The Lettermen

The Lettermen are a group of three guys who sang a lot of hits way back 45 years ago, they are quite popular with the older generations like my father, he used to listen to the lettermen a lot during his days, but for me I think they sound old, not that they sound like old men but listening to their music makes you feel like you were living in the sixties. My father has a copy of every lettermen record album at home, and I’m talking about the black discs as big as plates where it plays music while spinning under a needle, amazing how these antiquities work. But unfortunately his records are now mere memorabilia items after record players went extinct during the turn of the millennium, now my father has only one lettermen music cd to listen with which amazes him how the thing works the same way his record artifacts does to us. I do have one lettermen mp3 in our databank “you’ll never walk alone” but I’d rather not let my father hear it else complicate him more with digital technology.

The lettermen gave a show in our little city last weekend, and after listening to their music way back when he was my age, my father had to see their show for nostalgia’s sake. Me and my brother were not too keen on joining them though because we only had been living half as long as the lettermen’s singing career but my father did convince us to go anyway. We took a cab because I felt if we drove to the theater, I could have also drove myself nuts looking for a place to park, and when we did get to the theater the lobby was full of rich old people in a glamour and jewelry showdown. I had five bottles of beer with ariel earlier that afternoon and I was now hungry, there was a little concession stand at the lobby which served pasta, my brother too was hungry but he is far worse than me being a loner, the rich crowd drove him sick. He took me instead to this back alley road from the theater that led to a little peasants hut, he treated me for some bread and noodles there and we talked about how phony the crowd in the theater was.

We had numbered seats on our tickets for the show but for all things stupid, our numbered seats were the farthest seat on the other end of the theater walls anyway. And when we got to our seats, some old lady was sitting on my seat, she asked me if she could sit in my place so that she could be with her friends, but I insisted on my seat though, I wasn’t paying five hundred bucks for me to play nomad inside the theater.

The view from the far end of the theater was worst, but at least I could stand from my seat or jerk my head left and right without bothering anybody from behind. The lettermen came up on stage and sang versions of their songs “cant take my eyes off of you” “the way you look tonight” “put your head on my shoulders” hell if only I could get hold of a beer.

The show ended around midnight, we rode back home with our parents. The lettermen were to have another show in cebu the following night so my parents took the first flight to cebu the next morning to get front row tickets to their show, but my father said it was pretty much the same as the one they did back home. My parents stayed in the same hotel with the lettermen and my father was able to get one of his records signed.

Only tony butala signed on the record case because he’s the only original member of the lettermen left. The other two replacement lettermen were mark preston and donovan tea. Mark preston looked pretty much like a chef, maybe it has something to do with his mustache because his smile looked like those Italian chefs you see in pasta cook books. And the other guy's name sounded like a fancy flavor for a tea, I felt I must have heard somebody ordering a donovan tea in starbucks.