LIVE AND LOUD | STONEFREE - TADHANA (UDD COVER) AND MY LIFE AS A 2000S TV COPYWRITER

The first thing I remember when I think about the band Stonefree is “Listen,” which also served as the soundtrack of the ABC-5 show Single back in the mid-2000s. The show was produced by Ideal Minds, the same production company behind The Misadventures of Maverick and Ariel and JM Rodriguez’s On-Air.

Before I worked at ABC, I used to spam the channel every Wednesday because their block had Friends, followed by On-Air, and then either Single and/or Maverick and Ariel.

This was a time when mainstream channels were littered with primetime soaps, weekday comedies were slowly disappearing, and for kids, shows like these Ideal Minds programs, Jojo A: All The Way, Men’s Room, and Strangebrew were the bomb. If I didn’t become a copywriter, it would have been neat to end up as a segment producer for one of these shows.

Single was the breakthrough platform of Viva Hot Babe Asia Agcaoili. This was when people first saw her as an eloquent emcee from UP, not yet the no-nonsense vixen she would become a few years later. I may be wrong, but I think Single lasted two seasons. Normally, reality dating shows, especially those featuring four women with no acting background, are cheesy. However, the song and the way the show was produced made it feel kind of high-end. That said, a show about four girls with no prior acting experience, and I think there was even a season with a male lead, going to bars and meeting people was always bound to have its limits.

Anyway, aside from “Listen,” the band also had hits like “Ikot” and “Anghel.” While “Ikot” is my personal favorite, I can safely say that “Listen” was the song that propelled the band to stardom. When I first heard it, it felt like it belonged in the same realm as Nexus’ “I Keep on Saying” and Kulay’s “Burn,” because the shock of realizing it was made by a Pinoy band was real. I honestly thought back then that it came from some American Christian rock band, or that their vocalist sounded like the guy from Battery.

While writing this, I even wondered if they had collaborated with Barbie Almalbis. Turns out “High” was sung by The Speaks, which confused me because that Filipino American rock band pretty much shared the same vibe as Stonefree.

As a young copywriter in the 2000s, TV stations could legally use produced music through samplers. These were usually six-to-ten-track CDs that allowed a channel to use songs legally for six months after release. Back then, copyright rules were also pretty lax, and I remember using local songs for more than a year unless the production outfit explicitly asked us to stop. It was also a time when you could use songs that were sung in a show simply because they were featured in an episode.

I remember using Marty Casey’s version of Britney Spears’ “Hit Me, Baby, One More Time” for my Rockstar: INXS TV and radio plug because I loved the cover. That reality show, which also featured Dave Navarro and, of course, INXS, remains one of my all-time favorites because it combined rock songs with actual rock star attitudes, something American Idol struggled to capture back then.

Anyway, I haven’t heard much about Stonefree in a while, so I’m really happy to see them back and doing things on YouTube. They had a song called “Tadhana,” but it wasn’t as popular as the Up Dharma Down song of the same name, which was also used as the soundtrack of the show Ilumina, starring Rhian Ramos and Jackie Rice. Stonefree recently covered this UDD hit, and it’s awesome. It also feels like they put their own spin on it by using the full version instead of the edit most of us are familiar with. I still prefer the radio edit over the full version, but this approach fits the Stonefree brand more.