chito miranda

Alfonso "Chito" Miranda, Jr. [born February 7, 1976] is a Filipino singer and songwriter who is best known as the lead singer for the band Parokya ni Edgar.

Miranda attended grade school and high school in the Ateneo de Manila University when he met Gab Chee Kee, Vinci Montaner, Jeric Estaco, and Miko Yap. They formed a garage band during their high school years.

The group was known in school to be class clowns. Normally in shows, they would show up in women’s clothing to entertain victims of earthquakes and typhoons and sing off-key in poetry readings.

They eventually landed the role as front act band for the locally well-known Filipino alternative rock band The Eraserheads. Later on, Buwi Meneses and Dindin Moreno joined as bassist and drummer, respectively. When they graduated high school, Jeric and Miko decided to leave the group to pursue other interests. Shortly thereafter, Darius Semaña [lead guitar] joined to complete the sextet.

Originally, Parokya ni Edgar was called "Comic Relief". However, they decided to change the name in homage to an ancient Noli Me Tangere joke in their student days.

Later on, Parokya ni Edgar performed regularly in Club Dredd, one of the famous clubs in Manila during that time. The band slowly gained popularity during the height of the Filipino rock explosion, with the local rock community opening up to the influence of foreign grunge acts such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.

Eventually, the late managing director of Universal Records, Bella Dy Tan, signed them as contract artists after witnessing one of their performances at Club Dredd. The band garnered a triple platinum award for their first album Khangkhungkherrnitz.

One of the band's songs, "Buloy", has lyrics inspired by a friend Miranda met in Batangas. He was a Fine Arts student at Far Eastern University and committed suicide some time after "Buloy" was released and this caused some controversy among fans and non-fans.

Miranda is a member of Alpha Kappa Rho fraternity in the Philippines. He is good friends with fellow Filipino artists, the late Francis Magalona, and rapper Gloc9. Miranda dated actress Kaye Abad for a long period of time from the early 2000's until their breakup in 2009.

source: wikipedia