As narrarated by Marvin (me):

Who is bruce leroy?  Of course for those of you that love the 80's would know who bruce leroy is(The Last Dragon).

But if youre readin this youre probably not here to read about Taimak(the great actor who played Bruce Leroy in the movie).

Your are readin this its because of your curiosity of the ever changing faces of the collective, live ATL hiphop band, Bruce Leroy.

How did this all begin?

Well, one day (late 2004) myself(lead vocalist for group to be called Bruce Leroy) and Marc(frontman for titofelix) became aquantances through mutual friends -  discovered they shared a passion for music.  They exchanged ideas back and forth and shared a mutual friendship bonded by music, girls, and havin a good time. 

Around this time-Atlanta was to host the NFAYA (National Filipino American Youth Association) conference at Georgia State University.

A little background about the Movement:
The National Filipino American Youth Association is honored to bring southeasts first Filipino-American arts & entertainment festival entitled THE MOVEMENT. This festival will provide a platform for emerging Filipino artists to showcase their talents to the southeast a region thirsty and eager to experience the multiple talents Filipinos bring to the arts & entertainment industry. Fans and aspiring artists can participate in numerous workshops, exhibitions, and an industry Q & A discussion panel. Ongoing musical, comedic and dance performances will be held throughout the two-day event. Come join the southeast community to celebrate and support Filipino-American artists and entertainers from around the country at THE MOVEMENT.
The artists featured at The MOVEMENT include turntablists, magicians, dancers, musicians, sculptors, artists, photographers, industry executives, comedians, beatboxers, breakdancers, graffiti artists, and spoken word artists.

The last time Atlanta hosted this 3 day event was @ Emory University in 2001. Marvin performed a spoken word piece and titofelix was just getting started and performed one of their first gigs @ the Emory NFAYA conference.  Little did they know that they would both cross paths again years later to form Bruce Leroy.

But back to the story in 2004-
Titofelix was already scheduled to play on Saturday.  One of the event coordinators contacted Marc because a lot of the acts from other cities dropped out for Friday's event, and asked him if titofelix can play friday and saturday .  Beacuse not everyone in the band could play on Friday due to late notice-that's when Marc contacted me.

We've already talked about getting a group together-but not until after the NFAYA conference finished just because Marc had an enormous role as being the head coordinator and performer for the event-and I was in charge of sound(which at the the time had no experience to the magnitude of this event-I couldn't have done it without the help of Dillio and the rest of the NFAYA  crew).  Our plates were pretty much full to take on other responsibilities, let alone start a new band.

But for the love of music-we scheduled a jam session at Babyjay's (titofelix drummer) house a couple weeks before the event.
At the session...I brought along my good friend Max the Haitian Sensation - who played bass guitar.  This is where I met Dillio, BabyJay and Vangie.  We took over babyjay's living room with:
myslef on vocals
Marc on guitar and vocals
Dillio on keys and vocals
Babyjay on drums
Max on the bass
Vangie on vocals

It was a site to see.  I was instantly hooked to the magic we created in that room.  We would jam from 8-2 in the morning for those first few sessions.  I'm smiling while I'm typing this because (prepare for a cliche) its almost like there are no words to describe the feeling(some of you artists reading this will understand) of the chemistry our group had.

We played anything from Linkin Park, to Slick Rick, to Prince, to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, to emo, to to punk, to classic rock, back to hip-hop, and all the way to video game theme songs like Mario Brothers, Zelda, Mortal Kombat-while using the samples of Streetfighter over the carribean zouk style of music....yeah..it was pretty crazy...We had a lot of fun back then.

.........................end of part 1.................................

part two coming next week.....