Music scene flashback: Nuno in Manila, June 2005

I got to see Nuno by chance because of my heaven-sent fraternity brother who donated his slot and ticket to me. Big thanks to him! Nuno’s vistit was supposedly to hold a guitar clinic, courtesy of Washburn Guitars and Yupangco. Nuno Bettencourt was best known as Extreme’s lead guitarist. Yes, the easiest reference is “More than Words”. But the very first song I heard from him as a solo artist was “Crave” from his solo album Schizophonic, which I first watched its video from now defunct UnTV.

Promotional poster & ticket

No, it was not really a guitar clinic. It turned out to be what he preferred to do: a gig with his band then, Near Death Experience. In other words, it was like a private (and free!) concert for 300 people. It was a treat because he still played a lot of Extreme songs, as well as his songs as a solo artist. If you’ve seen the DVD “Guitar Wars”, the playlist of the clinic-turned-concert is basically the same with what Nuno played in the DVD including a personal favorite “Midnight Express”, plus “Flight of the Wounded Bumblebee” which I particularly remember so well, and several Population 1 songs. And he just had to give it up and play “More than Words” too. LOL

The highlights of my personal Nuno experience:

- I went to the clinic, alone. I met three friendly folks who asked me to join their crowd.

- I screamed “I love you!” to him, and he said it back. J Those where my teeny days.

- A fan jammed with him. That lucky fan did the solo for “Get the Funk Out”.

- He signed my bag, we had a photo-op, and then I kissed him! I immediately ran off and he said, “Hey, where are you going?!”

I was able to take lots of photos and videos of this clinic, but unfortunately they had disappeared along with the shutdown of Friendster Blogs.

I had blogged about this in my Friendster, Multiply, DeviantArt and MySpace in 2005 with ecstatic emotion. Meaning, they were full of all-caps phrases and exclamation point. And as I remember him today, he’s playing guitar for Rihanna’s live tours, as posted in his Facebook fan page updates.