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Artist
Whatever the founder and chief-instigator, Ray "Binky" Lampano, Jnr., of Asia’s mighty blues band Lampano Alley played before the Blues was a matter of convenience not conviction – not that he didn’t already suffer for the music. More than a band, Lampano Alley is a long drawn-out process. An epiphany alone cannot explain it; rather, something more akin to pulling teeth. Lampano grew up on a staple of gospel, rock, folk, jazz standards, and Manila AM-radio programs, whose narratives became grist for the mill of his imagination. Long before Lampano became a cult-figure in the Manila alternative music scene in the ‘80s, he was always fascinated by stories behind music from the time the Blues was but a distant chug. In the '70s, the Blues in the Philippines funnelled through the hyper-decibels of Pinoy Rock where it was, by and large, a mere frame of reference than a way of life. The movement itself became almost as distant a memory in the 80s even as the Blues became a sideshow for pointless jams. In the late-'80s, Lampano was already restless and already hearing-impaired after a few years in the trenches of alternative music. A lukewarm solo album in the 90s signaled 180-degree turn to the Blues. Chance collaborations with like-minded musicians – like the amazingly funky pianist-keyboardist Butch Saulog – divined strains of a dream band, if yet still largely amorphous. Around this time, Lampano began to amass a collection of blues and jazz oddities, and soak in their sounds