Sunday Life
Being an APO Kid

By Ala Paredes
Sunday, September 28, 2008

HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes

I was going to pass up writing an article for this Sunday. I am still exhausted, physically and mentally, from the APO concert at the Big Dome last Sunday and the opening of my photo exhibit in Megamall last Tuesday. But then I read my daughter’s blog which I felt would make a good last article to cap the topics that I’ve been writing about the last three weeks, all dealing with my life as/with/an APO. Instead of leaving my readers without anything to read, I thought I’d share this wonderful piece written by my daughter Ala who lives in Sydney.

Last weekend, the APO Hiking Society celebrated their 39th anniversary at the Big Dome. I, on the hand, spent Saturday night doing dishes and homework in Sydney, though my heart would have given anything just to be there. I’m pretty sure that the Sydney contingent of the APO offspring were the only ones who weren’t there watching our fathers celebrate 39 years of their life’s work.

Not being there for such a grand culmination of their careers made me reminisce about what it was like growing up as an “APO Kid.” That is what they called us every time we guested on their TV shows Sa Linggo N’APO Sila, Sang Linggo N’APO Sila and, in the case of the Jim Paredes branch of the APO Kids, Tatak Pilipino.

We APO Kids grew up under the misconception that we were related by blood, as first cousins. I only realized we weren’t when I had to do a “family tree” assignment in third grade. I asked my mom where I should write the names of Danny and Boboy’s children and she told me that we weren’t actually related, though we might as well have been. Not only are the APO the ninongs (godfathers) of each other’s children but the APO, the APO wives, and the APO kids used to spend every summer and semester break on holidays together. My childhood summers are marked by memories of Davao, Hidden Valley and other places we all used to visit.

Another reason I thought the APO kids were related was that we shared certain obligations that came with being the offspring of one third of the APO. One obligation was having to come out on TV every Christmas, and every time it was our father’s birthday. Whether it was a live appearance or prerecorded, I remember all too well being squeezed by my mother into my Sunday best and being whisked away to ABS-CBN to stay hidden in a dressing room for hours and hours only to appear on camera for five minutes to greet my dad with a Happy Birthday. Even though we did it every single year, he would still act genuinely surprised and, on some years, even shed a tear or two. One year, me and my sister sang Too Shy To Say with him on one of those song numbers that are supposed to make people cry. Another year, my sister and I were made to co-write a song for my dad, which Ely Buendia of the Eraserheads contributed a melody to and sang onstage (I am pretty sure my memory is accurate and I did not just make that up. Feel free to verify, Mister Buendia).

Then there was that one year when we APO Kids had to sing Give Love on Christmas Day for the big ABS-CBN Christmas Special. The networks certainly capitalized on us on special occasions.

Along with the obligations came the perks. Perk number one was free entry to concerts and automatic backstage passes. Thanks to being an APO Kid, I was able to meet and have my backpack signed by the Eraserheads, and I also met the Backstreet Boys and Alanis Morissette when they guested on their noontime show.

Perk number two was special treatment in certain places such as salons and beauty parlors. The one we used to go along Katipunan would immediately play their APO CD as soon as we walked through the door, as a cheeky way of making sip-sip.

And yet, amid all this, I was not truly aware that my dad was a celebrity until late in high school, not even if I had seen him on stage being applauded by adoring fans countless times. Not even when all my classmates would sing “What’s this, kabayong buntis” every lunch time. Not even when my teachers would ask me for my dad’s autograph. I was such an oblivious young girl, more concerned with doodling and Disney cartoons. I didn’t really know when a new APO single would be out on the airwaves until other people asked me about it.

It never occurred to me that having a dad who was on TV was unusual because it had always been that way for as long as I could remember. I would watch him dress up in the mornings and leave. An hour later, he would be on TV. I was only two years old when I first saw them on TV in a San Miguel commercial chasing a girl in a white dress. I even remember the jingle: “She-boom, she-boom, lalalalala…” But growing up, I was always in school during his noontime show, so I only got to watch on Sundays.

Ironically, what seemed strange and alien to me were my classmates’ fathers, who would all come home from the office in button-down shirts and clutching briefcases. “Normal” to me was a father coming home in a sequined costume, clutching a briefcase full of stage makeup; one who made us listen to Paul Simon and Frank Zappa, and taught us poetry.

We had a recording studio, but it never occurred to me that it was my dad’s means of making a living. To me, it was a playground where I could bang on the drums and play with the synthesizer during long, summer afternoons. When Joey Ayala would record there, I would play with his gongs and ethnic instruments.

I didn’t consciously know any APO hits till I hit college, because to me they were like ever-present background music throughout my growing-up years, something whose existence I knew about but never thought about, like the atmosphere. Sure, I could sing American Junk at the drop of a hat. But I was surprised when I entered college and found that a whole lot of people knew the music of the APO.

I suppose I only truly ever felt like I was “Jim Paredes’ daughter” when I started appearing on TV myself. The comparison was inevitable, and so was harsh criticism, but I’m not the only TV personality to have ever dealt with nastiness. I suppose to many I was just another daughter of a celebrity who probably got into showbiz purely through her last name. But I maintain that I wouldn’t have lasted that long if I didn’t at least have any hosting ability whatsoever.

And, on the contrary, entering the TV biz was something I felt I did independently. It was by no means my father’s idea, and not once did any agent or client contact me through him. He never meddled with my dealings. I wasn’t trying to be “Jim Paredes’ daughter.” I just felt like TV was something I’d know how to do if given the chance. After all, I was always emceeing school concerts and programs, and I even had a high school teacher who once told me, “Bagay sa iyo maging veejay.” (You should be a veejay.)

But as I have found through the years, being the daughter of a famous person means living behind a very long shadow. Sometimes, people don’t see you as anything but an “APO Kid.” Every question people ask you is a dad-related question. Never mind if you just won the Nobel Prize or ended world hunger, they won’t care because your dad didn’t do it.

And of course, there is always comparison if you get into anything that is any way remotely connected to what your father is brilliant at. I think there is a reason why no APO offspring has really broken into the music scene, although there are talented singers and musicians among us. We’re too terrified. People will judge us for not living up to our fathers, or for living up to them too much. It’s a hard battle to win.

And now that I am older and have struggled with finding my own identity, I realize that I will always be my father’s daughter, no matter what. Despite the pains some of us APO Kids might have experienced in coming into our own, I suppose we are all the same in sharing a genuine admiration for these artists who just happen to be our fathers. The APO are not only singers, they are performers. They are not only a singing group, they are the best of friends. I can watch an APO concert and be just as entertained as other non-APO-kid audience members, and I do love their music. Like so many Filipinos, their songs have touched my heart. I am very much an APO fan.

I am resigned to the fact that if I choose to do anything that my dad has done before, be it music, showbiz or writing, my version will always be compared to his (and will most likely come out the “paler” version, because that’s what people always say). But that shouldn’t stop me from doing the things I love just because my father’s done it before. And so, I may be my own person, but I am honored to be my father’s daughter, too.
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“SKIN: A Photo Exhibit by Jim Paredes in Black and White and Red” opened last Sept. 24 and will run till Oct. 2 at Renaissance Gallery, fourth floor, Megamall Building A. Do visit and sign my guestbook.

Sunday Life
Our life’s work
HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes
Sunday, September 21, 2008

It’s been a grueling month and an especially backbreaking two weeks leading to Sept. 20. Danny and Boboy and I worked very hard to put on the best show we possibly could for our 39th year anniversary at the Big Dome.

It is the Wednesday before September 20 as I write this so I cannot say with certainty how the show actually went since it has not yet transpired. I only hope it went well. But what I can tell you is that it was our best. It has to be. Because every show we do is the best we’ve ever done, as far as we are concerned. Anything that we could have done better is hindsight. As in everything we do in life, each time we do a show, we can only conclude that we really couldn’t have done it better.

The whole past month got me not just thinking but, more importantly, realizing that APO can actually lay claim to a life’s work. I remember one of my sisters telling me about a guy she dated who asked her what her life’s work was. At that time, she did not know what to answer since she didn’t feel she had achieved anything or had done anything significant for any length of time.

I know it can sound a bit pretentious to talk about our life’s work until you consider that we have actually been doing APO — including writing, singing and performing — for a very long time. All the songs we have written and sung and performed, all the places and venues we have visited, and all the patrons who have seen us or bought our albums, or liked what we do are witnesses to our accomplishment.

A distinguished, seasoned and accomplished architect can show off the buildings and houses he has designed as physical evidence of his life’s work. In our case, what we can show as performers for all these 39 years is far less tangible. No matter how good a show we mount, people eventually forget how great it was until we do it again. Our so-called “body of work” is hard to define since performance is fleeting. Whatever is real about what we do, though magical, disappears into thin air at the end of the show. In the end, we, through our representations — such as the songs we have made — live in the hearts and memories of our public where we share space with other songs written by other people.

A life’s work is what you have done to define yourself. It is the entire effort you have put in through the years, on a day-to-day basis. It is the lifelong effort of chipping off chunks and slivers out of a solid undefined block of potential, and carving an image and persona that you long ago decided was how you wanted to be represented in the world.

That is only one part of it. The other part is, with the same image and persona you have created, you can act on the world and fashion it accordingly. People are potential students in the eyes of a teacher. To a businessman, they are potential consumers. To a performer, people are his audience.

German Moreno starts his radio program with the classic line from an old Hollywood song that goes, “Everything that happens in life, happens in a show.” To a performer who does nothing but perform, the show is his life, and life is everything. The show therefore is everything.

Danny, Boboy and I subscribe to this, and will continue to do so. Even amid personal tragedies like the death of loved ones, relationship breakups, or whatever else life has dished out to us, we have showed up for our scheduled gigs. The show has gone on. And even in those times when we were not really up to it, we pretended that we were, until we brought back the true joy of performing.

The show is life. You default on one, you miss out on the other.

There is an intimacy we experience when we dedicate ourselves to something we love. Like a woman to a man who desires her, a career or a calling is something you show up for, fall in love with, and yes, even marry. A cousin of mine, cynically humorous as he was, warned us about this. He said that you should never fall in love with your job because you end up marrying it, and then you screw it!

But I believe that with a real life’s work, it is a perfect match where you and your career do the day-to-day work of putting it all together. Contrary to how my cousin put it, you make love to it at every opportunity, not just to tame it, get familiar with it and enjoy it, but to be conquered and enjoyed by it as well. And the more you do this, the better it gets.

But just like in any relationship, there is also the downside when, at times, you feel alienated in the world you have chosen, and without that spark to keep going at it. The road is long; it’s quite a distance through the desert and there aren’t any sure signs of an oasis on the horizon. But if you plod on, sure enough, little patches of green will begin to appear.

With APO, sometimes it is work. Rejections happen. But the journey isn’t over until you give up. Sometimes, it feels like all we do is bump our heads on a wall hoping that the wall breaks first.

Thirty-nine years is a long time to look back on. But it’s been a good span for me and my friends. We have put in a lot of effort, shed tears, and done physically exhausting work. In turn, it has helped us provide pretty well for our families, and supported our other dreams as well. More importantly, it has given us a sense of place in this thing called life.

How much longer will APO last? None of us really knows. Sometimes it seems like we are running on empty with only hubris keeping us going. At other times, we feel like a brand-new solar car that can keep on going forever.

Whichever of these we are, at this point, it doesn’t really matter. What is important is that we made a choice, showed up and did what it took all through these years, and continue to do so. It was a choice well made and a decision well-kept.
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One of my passions is photography.

I am having an exhibit and it will be open to the public starting this Wednesday. Do drop by.

“Skin: A Photo Exhibit by Jim Paredes in Black and White and Red” runs from Sept. 24 to Oct. 2 at Renaissance Gallery, fourth floor, Megamall Building A.

Sunday Life

Philippine Star
HUMMING IN MY UNIVERSE By Jim Paredes
Sunday, September 7, 2008

Please bear with this shameless plug. On September 20, the APO Hiking Society will be onstage at the Araneta Coliseum to celebrate 39 years of friendship and music and we intend to perform our hearts out. Through all these years, Danny, Boboy and I have done a lot together, but performing as headliners at the Big Dome has not been one of them. Each time we inquired on its availability in the past, it was always booked. But this year, it will be ours to enjoy and celebrate in.

The three of us, I humbly say, have done some remarkable things together. We have released 26 albums, done many TV shows, a few movies, performed all over the Philippines and many parts of the world. Our friendship is also rock solid and is something we relish as much as we do performing.

Today, I would like to enumerate 39 facts and stories you may find interesting about Danny, Boboy and me, and share a few insights I have learned from these two friends. These are culled from our experiences as friends, partners (in crime and in good things), co-workers, and as an entity known as the APO Hiking Society. If it seems like I am bragging at times, I am. You see, it took us all these years to learn them.

1. Boboy was born in Dipolog, Danny in Leyte and I in Manila, representing the three main Islands of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

2. Striking a friendship is easy but keeping it is something one must work on. With us, it happened quite naturally and effortlessly, but we found out later that we had to learn patience and understanding to get over the differences that would crop up time and again.

3. Even while work may be needed to sustain them, friendships are still far easier to maintain than marriages or love affairs. APO’s friendship is quite a low-maintenance one. We may not be together for sometime but have no problem picking up where we left off.

4. It is not only possible but necessary to develop a collective ego to succeed as a group. In APO, it is the only type of ego allowed. All other types must be suppressed if we are to retain our solid synergistic entity.

5. Truly great performances are the result of synergy. Synergy is when the whole is much more than the sum of its parts. It is when 1+1+1 can equal not just three but anywhere from six to 1,000 to infinity!

Synergy is like an accident. It just happens, seemingly without planning. The “accident” of synergy happens more often when as a group you are always practicing, rehearsing and are attuned and in tune with each other. Through the years, APO has become quite “accident-prone” to synergy so that we have learned to almost expect it.

6. A lot of people see APO as a “political” group. The truth is, we have only done about five songs that have any political content among hundreds that are primarily love songs. We see ourselves as musical artists who do speak out on political matters occasionally.

7. Between TV, movies and concerts, we like doing concerts the most. Why? Because we have 100-percent control over how we want to entertain an audience. We write our own stuff. It doesn’t work out quite as well when other people write for us. We end up rewriting it to make it our own. When you work on TV, most everything you do is dictated by scriptwriters. Even the songs are chosen for you. It’s not as creatively challenging as when you are totally answerable for everything.

8. In our entire recording career, Danny and I have only collaborated as songwriters on two songs. With Blue Jeans, he wrote the opening slow part, while I did the fast part. We did not consult one another at all. We listened to what we individually had written the night before in the studio and just connected the two melodies together. The other song is Over and Done, a song written in 1971. Danny had just broken off with my sister, and I with my girlfriend. We wrote this over a bottle of beer. One bottle was enough.

9. Even though we have been doing APO for 39 years, the three of us look forward to every performance and still get excited. There is a Zen saying that “there is no such thing as repetition.” This is one of our mantras. An APO show, even if we do the same songs or even the same spiels, is a different experience for us each time. We are totally present with each other and with our audience, which means we are not just going through the motions but coming from a present awareness. That’s why it always feels new to us.

10. We truly appreciate each other’s gifts and contributions and rely on each other.

11. The strategy we discovered early on, that of “surprise and delight,” which we use when drawing up a repertoire or planning a show, has been a great one for us.

12. We do what we do to please a paying audience. But that is only secondary to the fact that APO continues to exist because we’re having fun being ourselves.

13. The three of us have not quarreled, and will not ever quarrel, about money.

14. Coming from the ‘70s, we never imagined that a solid career could be built on being original and writing and singing OPM.

15. What we may have perceived as weaknesses in each other earlier in our career have by now become acceptable traits and in a sense, even comfortably familiar. We have used a lot of them to advantage, such as Boboy’s perceived lack of height, Danny’s promdi past, my “great dancing prowess,” to name a few that have gotten us a few laughs. I would not exchange my friends for anyone else in the business who may be more talented, good-looking, perfect, etc. We have formed a working relationship that not only suits us but, in some ways, our audience as well.

16. At a certain point in our career, we discovered and fine-tuned our instinct to deliver high-impact shows even on a so-called “bad” night.

17. There are talented people in the business who choose to not go beyond their comfort zone and there are the less talented who work really hard and actually fly higher than even the outrageously talented. We in APO choose to be in this category of the hard-working “less talented.” The best performers are not necessarily the most gifted. They are there because they are gutsy enough to show up and share what little they’ve got. And that is a big deal. Sometimes. It is 90 percent of the success formula.

18. Celebrity is power and must be used to great effect for worthy goals. We discovered this early and have lent our names to some worthy causes.

19. When the tribute albums “Kami Na Po Muna” by the young bands came out, we were happy that the young kids had discovered our songs. It was an even bigger thrill since, as it turned out, the band versions also coaxed the kids to seek out the original APO versions as well. Our audience complexion is changing again. These days, we have young kids watching our concerts with their parents.

20. Danny and Boboy really love golf — enough to wake up early almost every day even after a long show the night before to sink a few holes.

21.  Danny is a man of many talents, one of which includes Bonsai cultivation.

22. Boboy is an excellent athlete of sports such as golf and tennis and has won many tournaments.

23. I wear red underwear every time we are on stage. It’s a good luck charm for me.

24. The three of us spent about seven hours in a Honolulu detention center in the ‘80s because we supposedly had the “wrong” visa. It’s a long story, but we were cleared and have not had the same problem since.

25. Right after EDSA , when Danny was asked what his occupation was by a Hong Kong immigration officer, he answered that he was a “hero” and opened the PAL in-flight magazine to show his picture among a collection of photos entitled “Heroes of the Revolution.” The immigration officer broke into a big smile.

25. Among the three of us, we have had four marriages. Boboy and I have one each!

26. Among the three of us, we have nine children. Boboy has two, I have three.

27. Among the three of us, there have been two annulled marriages. And it’s neither Boboy’s nor mine.

28. The very first time we performed at the Araneta Coliseum was traumatic for us. We were the front act for the Commodores, and we went through two nights of booing from the audience who had no patience with us because they so wanted the main stars to perform already. Those were moments when we seriously assessed our decision to be in showbiz!

29. Boboy loves Sudoku.

30. Because of his height, Boboy used to be a model for trophies! (No, that’s not true!)

31. A few months ago, we sang (at the request of an estranged husband) for a woman in her office. It was a wanton act of love commissioned by the husband on Valentine’s Day. With a boombox in hand, we approached her cubicle, gave her flowers and broke into Panalangin. The whole office went crazy! It was the husband’s way of breaking the ice after being estranged from her and before asking her out for just a wee moment at the Starbucks in the building next door.

They have been seeing each other more frequently over dinners now, so we heard.

32. I am the only grandfather among the APO so far.

33. The best songs of APO were written in no time at all. I have seen Danny write songs in minutes, and I have done the same. When we put on our thinking caps, it does not happen as serendipitously. Creativity is an intuitive act and works best without intellectualizing. I have come to the conclusion that we do our best in most endeavors when we are awake to the moment and simply tap into the universe’s gifts and perform effortlessly.

34. When we perform even for a largely foreign crowd, we represent ourselves best when we sing our own Filipino songs. It’s scary but it works. During one World Expo in the ‘80s before a crowd of 20,000 foreigners in Brisbane, Australia, we did hour-long concerts for three straight nights singing our Tagalog songs to a crowd that simply loved it. We must have sounded exotic to them. I believe we are best appreciated when we show the world who we are, not how well we can fit in by imitating them.

35. We performed in Saudi Arabia in 1987 before a segregated crowd. Boboy was singing to the side of the aisle where the women were, I sang to the men, and Danny sang to the fence that separated the sexes!

36. Our first concert tour was in 1975. We were fresh out of college and we visited 57 cities in three months. We were a filler act to big names then like Eddie Mercado, Susan Salcedo, Merci Molina, Toto, etc. Since we were the most junior in stature and the most able-bodied, we were tasked with setting up the sound equipment before a show and putting it all back in the van after. We also drove the vehicles on many legs of the tour. For all this, we were paid the huge sum of US$2,000 each (at seven pesos to a dollar then). The tour made us fall hopelessly in love with performing and was a great learning experience for three young men.

37. Yes, we do quarrel over some things, but have not done so in years. We used to quarrel about tardiness, perceived shabbiness in performances, repertoire, etc. We’ve learned to accept each other and have discovered that each of us has become sensitive to each other’s personalities and quirks.

38. We are a highly democratic group, sometimes to a fault. We allow each one to grow in the direction that he wishes. I live in Sydney. Danny has his businesses. Boboy does acting. We believe that as each of us grows, we have more to contribute to APO in terms of the knowledge and wealth of experience we can share.

39. On September 20 at the Araneta Coliseum, you will see the culmination of our life’s work of 39 years and the extraordinary friendship among three diverse people. We have had an amazing journey professionally and personally, and we are proud to share it with you.

See you at the Big Dome on September 20.

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You can get your tickets at Ticket.net at all SM stores (phone no. 911-5555), You can also call 426-5301 or 426-0103 for more details or visit http://apohikingsociety.org.