What About Me?
Onal, Mike, and Hubert at Bill’s Pickin’ Parlor
I was invited to play with some Filipino fellows I had met, at a party thrown by the local Filipino Association.
When I sat down to play with them, as a percussionist, the first thing I try to do is connect with the drummer. I kept looking over at the drummer, trying to make eye contact. After a little while, I thought to myself “This guy doesn’t like me being here: he won’t even look at me.”
When the band took a break, the lead singer walked over to where I was sitting, leaned over, and said “I forgot to tell you: the drummer is blind.”
That certainly explained why he wasn’t making eye contact! His name was Onal Castaneda, and we became good friends.
I had a chance, a few years later to describe that incident to Onal and his wife at his going-away party, when he was moving back to the Philippines. I had never really thought about the event from his point of view, but his wife said “Yes, on the set break, Onal said to me ‘There were a bunch of different sounds happening in the music: where were they coming from?’” I guess, besides forgetting to tell me that the drummer was blind, they forgot to tell the drummer that there would be a percussionist joining them.
We wound up forming a country band, because another friend of ours loved to sing country songs, and we got a regular gig at Bill’s Pickin’ Parlor in West Columbia. One Saturday we finished our first set, and I think everyone was pretty excited, because we had played well. We jumped off the stage and kind of rushed to go sit down in the backstage room. But as we were passing through the door to go backstage, we heard “Hey hey, what about me?”
My friend Hubert said, “Kuya, we forgot Onal!”
He was still sitting behind the drum set, with no possibility of getting off the stage on his own: a stage like that is littered with cables, amps, guitar stands, mic stands, etc.
And Hubert told me this had happened once before where they had left Onal stranded in some situation he could not walk out of on his own while playing a gig, and Onal actually had to call Hubert to come get him.
When I told my friend Gerry Scott this story, he said “Oh, we did the same thing to Stevie Wonder once: it was a benefit concert, and we had to rush to get each band up on stage after the last. We got the Red Hot Chili Peppers set up, and they started playing, when someone noticed that we had left Stevie up on the platform from where he had been singing and playing keyboards. Since the Chili Peppers had already started playing, we just had to leave him there until they were done.”
In any case, I wrote this song for Onal before he left for the Philippines:
What about me
Playing down at Bill’s on Saturday night
The crowd was all dancing, feeling right
The music was so hot
The band didn’t give it a thought
And left me all alone behind the drums
Singin’…
Hey hey hey, what about me?
Did you dumb shmucks forget that I can’t see?
You left me on the stage
Just to shout and rage
Hey hey hey, what about me?
After that night, you think they learned their lesson?
Then you don’t know my friends, and that’s a blessin’
They rushed off for a drink
Man they didn’t even think
And I had to call Hubie up on my phone
And say…
Hey hey hey, what about me?
Did you dumb shmucks forget that I can’t see?
You left me on the stage
Just to shout and rage
Hey hey hey, what about me?