So in my previous blog entry, I thought that I have finally unlocked the mystery of the bootlegged Best of Rivermaya in my collection. But unfortunately, I was dead wrong when I tracked down Leo Givero, a Rivermaya completist/fan and asked him if he could send me photos of the album in his possession. It seems the Discogs uploader where I got my source from mistakenly uploaded the wrong album cover. This version of "The Best of Rivermaya Album" is probably their first Best of International Album as the track listing of the album consists mostly English songs from their first album up to the It's Not Easy Being Green Album plus three tagalog songs that were considered to be their biggest hits thus far. I say First "Best of" International album because if you recall, way back in 2005, Rivermaya was launched to the "Asian" audience after their highly successful MTV Asia Awards appearance that wowed the international community with their live performance of their massive hit You'll be Safe Here with the Thai Royal Symphony Orchestra. Back then, it was thought that this was the initial attempt for Rivermaya to break into the Asian Market which was released by Warner Music, at that time the label Rivermaya was signed to. But the existence of this rare "Best of" album speaks otherwise.
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Track Listing and photo by Leo Givero
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As can be seen in the album's back cover as provided to me by Leo Givero, the compilation consisted of 3 tracks from the self titled debut album Rivermaya, 4 from sophomore album TRIP, 6 from Atomic Bomb (Bamboo's last album with Rivermaya as lead Vocalist), 3 from It's Not Easy Being Green (Rico Blanco's debut as lead vocalist). This was compiled and released by Sony-BMG and it says that it was released in 2007 (There's a Carousell
listing for this in case anyone is interested). I find the release date odd as by this time, Rivermaya was already signed under Warner Music Philippines. So apparently this is not the first "Best of" Asian release but actually an attempt by SONY-BMG to cash in on the prior Warner Music Release. As I am writing this, I'm experiencing a mild headache because the chronology of the "Best of" albums' released to the international audience is out of order. The Warner Music released album featured the Rico Blanco led vocals from the time they were signed with VIVA Music Philippines (Warner must have bought the rights to the songs for this release as Rivermaya signed with Warner after they left VIVA). This includes the English songs of the independently released Free album and those English songs from the Between the Stars and Waves album plus the hit single "You'll be Safe Here". No representation from their first VIVA Music Philippines Album Bagong Liwanag as it did not contain any English songs and was a very solid all Filipino sound track. While SONY-BMG's latter release featured the band's earlier works with Bamboo on Vocals until Rico's debut as the band's vocalist.
The bottom left portion of the CD inlay has a marking that says "Promotional Copy, Not for Sale", so is this a case of a product that never actually made it for public release? Or was this a promotional copy acquired by Leo Givero. He told me he bought it from a Malaysian collector who seems to have bought the product from Malaysia. If I remember it correctly, Rivermaya became a big hit in the South East Asian Market and I've sourced my Warner released copy of their "Best of" from Singapore. I just find it a shrewd business decision that the people at SONY-BMG made to ride on the success of Rivermaya after they left SONY-BMG. I mean this wasn't their first attempt at it. When Rivermaya signed with VIVA Music Philipines, SONY-BMG not long after released a "Best of Rivermaya" album which was a part of their Himig 90's collection of compilation albums. Anyway I think for Rivermaya collectors, this is truly a gem because not only is this rare but this is the only other "Best of" album that featured Bamboo on vocals (the other one being the Himig 90's album). Further "Best of" compilation albums were released by VIVA Music Philippines in 2006 which includes the single Posible written and recorded for the Asian Games, and two other Greatest Hits albums which I call the Red album and the Silver album. But that will be another blog entry for another day.
So the quest to find this album continues for me....
