A night of discovery at the El Pescador

I am probably the only person on this planet who went through the teenage years without ever listening to music on the radio. To this day, in fact, I am not familiar with popular tunes (especially foreign ones) and I hardly know those Caucasian singers. Those boy bands? They all sound the same to me.

Whenever I entertain at home, friends already know that all I can offer them is good food and lively conversation. But no piped in music and definitely no singing because I’ll die first before I put a karaoke machine in my house.

If ever I go out at night, it’s just for a quiet dinner or a piece of cake (that one with the poppy seed) in Starbucks. But no music bars that are always filled with smoke (except in Makati) and blaring sound that you don’t hear each other anymore. (What’s the point in going out with friends if you can’t communicate with each other?)

On many occasions whenever I have trips out of town, my hosts would often go out of their way to treat me out to music bars at night – thinking I would have a blast there when in truth I’d always be bored stiff just listening to a band singing while sipping overpriced drinks. (How come they never serve Tanduay and Coke in those establishments?)

Last week, Billy Legaspi, a balikbayan friend (from Virginia) who was introduced to me by Dolly Ann Carvajal came home and I invited him to dinner at the newly opened El Pescador in Metro Walk in Pasig.

El Pescador is fine dining downstairs and a music bar on the second floor. Owned by Tito Ascano and John Robles (nephew-in-law of Jimmy Santos), El Pescador offers excellent cuisine (really fresh seafood) at still very reasonable prices.

Of course, my original plan was to bring Billy to El Pescador only for dinner. If we had a little more time (he has a full schedule since friends are taking turns treating him out), I thought we could walk over to Starbucks for some sweetmeats and latte to go with the conversation. (I’ve been encouraging him to get property here in the Philippines because now is a good time to buy.)

But Billy is the type who enjoys going to music bars and I know he was just shy to ask me to bring him to one that night. All throughout the night, I kept from him the fact that there was actually a music bar just upstairs.

Toward the end of dinner, however, music from upstairs began to creep down into the restaurant on the ground floor where we were. I wanted to cover Billy’s ears so he won’t hear it, but it was too late. "Did you hear that?" Billy asked me. "Hear what?" I pretended to be very busy with dinner to hear anything else.

The music became louder this time and at that point, I was already devising ways to make it appear like my companion was just hearing things.

The co-owner, John Robles, however, approached our table and volunteered the information that there was a band audition going on upstairs. Audition night? It sounded more like Fright Night to me.

But the female voice that came from upstairs I have to admit sounded like one of the Sirens, you know, the sea nymphets in Odyssey whose captivating songs would lure the seamen to dive into the ocean and die there. The only way Ulysses escaped it was to have himself tied to the mast, while his men had their ears covered in wax.

I looked at the votive candles on the tables near us and was about to stuff these into Billy’s ears, except that even I was so captivated by that singing voice, I agreed to go up to the music bar.

Upstairs, the girl singing really had the audience under her spell. It was just too bad that by the time we sat down to our table, she was just about to finish her set.

Then came the next band with a female lead singer sporting a dowdy-looking sweater that made her look like a spinster. The girl’s face is actually pretty and her figure is slim, but the sweater really had to go because she looked like she was having a frigidity attack with every song she sings.

Individually, they sang well, but as a group they still had to put their act together – like they all just met in an FX taxi early that evening and decided to join the audition at El Pescador.

The third group turned out to be the best – especially since everyone in the group (including the guitarist and the drummer) could sing and sing well. Later, I found out that they already have a recorded song – composed by Brix Ferraris no less.

Then it dawned on me how much talent there is just waiting to be tapped in these music bars. But while these singers are waiting to be discovered for the mainstream, they spend late nights in these joints earning P1,000 or even P500 for the really new ones. (That’s not a lot considering the fact that they have to spend on clothes.)

Of course, given the proper breaks, they can hit the big-time and end up like Regine Velasquez. And I bet one of those I listened to in El Pescador recently has a chance to hitting it really big in time – even Ms. Sweater Girl if she’d learn to dress up more appropriately.

If that time comes, remember I knew them when.