Blogger Jayvee Fernandez is giving away 10 tickets over at his blog, A Bugged Life, for the Trance Alliance launch party over at A-Venue next Saturday, November 29. Trance Alliance is the joint dance events promotion project of Domini Primero of Driven Manila and Stephen Ku of World Wide Womb. Their launch party will feature DJ John “00” Fleming and Digital Blonde. To have a chance at winning one of those free tickets, just comment on Jayvee's post answering the question: “What do you love most about Manila’s clubbing scene?”. Jayvee will randomly pick 10 lucky winners from among the comments. Good luck!

Read this ClickTheCity.com article if you want more information about the event and the performing DJs. Or view the following YouTube promotional video:

Christopher Cross, the man who gave us the 80s hit song "Sailing", is coming to Manila this November 29 for a one-night concert at the Araneta Center. Not many people know this trivia but "Sailing", and the eponymous album that it came from, Christopher Cross, gave him a grand slam at the 1981 Grammy Awards. He got all of the four "Big Awards": Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year; a feat that has yet to be equaled. (Norah Jones came close in 2003 by winning three of the four big awards, but while her song "Don't Know Why" also won the Song of the Year award, she didn't write that song and so she wasn't credited with that award.)

Among the other hit songs by Christopher Cross is the famous "Think of Laura", which was revived as the tribute song "Think of Aaliyah" by Boyz II Men. Another well-known song of Cross' is "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)", from the soundtrack of the movie Arthur. That latter song gave Cross both an Oscar and a Golden Globe award for the best original song used in a film. And that means that Christopher Cross is one of the elite few to have won a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Golden Globe.

Joining Christopher Cross for his concert in Manila is Chrysta Jones of Workshy, a duet band described as "somewhere in between Matt Bianco and Swing Out Sister—with a little Burt Bacharach thrown in". The official plug by Ovation Productions, the event's handler, mentions "Workshy featuring Chrysta Jones", but I think it's just Jones who's coming and not with her partner Michael McDermott.

I just got official word from someone involved with San Miguel's events that Sepultura is indeed coming to the Red Horse Muziklaban. So if you're an old-school headbanger, mark your calendars for November 29 so that you can head on over to the Marikina Sports Complex to attend the 10th year final night of the Muziklaban rock band competition.

And if my word and my source's word is still not enough for you, check out this announcement from the official Sepultura website. :-)

Trance music enthusiasts are sure to converge at the Manila World Trade Center this November 21, Friday as the world’s #1 DJ (as certified by DJMag) Armin van Buuren is set to bring Metro Manila again through an epic trance journey. This dance party is part of Armin’s worldwide tour to promote his new DJ mix compilation, A State of Trance 2008. He has a weekly radio show with the same name and his yearly compilations are meant to highlight the best trance music for the year. Joining him is Blake Jarrell, who I know as the one who did an extremely wicked trance remix of Linkin Park’s “Shadow of the Day”.

I’ve bought A State of Trance 2007 and have started listening to his radio show a few months ago and I can definitely say that Armin IMO has better taste in trance music than either Paul van Dyk or Tiësto, the two DJs Armin has dethroned from the #1 spot. (Tiësto was #1 from 2002 to 2004 and which PvD took over from 2005 to 2006.) While I have bought a lot of PvD’s CDs, I prefer him as a trance music producer instead of as a DJ and Armin gets my nod as my favorite trance DJ. So I guess it’s high time that Armin got the top spot in 2007 and 2008!

The last time I went to a Trance DJ party was to Tiësto’s set way back in 2006 at the PICC Forum. I managed to get a free ticket from a good friend whose brother was one of the opening DJs before Tiësto’s set. It was a great! I had fun dancing to the anthemic trance selection till the wee hours of the morning.

I wish I could go to Armin’s set, but due to various circumstances, I’ll just have to content myself with buying his CD. :-P

More information can be found in this ClickTheCity.com article.

From the blog/Plurk grapevine we hear word that 90s death/thrash metal band Sepultura (Wikipedia article) from Brazil will be guest performing at the finals night of Red Horse's Muziklaban band competition. If this pushes through, expect to see them on November 29 at the Marikina Sports Complex. Of course, being a hard-core rock concert, expect plenty of roughhousing and other general mosh pit behavior at the Musiklaban finals, should you dare to go there. Hehehe.

According to a reply by a certain unnamed person on another unnamed person's plurk, the contract signing for the guest appearance occurred earlier today. This person has also "seen the rider and program sequence", so this is not a rumor and hopefully the gig will continue to push through on November 29. Also check out this blog post, from Azrael Coladilla, a Sepultura fan. He'll definitely post updates on his blog regarding any developments in case you wish to follow this lead.