basco, Louie Heredia, Pido and Take 1, "Elvises" Edgar Opida and Boy Sanchez, Boyfriends, Aegis, Jackie Magno, Pat Castillo, 17:28, Vienna, Father & Sons, The Moonstrucks and Ernie Delgado of the Electromaniacs. Of course, RJ N’ Friends will be there to do what life for them is all about, rock ’n roll.
"It’s been 40 years but as long as there are people who are willing to listen to our music, the fun continues," RJ declares.