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COURTESY PHOTO
The band Kalapana will perform tonight at the New Year’s Eve Pineapple Drop at Town Center of Mililani despite the loss of founding member Malani Bilyeu after he died Thursday on Kauai. Members of Kalapana are DJ Pratt, left, Bilyeu, Kenji Sano and Gaylord Holomalia.
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The show will go on.
Kalapana will perform at tonight’s New Year’s Eve Pineapple Drop at Town Center of Mililani as scheduled despite the death of founding member Malani
Bilyeu. The group’s surviving members, Gaylord Holomalia, DJ Pratt and Kenji Sano, decided to go on with the performance as a tribute to Bilyeu, said publicist Mona Wood.
On a couple of Kalapana’s hit songs in which Bilyeu was the lead singer, the band will play along with a recording of Bilyeu’s voice, Wood said.
Kalapana is scheduled to perform at 6:30 p.m. and will lead the countdown to the Pineapple Drop at 7 p.m., which will coincide with the Times Square ball drop in New York.
Bilyeu, 69, died Thursday on Kauai.
He was born Carl James Malani Bilyeu in Honolulu and raised in Kalihi Valley.
Bilyeu was a 26-year-old Vietnam veteran when he founded Kalapana with Pratt, Mackey Feary and Kirk Thompson.
Kalapana was one of the most popular local contemporary music groups in the 1970s, playing sold-out concerts at the Waikiki Shell and partnering with Cecilio &Kapono, another popular local group of the ’70s, to co-headline the biggest Aloha Stadium concert of the decade.
Bilyeu was one of Kalapana’s songwriters. His contributions include “You Make it Hard” and “(For You) I’d Chase a Rainbow.”