I don't really know how to begin this as I haven't written like this in a long time, but the news of Richard's passing away triggered some distant memories my friends and I have of one of our favorite band figures here in the city. No, we were not very close to Richard, we barely even knew of his personal life. I'm not even sure if he remembers our names. We only shared a short time together in some concerts here around 1996-1997, just laughing over some silly stuffs. I remember us calling him "Tita" because his acting out gay was our favorite antic. But of course, there were interviews with his former band Souls of Leash (SOL) for our former do-it-yourself zine, La Puztizo (LP), so I thought of going over my old stuffs to see if we had a long interview with the band just to remember how Richard was before.
Surprisingly though, there was no long interview with SOL. The feature on them was just a short section, but highlights the question "Why SOL (as name for band)?" to which their answer was, "Ambot kay Richard! Islan tani namon amon ngalan galing kay too late na." Richard's name, though, can be seen repeatedly in some small sections of several other issues of the zine, like in a gig review, "Richard says Unan (a song of SOL, FYI to those who forgot/don't know) is about an unwashed awfully smelling" and in another article called Skeletons in the Closet, we wrote, "We used to label SOL as no. 1 in our list of bands we would love to send to Pluto (Chard, forgive us) because... we don't know." Yeah, no offense to Johann, Kim, Tata, and the late Scott, but Richard was our favorite SOL member it seems. ;) And Richard was one of the few band figures who still greeted us even after almost a decade of not seeing each other.
I was about to give up on my search when in the second to the last issue of LP I looked in, in a section entitled Mushy Mushee (our different take on Valentine's), I caught sight of Richard's name again. There was a poem written in Joy's handwriting and at the end was the caption "By Raymond Ja_____, ah, uhm (Chard, ano to gani ah? Nalipat kami)." I remember Rej saying that he did give us something for the zine, but how he came to give it to us, if we coerced him or what, I can't remember anymore. I do remember him saying not to put his name as the author, but to put his cousin's name, Raymond Javelosa (if I remember it right, Rej? Joy?). When I read the entire poem, well... I was looking for something and this was not what I expected, yet it seemed to be the exact thing I needed to find. I don't know if I'm just overreacting because the news of Richard's demise is still fresh, but you be the judge. So I'm sharing this with everyone who knew him in some way or another... this poem deserves a better place than hiding in my old and dusty shoebox, don't you think?
Written by Bles Garachico
co-Honcho of LaPuztizo fanzine and Tattletale
