00:00The Philippine audience is something out of the ordinary, that's why we love it so much here.
00:05It's just the energy that people give us, it's uncomparable to anywhere in the world.
00:11And I think, you know, yeah, they sing, we guys just sing all our songs there for Derek.
00:19And we always say you guys are like the selfie capital of the world.
00:24We take the most photos with bands here in the Philippines and anywhere else in the world.
00:30And it's special for us to experience that.
00:33It makes us feel loved, it makes us feel appreciated.
00:43Technically we put out our first album in 92.
00:48But the band sort of evolved from another band called Shadow that put out an album in 1990.
00:56But I've been, you know, right around 1986 I started playing reggae music in my hometown of San Diego.
01:07And there was always a lot of interest in reggae music.
01:11The reggae community and musicians and people that were adopting the music
01:17was a very close, tight-knit group of people.
01:20And we were blessed to have lots of acts from Jamaica touring through there, you know.
01:27So we got to see bands like Steel Pulse and Black O' Guru and Freddie McGregor, Marcia Griffiths.
01:35All of these groups were touring very extensively back in those days.
01:38So we were very fortunate.
01:40And I, at the time, I was a young man just fresh out of high school.
01:44I graduated high school in 1984.
01:46So I was lucky enough to make friends with one of the main promoters,
01:53a woman by the name of Makeda Dre who's still very strong in San Diego, my friend, all these years.
02:00And she would let me help her set up coffees, me and my cousin.
02:07So we would set up tables and help during soundcheck.
02:12Clean, sweet, and then she would give us a pass into the show.
02:16So I got to go and see a lot of shows like that.
02:19You know, I think the key to longevity, especially this unit, this unit we're celebrating, me and Paul,
02:29we've been playing together since 1998.
02:33And everybody else came soon after that.
02:37Mikey, he's the youngest, the bass player, but he's been with us for 15 years now.
02:43I think that what this band, the secret to this band is that we all are friends, really.
02:56We really respect each other musically.
02:59We enjoy playing with each other.
03:01After all of these years, I love getting on stage with these guys.
03:06And now it just feels like something totally natural.
03:11We've been through a lot of ups and downs.
03:13You know, we've survived a lot of very difficult times.
03:17The early 2000s was probably the most difficult time with piracy.
03:23The royalties that you get from music.
03:35You
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