Julie Ann San Jose, 6CycleMind in latest ‘Wish Date’ show

Wish Date’s concert cum-movie shows are getting more and more exciting musically. Its presentation, “Unexpected,” last Sunday night at SM Mall of Asia Arena had GMA 7’s top-star Julie Ann San Jose as major attraction supplemented with vibrant performances of the bands 6cyclemind, Cup of Joe, and solo spots of Arthur Miguel and Hakki. 

In past editions of the unique concert-cum-movie show, Kyla, Joey Albert, Gigi de Lana and the bands South Border, Moonstar88 have been featured.

Last Sunday, San Jose, in an all-white suite and pants, mesmerized the full-house audience, with four solo spots of mostly old Filipino pop songs and one foreign hit. She did a spellbinding rendition of Mike Carpio’s “Hiling,” Jimmy Bondoc’s  “Let Me Be the One,” Parokya ni Edgar’s “Your Song,” and Faith Hill’s “There You’ll Be.”

She was the finale solo singer whose spots came at the last segment of the concert that supplemented the movie “Unexpected” featuring TJ Marquez, Kate Yalung, Jameson Blake, and Riza  Faulkerson, the younger sister of Alden Richards in her first ever acting stint.

The film is about a woman who was orphaned young and grew up feeling strong on her own yet kept falling in love with deceitful men, including a meek, handsome lawyer, who would turn out to be a covert gay who heroically married her despite her being already pregnant with another man’s child. The lawyer eventually died. 

6cyclemind, an all-male band, was a big hit with their own songs, including “Sandalan,” which has the catchlines “Sige lang, iiyak mo lang sa langit, iiyak mo lang sa akin.”

Cup of Joe is a rising all-male band from Viva Music, whose two lead vocalists contrast their projected respective  personalities: One is tall and projects to be macho-rough and the shorter guy with an almost lean physique projects androginy though his moves are almost effeminate. His outfit that night was a leatherette black jacket on thigh-length black leatherette shorts and knee-high black boots. The lower part of his thick black hair was dyed blonde. 

One of the numbers Cup of Joe did was their hit song, “Ikaw Pa Rin ang Pipilliin Ko.” They were not convincingly melancholic in Loggins and Messina’s classic “Alone Again, Naturally.” They are too gay to be sad. They sang other songs blithely.

Arthur Miguel seems to have never identified himself as being an LGBTQ+ person but his outfits and stage movements are that of a flamboyant gay. Even his voice and enunciation tend to be gay. 

He looked and sounded totally different from the Arthur Miguel on YouTube and other digital platforms where his covers of Taylor Swift’s “Crazier” and Rey Valera’s “Walang Kapalit” have amassed million views over the years. But he did those covers sitting down and playing the guitar. 

At the spacious MOA Arena stage last Sunday, he did both songs standing up so he let loose what seems to be his bottled up flamboyance. 

Androgynous projections among male singers seem to be favored by the Gen Zs. Again, those males don’t proclaim themselves part of the LGBTQ+ community. 

GMA Music released on 30 April on the digital platforms the single “Wala Na” of JC Regino, the only son of the late hit  singer-songwriter April Boy Regino. 

The company gave the boyish Regino (he looks 19 at 29 years old) a Zoom media conference recently  instead of a face-to-face huddle with the journos and, for a while, we thought it had to be a virtual media event because the interviewee was in the US. But, no, the youthful Regino was just at home somewhere in Metro Manila. He seems to live with his mother, Madelyn Regino, and seems be single as he has never talked about having a partner or having children. 

Someone asked him about the biopic on his father and if he was going to play the character. He quickly answered that the would-be producers blatantly told him he looked more like his mom than his dad. Also the son has a wiry body while his dad had always been chubby.

The father moved the family to California in 2005 but returned to the Philippines in 2014 when he became sickly. But April Boy, according to Internet reports, became a US citizen in 2011. The father passed in 2020 November here in the Philippines. As early as in 2014, April Boy had told Korina Sanchez in an interview that his ailments redevelop and worsen because he couldn’t give up drinking so many bottles of beer every time he feels well. He actually contracted  diabetes eventually.

JC began releasing his solo songs also with Universal MCA in 202O but they were written by Vehnee Saturno. 

The young Regino (whose full first name is John Christian) started releasing duets with his father in 2010 at Viva Records  and with his uncles (Vingo and Jimmy, brothers of April Boy known in showbiz as “April Boys”) in 2020 with Universal MCA. 

JC began releasing his solo songs also with Universal MCA in 202O but they were written by Vehnee Saturno. 

But the son was aching and raring to record his personally composed songs and GMA Music gave him the chance to do so  in March 2023 with the ditty “Idolo.”

“Wala Na,” which comes out this April (somehow an evocation of his dad’s birth month, which was why he was nicknamed April Boy) is a follow up to “Idolo.” The youthful Regino jovially announced that the multitude can relate to “Wala Na” because it is about being heartbroken. He believes the Pinoys like heartbreak songs more than songs of triumph and joy. He also knows that Pinoys go crazy over romantic yarns.

He seems to have written enough heartbreak and romantic songs and he’s strongly hoping that after his second single “Wala Na”, the company will ask him already to do an album of his compositions. 

He really wants to become like his dad who is known mostly for the songs he has written himself. If he doesn’t develop his father’s fondness for beer, the son could do more albums than his father did. JC seems to not enjoy going out and drinking with the boys. His skin is pale white and seems devoid of sun. 

And maybe he should not get stuck with his own compositions to cut into an album. They don’t seem to appeal to  album producers. It will do him well to be at the behest of professional composers like Ryan Cayabyab, Cecille Azarcon, Vehnee Saturno, Louie Ocampo and Rey Valera.