If you have ever found yourself singing along to a jingle, chances are that you are singing along with Michelle Carrillo. The Hong Kong-born musician is the voice behind numerous commercials, including Towngas, Coca-Cola, San Miguel and Tuborg. The latter, the catchy Take It Higher, was so popular that the beer manufacturers decided to have it released as a single. In addition, Carrillo also has a successful career as a session musician, performing on albums by a variety of Canto-pop stars. She is also currently the lead vocalist and percussionist of Frontline, the new resident band at the Hard Rock Cafe. The five-piece group play everything from rock to rap; Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton to Coolio and Will Smith - with some Beatles thrown in for good measure. 'We do two types of sets: ultra-high-energy dance, but we play a lot more varied scope earlier in the week, when we have a much more chilled-out type of crowd,' says lead vocalist and drummer Jaime Murcell. According to guitarist Cary Abrams, the diversity of the Hard Rock clientele pushes the group to keep the repertoire as varied as possible. 'Playing the Hard Rock is different from playing any other venue in the world. Number one, you get all the tourists. They're used to hearing the music that they grew up listening to. So you get the people who are used to hearing the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin,' the native New Yorker says. 'When they come here and they see a band they expect to hear the Hard Rock type of style and attitude.' The group, Carrillo claims, was formed by chance ('We just picked it up like the Mark Six'). All five members, including keyboard player Randall Lipford and bass and saxophone player Robert Scott, are Hong Kong-based freelance musicians. Most of Frontline's members have performed with the likes of Sammi Cheng, Alex To and Leon Lai. After working together on various occasions on the live entertainment circuit, they decided to form a band. 'We've all been in Hong Kong for five years or more. Each of us in the band has played in other bands and other venues. The way this band ended up forming is that we took the best individuals from all of the bands that played around town,' says Abrams. Lipford, Abrams and Scott were brought out from the United States and Canada to play in local night-spots - JJ's, Catwalk and the Excelsior, respectively. After their contracts were up, they decided to stay. Abrams believes that one of the strengths of the band is their varied musical influences. Abrams' main influences come from rock: the likes of Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. Lipford cites as his main musical influence Terry Riley, hip-hop producer and leader of the group Blackstreet. Murcell, originally from Britain, comes from a background of '1980s jazz funk'. 'We've all taken the best from what we've previously done. The variety of music, the style, the attitude . . . we've all combined them into the one unit. In our minds we often consider it a super vat.' Although Frontline is not quick to bemoan the life of a cover band, these musicians do recognise that performing covers does have some drawbacks. According to Abrams, the variety of the music they play - and the range of styles they bring to the group - make being a cover band a little less monotonous. 'We take a lot of the songs and we arrange them and we put our own original ideas into them, so what you'll hear is the song that you're used to hearing but with a different attitude, rhythm, a different melody. So it takes away the doldrums of playing stuff completely off the radio.' Regardless, these musicians do have a few gripes about Hong Kong's music scene. 'I think Hong Kong music is stuck in time,' New Yorker Lipford says. 'They won't open up for change; you try to open up for change and it goes back round again, back to melodic Canto-pop. As long as karaoke is the most popular thing in Hong Kong, it's going to always go back.' Murcell agrees: 'It's a nation of followers. The only original music here is following the Western world. Few are taking the initiative, and then everybody is terrified. The last new style in Britain was Brit-pop. We went back to the 70s and started playing 70s rock, and the Beatles-era type of stuff, and it just exploded because people wanted to hear that. 'It's the new generation of hippies. People in their 20s now are into the 70s. That will never happen here because they want to be safe, safe, safe.' According to Murcell, another drawback of the local music scene is the difficulties there are with recording and distributing an independent record. Frontline is hoping to release an album in the near future, but they are well aware of the problems. Murcell experienced this first-hand. In 1994 he released an album, Murcell-7th Wave, on independent Zee Rem Music. 'You need about $10 million to promote anything. It's all very well making an album, but you need five times more money to do distribution and promotion than you need to make the album.' Until then, Carrillo and the rest of Frontline can be heard at the Hard Rock. Failing that, there is still the Tuborg commercial. Frontline, Hard Rock Cafe Kowloon, Tues to Sat, 10pm to 1am. Cover charge $80, includes one drink
