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| Thoughts And Notions circa 2006 |
It was on May 7, 2006 when we had our album launching at SM Mall Cagayan de Oro courtesy of House of Praise's initiative to launch us in our home province. It was the first of a series of mall tours that was planned by House of Praise. It took us months to prepare for this event. And we were able to invite friends and visitors from our church. From as far as Iligan City and Ozamis City. From what I could remember. The band experienced some jitters, specially guitarist Tim Marquez, who was battling a bum stomach because of extreme nervousness. Of course, this wasn't the band's first live performance. Under their belt, they already experienced that disastrous debut in front of a sold out crowd. They also guested on a Live Event sponsored by Love Radio on an open concert as guests. But it was never at this magnitude where they have the whole show for themselves. Where they were the main feature. So the band played their original songs while also doing covers of Jars of Clay and Sixpence None the Richer (two of their major musical influences) songs to get the crowd going. Back then, Christian Contemporary Music has not exploded into the mainstream market yet. And although both of the aforementioned bands had a modicum of success in mainstream radio, some people still thought that the Jars of Clay song "I Need You" that we covered during the album launching with John Fernandez doing the vocal chores was an original composition of the band. 
We are very much thankful to Praise Music for changing our lives. And for making us a part of their instrument and having us join their cause in sharing God's good news thru music. I've personally known their founder and CEO Mr. Johnny Sy. And the guy is really dedicated and passionate in the mission to share God's good news thru music. God Bless his heart. I'm looking forward to work for him once more once I'm able to figure out the next step in the band's digital journey. House of Praise had a very good run as the number one retailer and distributor of Christian Music in the Philippines. Sadly, business closed down as they were not spared from the Pandemic that we are facing right now. Still, they have managed to shift to digital distribution and we can still support them by listening to the songs that they distributed on Digital Streaming sites like Spotify. It's ironic really. If in the 2000s, Free music is supposed to be killing the music industry, now Free music is what is running the industry. To support your favorite artists (and us too if you could lend us your listening ears), all you have to do is login to Spotify and listen to the songs for FREE! But, there's also a premium account that will give you all access to million of songs and unlimited downloads for your listening pleasure anytime anywhere. A FREE Spotify account allows you to listen to songs randomly. A premium account (at a minimum fee) allows you to not only listen to the songs but download the songs too. Check out the entire details here. And if you don't have Spotify, there are a lot of other options too. So if 2006 would require you to buy our album to fully experience and listen to our songs, then this year it is easily available for FREE! All you have to do is click on the link below and you are set to choose which Digital Music Streaming platform to access our music and listen to it........ FOR FREE! Really! No kidding. It's FREE!
Praise Music (our debut album's national distributor) took care of the preparations and mall booking as they have a store in this SM Mall branch in Cagayan de Oro. I guess it was part of their privilege as Mall tenants to have a free use of the Mall space that served as our stage for the album launching. Preparations for this event started on November 2005 as me and Al Torres, the A&R head for Praise Music at that time, were in constant communication in preparation of our Debut Album's production and release. It was Al who gave us the break for our album to be distributed nationwide under Praise Music, the distribution arm of House of Praise. It was the song "My Love Song" that caught his ears. Specifically the catchy opening guitar riffs of the song. It was also Al who advised us to build a band so that we could promote the album properly and do a series of Mall shows not only in Cagayan de Oro but in other cities as well. Though the latter never came to fruition for budgetary reasons I guess. I think I could understood the circumstances because the mid 2000s was the peak of the rampant piracy. Music downloads off the internet as well as those cheaply replicated CDs being sold in flea markets were rampant during that time. Hence, record companies hesitated to "invest" in marketing and promotions for an upcoming artist as they deem it too risky to spend and lose money in the end. But looking back, I find it a missed opportunity. As we could have done more to help promote not only our songs, but other artists' songs on Praise Music's catalogue as well. Later on as we continued our live gigs, we went the independent route and was promoting the album online and thru local live gigs and I've managed to create a decent following. In fact, when you do a google search of "OPM Christian Contemporary Band from the Philippines", Thoughts And Notions always appears among the top of the search results. And that's something that I'm trying to take back now as the 12 year hiatus seemed to cause us to lose the digital footprint we were able to build back in the day.
Anyway, back to the album launching. The band back then were in the age range of 16 to 18 year olds pursuing their passion in music. Pretty young to be given this platform to sing and honor God through our songs. Thrina Dimaano (the band vocalist) was I think turning 16 during that time. And she was challenged to command the stage and own the performance as the band played the music. Good thing that she was largely helped by John Fernandez (guitars/vocals) who alternated the vocal duties with Thrina. John brought a certain "Jars of Clay" dynamic to the band's live performance as I was encouraging him to cover Jars of Clay songs every time the band had a live gig. Alvin Carreon (bassist) was steady doing his bass lines while Nelson Dychauco Jr. (drums) had a good command of the drum beats. He was the keyboardist in our Church's Music Ministry. So doing the drumming for the band kind of felt a little bit alien to him at first. Though for every performance, there was a markedly huge improvement. And the album launch would prove that he now had better controls of the drum beats. The band played eight songs. Two original songs by Jars of Clay (I Need You) and Sixpence None the Richer (Kiss Me). An original composition of John (Feeling I Found in You). And five songs from the debut album, namely Brand New Day, Defender, Savior, Earthbound Angel, and My Love Song. I think this is the only time we played Defender live. The other songs were a regular staple in our succeeding live gigs. Defender is what I would like to say as a Coldplay inspired song. I say that because of the keyboard backbone of the song that I specifically requested for Wilbert to do when we arranged the song. I'm a huge fan of Coldplay, and I remember I requested Wilbert to try to come up with a "Coldplayish" song. Defender is the result of that.
Brand New Day is what I would call our Pop Rock influenced song in the veins of my other all-time favorite Filipino band Rivermaya. This song breached the Top 20 countdown in 89.3 Killer Bee Cagayan de Oro's Top 20 Local Vocal song countdown. Killer Bee was one of the most popular radio stations back then. They are currently reformatted and renamed to Magic 89.3 Cagayan de Oro. Savior was a favorite alternative rock sounding Praise and Worship song that was played by various churches in Cagayan de Oro back then. It was also the first song that we ever wrote and recorded for the debut album. And we were able to previously perform this song with the FCCY CDO Music Ministry prior to the formation of the band during a Praise and Worship event in our Church. Earthbound Angel was a moving ballad that enjoyed mainstream success among college kids back then. It really appealed to the listeners who were yearning for a sincere Love Song. I wrote the lyrics of the song that details what a Christian Love is. Or how God's love is. The finale was My Love Song simply because we owe it to the song for serving as the bridge to jump start our career as musicians. The debut album consisted of ten songs. So basically in our Album Launching, we played half of what was in the album. We left out the other songs because we planned to play them in other venues. We felt those were the five best songs in the album. Though personally, the remaining five aren't that far off. It was an eclectic mix of our influences. From Pop, Rock, Acoustic, Ballad, and anything in between. We just decided to make music that we would enjoy listening to and hope others would too to match our Christian themed lyrics.
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| John Fernandez on Vocals/Guitars |
Now going back to John's song, Feeling I found in you. He was already playing the song with the band (minus Thrina) when they were still called Sadhana. This was before they were recruited to join Thoughts And Notions. We had a rough recording of this song. But we were never able to truly finish a proper recording of the song. Maybe one of these days it would be recorded. But I guess that will be up to John. The song had a following when John was playing it. It's a song with Pop sensibilities that appeals to the college crowd. John is currently back in the fold and doing a re-recording of the debut album in whatever form he likes. I gave him the freedom to experiment on the songs from the debut album. We have one song, a rearranged version of Brand New Day all set for release this January 2022. Even though the band were never a part of the debut album's original recordings (except for Thrina, and it was my songwriting partner Wilbert Tan who did the instruments and song arrangements as detailed here), I'm hoping that this iteration of the band could do a recording and join John in the re-recording of the debut album. I truly appreciate their time with the band and would really want to make them own the debut album even if they were not part of the original recordings. They hold a very important place in Thoughts And Notions' history. And what way to immortalize their talent by putting it into a recording and cementing their place in the band's recorded history. Well that's my fervent hope at least.
Let me take this opportunity also to thank those who supported us from the beginning. To the FCCYers from CDO, Iligan, and Butuan who traveled all the way from their cities to join us during this album launching. Good thing I was able to retrieve these old photos in my old e-mails. I barely remember the huge crowd we gathered on that day. SM Mall Cagayan de Oro's event center was packed as seen in the picture. With mall shoppers stopping to check out the band's performance. We were able to sell out the CDs in House of Praise's store that day. The next mall tour will take us to Lim Ket Kai Mall, CDO's first local Mall. And that will be for my next entry.
Oh for other contents, we recently just had our YouTube page updated as an Official Artist Channel. So we are planning to put additional exclusive contents there in the days to come. You can check out our past live performances, photo collage music videos, exclusive interviews, cover songs, and other things that we were able to preserve in our 2006-2009 Musical Journey. Our digital journey has just began. We got more songs on the pipeline. 30 more songs we hope to release next year. We're hoping you'll stay and join us for the ride. Just like the years that went by when you were one of those who inspired us to soldier on and just sing our songs as we aim to share God's Amazing Love thru music. So click on the link below and subscribe to our Official Artist Channel. Thank You and more stories to come! Promise!
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