Circuit Fest Music & Skate 2013 in the Philippines

These past few years, music festivals have grown in popularity here in the Philippines. America has Coachella, we have Bazooka Rocks, Wanderland, and of course Circuit Fest.

When I found out what the line up for Circuit Fest was, I freaked out and I called my mom, desperately trying to ask for tickets for the festival. Not only was I a fan of almost all of the bands, Mark Salling was going to host it!!

This was my first music festival and I was lucky enough to go with some of my best friends.

My Concert Buddies!

The first band, A+ Dropouts started the festival at around 3PM, followed by Megan Nicole.

The next band was This Century and we were super excited! They played Slow Dance Night, Sound of Fire, Hopeful Romantic, Skeletons and some of their other songs.

Okay. I know that all these photos are of Joel Kanitz, their lead singer. I have two reasons for this, (1) my friend, Sharie, only took photos of Joel and (2) why wouldn't she?! Look at those arms and that hair and that super cute smile! They're super good live and I fully intend to go to their next full concert when they come back.

When The Downtown Fiction came on, that's when it started to rain but instead of putting a damper on things, it somehow made the concert more memorable for my friends and I.

After their set, Mark Salling finally came out and of course we screamed and fan-girled all over the place.

He introduced Willy Santos, a professional Filipino skateboarder who's based in San Diego, California. While I'm not a skateboarder, it was cool to see a Filipino who's making waves in the industry.

And of course Riley Hawk, the son of Tony Hawk. They were supposed to do the Mini Ramp Jam but because of the rain, it was moved til the ramp dried. Unfortunately, it never completely dried but they still tried to do as much as they could without getting totally hurt.

Before You Exit finally came on and again, major fan-girling on our part.

I have a super crush on Riley. Yes. I know he's 3 years younger than me, but love can conquer all!! Before You Exit is composed of the three McDonough brothers: Toby, Riley and Connor. They're all super cute and they reminded me of the Hanson brothers and sure enough, they sang Mmmbop!

We Are The In Crowd and Allstar Weekend came up after and they both rocked the stage! While I wasn't a huge fan We Are The In Crowd, they had so much energy that it was super fun to watch their performance.

I was so excited when Allstar Weekend played some of my favorite songs of theirs like Come Down With Love and All The Way.

When Mayday Parade came on, it was a full on concert, everyone was dancing and screaming! It was obvious a lot of people came to watch them live and their performance didn't disappoint.

Sadly, we weren't able to watch Yellowcard. We left soon after Mayday Parade since we had to go find a taxi home and we knew that if we waited for the concert to finish, it would be impossible to find one.

All in all, it was an awesome day! We had so much fun watching all the band and now we're fans of all of them, but of course I have my personal favorites and it's pretty obvious who they are.

Thank you so much to Domingo Ronquillo of Globe Tattoo for the amazing tickets!

Here's a video of Before You Exit's cover of Some Nights by Fun:

And this is This Century's MV for Slow Dance Night, one of my favorite songs of theirs.

You'll Find Me Chasing THE WANTED

I had such an awesome time during The Wanted concert last September 14! First off, I really want to thank Tim Yap for giving us the awesome tickets!!

Now, I've been a fan of The Wanted ever since I heard a snippet of their song, All Time Low, in DJ Earworm's Like, OMG Baby (Capital FM Summertime Ball Mashup) Remix of the Top 15 Pop Songs in 2010. It had, at most, just 5 lines but it was enough for me to google them. You can imagine my reaction when I found out that they were coming here for a concert! I was absolutely ecstatic!!

For those of you who don't know, The Wanted is a British-Irish band that was formed back in '09. Jayne Collins, the same woman who put together The Saturdays and Parade, was the one who held the auditions and put these gorgeous men together.

(L-R) Jay McGuiness, Nathan Sykes, Max George, Tom Parker, Siva Kaneswaran

The show started off with the awesome Pioneer Dj, Arra Pascual. It felt more like we were at a party than a concert. She played songs that got everyone in the mood to dance!

After DJ Arra's performance, the audience was getting antsy, people shouting and screaming the moment anybody came on stage. The moment the boys came out, all hell broke loose! The screaming of girls was all anyone could hear (I admit to being part of that screaming). They started off with their song Invincible.

I just have to say that I have the BIGGEST crush on Nathan, and he's the only one in the group that's my age *wink wink*. I went with my best friend, Tin, and we were surprised to see that most of the fans were 11-16 year olds. I assumed that the fan base of The Wanted here in the Philippines were people around my age, but hey, these kids have good taste.

Moving on... I really really enjoyed the concert! I kept shouting and dancing and just really got into it, while my partner in crime, Tin, just stood there watching me, wondering what in the world was happening to me. 

I loved that the boys weren't scared to be themselves and just be goofy, doing little dances to the side and just being funny. You could see that they were comfortable and loved what they were doing. Their performance was also very very good. They had high energy and it was very infectious. It was difficult not to jump up and down and dance to their songs.

Jacqui, my lucky sister, was not only able to go to the Meet and Greet of The Wanted, but during Heart Vacancy, they wanted some of the audience members to go up on stage to sing to. Of course, Max saw my sister in her I love British Boys t-shirt and picked her. I swear she was close to tears as I watched her hug Max and the rest of the group.

Some of my favorite photos of the night

They had a group hug which made me laugh cause they all looked so cute!

This is one concert I won't soon forget. Super thank you again to Tim Yap for not only the tickets, which was more than enough, but for the signed Battleground album as well!!!! I absolutely love it! Thank you!

*Photos from Magic Liwanag. Couldn't get any decent photos cause I was too busy screaming like a fan girl. LOL.

Snow Patrol Live in Manila!

Just say yes, just say there's nothing holding you back.. It's not a test, nor a trick of the mind.. Only love.

-Just Say Yes (Snow Patrol)

Snow Patrol, is an acclaimed band that has had their music featured in numerous TV shows like One Tree Hill, Six Feet Under, Entourage, Grey's Anatomy and movies like Spider-Man 3, Hall Pass, Just Go With It and The Last Song. They've won the Phil Lynott Award for Best New Band in 1999 and more recently, the Q Classic Song Award for Chasing Cars in 2011. They also won Best Irish Band, Best Live Performance, Most Downloaded Irish Song Award during the Meteor Music Awards. The band comprises of Gary Lightbody (vocals & guitar), Nathan Connolly (guitar & back up vocals), Paul Wilson (bass guitar & backing vocals), Jonny Quinn (drums) and Tom Simpson (keyboards)

They finally visited the Philippines for their Fallen Empires tour and had a concert last August 9, 2012 at the Smart Araneta Center. 

They played songs from their latest album. They also performed hits like Chasing Cars, Open Your Eyes, Fallen Empires, my personal favorites, Called Out In The Dark and Just Say Yes as their last song. I have to admit, I wasn't aware of most of their songs, but after hearing them live, I can now say that I am a fan!

I absolutely loved the stage and the lights! (Kudos to all the people who worked on the show and the set.) The band was AMAZING and the energy of the audience was very infectious. Even if I didn't know the much of the songs, seeing and hearing other people singing along was very cool.

Photos from the concert

The set list for the night:

People kept tweeting about the concert that it became a Trending Topic here in the Philippines.

 

Had so much fun with my family and friends!

Also bought Up To Now and Fallen Empires..

Snow Patrol is a band that you really have to watch live. I love how Gary Lightbody sings with so much emotion. It's different when you listen to the album and the actual performance.

Super thanks to Chuvaness and Magic Liwanag for giving us tickets!! We really loved the concert!

Photos taken by Jacqui Morales, Jody Morales. Some taken from twitter and Philippine Concerts and Magic Liwanag