The comeback kids

As long as there’s a Philippines, they will come.

Something about these exotic shores beckons them.

I’m talking about pop stars whose best days may be in the distant past, but whose love affair with Filipino audiences is always in the here and now.

The list is quite lengthy. We’ve seen America, Bread, the Bee Gees (minus a Gee or two), Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwicke, British Invasion chestnuts like Peter and Gordon, Chad and Jeremy, Herman’s Hermits, The (in-name-only) Beach Boys, The Zombies, The Searchers, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, one-hit wonders Spiral Staircase, ’80s haircuts Air Supply and Survivor, and even Greg Rollie (sans Santana) come this way in years past. In fact, every ‘50s and ‘60s duo, combo or solo act you can name has found some temporary Graceland in the Philippines, including current favorite Cliff Richard.

Then there are the songwriters – the Paul Ankas (Love Will Keep Us Together, Calendar Girl, Laughter in the Rain), the Paul Williams (You and Me Against the World, Evergreen, I Won’t Last A Day), the Dennis Lamberts (One Tin Soldier, Rhinestone Cowboy, Baby Come Back) – people whose hit catalogues may be a little dusty, but still manage to push people’s nostalgia buttons.

Why is the Philippines the pop comeback capital of the world?

People here love nostalgia acts, basically.

After all, who can resist importing your own human jukebox – a walking, talking, gyrating, singing personal iPod whose playlists are always set to the 1960s? It was a golden era for the Philippines, of course. And for music.

Maybe that personal connection is the real appeal of the Asian market for comebackers (though I’m not so sure people in, say, Singapore or Hong Kong are flocking to see the ’70s songwriter who gave the world Rainbow Connection and Rainy Days and Mondays).

We must credit it to the Boomers – that large demographic with long, looong memories who may be a bit long in the tooth, but no less devoted to their golden oldie soundtracks – for the eternal comeback of the spotless dentures. This age group invariably welcomes the tattered and torn survivors of the ‘60s and ‘70s to these shores, where they happily play big coliseums instead of public parks (where they would be second-billed to puppet shows, like Spinal Tap). Basically, those old acts can still put asses in seats.

It doesn’t matter if their false teeth get in the way of enunciating their million-selling lyrics; the fans understand. Usually taking the stage with a few dozen extra pounds, a lot less hair, and sporting those huge owlish eyeglasses that seniors favor, they’re ready to run through the greatest hits to any happy crowd.

The senior superstars have found an important lifeline in the Philippines. And such comebacks are like a Vegas slot machine: once you ring those cherries once, it’s hard to stop playing. Thus, if you welcome in one comebacking pop star, the rest are sure to follow.

Sure, newer pop phenomena do occasionally tread these shores. Il Divo, for one, just did a concert here. But how many hits did these Simon Cowell-created robots have? Did they write hits like Let Me Be the One to Hold You, or We’ve Only Just Begun, or Just An Old-Fashioned Love Song? Uh-uh.

It’s worth considering, though, whether all these oldie acts are preempting more "alternative" bands from gracing these lands – in effect, taking tour money away from MTV-generation acts who might want to play here. Well, it makes for a nice, bratty argument, but I’m not sure it stands up. How many "alternative" bands have you heard about that suddenly cancelled their Philippine tours because of "security" issues or whatnot? Oasis backed out, as did Slipknot. The Red Hot Chili Peppers mysteriously canceled. Fact is, these bands are wimps, or else they sniffed a lack of ticket-buying potential after their names were dangled before the multitudes here.

Hey, you won’t catch Bread or Peter and Gordon backing out of a Philippine concert tour. These guys are hungry. They’re like ‘Nam vets: they’ll fly in anywhere, whatever the mission, as long as there’s a payday at the end of it. Could be a coup coming down, or a major typhoon; that’s not gonna stop Barry Gibb from greeting his fans here.

Of course, it gets a little ugly when a band like, say, ‘50s crooners The Cascades touch down here. One unappreciative wag quickly dubbed them "The Caskets." My editor admitted to feeling a little "sad" upon seeing Peter and Gordon live onstage, like they might have been transported over straight from the ICU, with an ambulance standing by. And when Greg Rollie, ex-Santana keyboardist, did a show here, the newspaper ads went overboard hyping his musical role, even suggesting that his former boss Carlos Santana would have been peddling fish without the sideman’s stellar contributions.

And that, of course, is show business. The real lowdown on why these guys get a second, third or fourth chance here in the Philippines is pretty simple: pop music was quite brilliant back in the day, roughly from the 1940s up to the mid-1970s. It all started to crap out after that. Wonder why so many pop stars now cover (or sample) old songs from the past? It’s because they don’t write them like they used to.

And Filipinos are suckers for a good tune. When they clamor for the golden oldie brigade to fly into NAIA, they’re really just exhibiting good taste. These are songs that people sing along to, that get reprinted in Jingle magazine year after year, that local radio stations inexplicably play decades after they were hits, making you wonder what decade it is in the Philippines. Songs packed with hooks, lush with melody, ready to dial up at the push of a button. It may not be the music Generation X was raised on, but it’s still standing on its own two legs. Do you think we’ll be saying that about, say, Eminem’s music 25 years from now, when he’s hobbling his way onto a PAL flight to do a "golden oldie" gig at Araneta Coliseum? Doubt it.