Wolfgang Disbanded! (I’m always the last one to hear about this shit…)
Wolfgang
The other day, while I was surfing for some random shit, I discovered that my favorite Filipino band, Wolfgang, had disbanded November last year … last year! And I’ve been waiting for their latest album because of how much I loved their last one, Black Mantra. I hinted at it earlier this year in the Wolfgang Yahoogroups I frequent (well, frequented until November, apparently), when someone asked if the band will have a reunion concert. A reunion concert! I was like “Errr, what the fuck is going on here!”
After a quick search at Google for keywords “wolfgang” “band” and “disbanded”, I got the links that confirmed it … Wolf Gemora (the drummer) has a new band called Lokomotiv here in Southern Cal (may have to check them out soon), Basti Artadi (the vocalist) has his own band, Kitaan, in San Francisco. Manuel Legarda (the guitarist) has formed his own band named Dirt in Manila, while Mon Legaspi (the bassist) has taken over the bass duties for an old favorite band of mine, The Dawn, back in the Philippines.
It’s almost embarrassing – finding out a significant event in your favorite band’s career exactly a year after it happened. Guess I’m not such a diehard fan at all, hehe … anyway, it’s a pity – they were a really great band and one of the few local bands I really loved to listen to …
I currently have seven albums of theirs (I’m still lacking the one before Black Mantra, entitled Serve in Silence, which is now very hard to find in the Philippines). The first album set the tone of what would be the “hardest” hard rock group in the Philippines, and the next albums only cemented their reputation. Unlike most Pinoy rock bands which exuded a certain “cheapness” and went for “radio friendly” songs, Wolfgang showed that they wrote songs for themselves, and the love for the craft shows. I’ve only been to one Wolfgang concert – and that was more than eight years ago, when they only had two albums out … and what a concert it was (I still have a scar to show for it, hehe).
Anyway, it was great knowing the band. As one of their songs go, “but if there’s something you can count on in life, the only thing that’s permanent is change” … this journal entry isn’t exactly a swan song for Wolfgang, but it’s near enough … maybe the bands they have now will kick as much ass…