Kids rock, with a little help from their parents By Christina Pazzanese, Boston Globe Correspondent Thursday, May 5, 2005 "Hey! Ho! Let's go! They're forming in a straight line... The kids are losing their minds." With distorted guitar and frenetic drums, the band cranks out the Ramones' punk classic "Blitzkrieg Bop" in the basement of a Needham office building. Look twice at this hard-driving group, though. The players are 11- and 12-year-old girls. Hannah Peterson, Maddy Youniss, and Adrienne O'Donnell, pony-tailed sixth-graders from Wellesley Middle School, are jamming together for the first time on guitar, keyboard, and drums at Plugged In, a private music program for kids who want to start a rock band. "We thought it would be cool," O'Donnell, 11, said of forming a band with her friends. "I like rap, but we can't rap." The girls are just a few of the many young people in the Boston suburbs who are putting aside soccer balls, at least for now, and picking up electric guitars. Fifty years after rock 'n' roll emerged as a semi-disreputable American art form and became the soundtrack of a generation that questioned authority, parents are buying their children instruments and even paying for lessons in how to rock. "This is all about dreaming something different. It's about personal expression and a love of music in general," said Tom Pugh, who started Plugged In with Sandra Rizkallah in Needham in 2002. Rizkallah and Pugh help young people who want to form a band but don't know how to do it. The semester-long class, which costs $450, teaches participants how to select and write songs, play together as a group, and craft a sound. Groups polish a set of five or six songs to perform at a benefit concert that concludes each semester. This spring's event will be June 12 at the Regent Theater in Arlington. "They're so happy to find a place where they can do it; it opens up a whole new world for them," said Rizkallah, a documentary producer by trade. Pugh, a graduate of Berklee College of Music, is a semiprofessional guitarist and vocalist in two Boston-area bands and works as a sound and television engineer at WGBH. Under Pugh's direction, the girls quickly grasp the song's three-chord structure and lyrics. At the end of the two-hour session, the girls switch instruments and churn out an impressive version of Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." The group, which hadn't yet decided on a name, is the youngest Pugh has taught so far. "If they're willing to try something like this, the enthusiasm will overcome a lack of experience," said Pugh. Three other bands under Pugh's tutelage, composed mostly of middle schoolers, performed recently at the Needham Youth Center, a venue known to students during the daytime as the Pollard gymnasium. Classmates eagerly crowded in to hear Will's Snack, Not From Concentrate, and Entropy, mesmerized as they blazed through sets anchored by the classic rock of The Who, the Beatles, and Queen. Entropy, a five-piece band featuring boys and girls from Newton and Needham, headlined the night, deftly mixing some original tunes with covers of Train and Alanis Morissette. In Medfield, a band of seventh-graders called ETM produced their own concert last week. "The love of music has to come first," Pugh said. "You can't be thinking about 'American Idol' or playing at the Fleet." Though they won't give out hard numbers, some musical instrument makers sense a trend of young people moving away from turntables and computer-based electronic music and returning to guitar-based rock. "We've had a couple of very spectacular years," said Morgan Ringwald, vice president of public relations for guitar maker Fender Musical Instruments Corp. He declined to discuss sales figures for the privately held company, but said the instrument industry as a whole is doing well. "People are getting back to making music," Ringwald said. Fender, whose guitars have long been used by professional musicians, now offers lower-priced starter packs that include an electric bass or guitar, an amplifier, cables, a guitar strap, and an instruction DVD or booklet. Fender also produces a three-quarter-sized version of its famed Stratocaster guitar that appeals to children whose hands don't quite fit around the neck of a regular guitar. The company also runs a guitar education program in cities across the country to help school music teachers learn to teach guitar. "Sales have increased by double digits over the last couple of years," said Jason LaChapelle, a spokesman for the Zildjian Co., a maker of cymbals and drumsticks in Norwell. "Entry-level kit lines are doing very well." LaChapelle said the company sees more young people than ever showing up at consumer trade shows interested in learning the drums. One California company, Daisy Rock Guitars, says it has seen a lot of interest in its line of electric guitars designed to appeal to preteen and teenage girls. The smaller-scale instruments are lighter than traditional guitars and have flower and butterfly-shaped bodies in colors like atomic pink and princess purple. "The number of guitarists is growing, but the fastest[-growing] segments are females," said Rich Lackowski, director of marketing and public relations. The company, which was started in 2000, has seen its sales skyrocket. Last year, Daisy Rock had $2 million in sales, which translates to 16,000 guitars sold, Lackowski said. Programs teaching young people to rock are now offered across the country. The Paul Green School of Rock Music, purported to be the inspiration for the 2003 movie "School of Rock," has nine locations in New York, California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and plans to open four more in the fall, according to the company's website. In Portland, Ore., the Rock n' Roll Camp for Girls was launched in 2000 by a former woman roadie and now includes a year-round afterschool program. Closer to home, the National Guitar Workshop will again run a Newton day camp this summer, "DayJams Rock Star Reality Camp for Kids." During four weeklong sessions, children of all abilities between 9 and 15 are formed into bands and learn how to write songs and perform them on stage at a concert that concludes each weekly session. Last year, the camp sold out, with 300 participants, and is close to being full again this year, said Suzy Fucini, the camp's publicist. "The whole idea is to jump-start kids in music," she said. "People are amazed you can get a band up and running in a week. "Some of the bands have stayed together and gotten gigs" at local coffeehouses and other venues. Once bands form and work out their repertoire, the next challenge is to find a place to perform. School dances and private parties are important sources of gigs. "The kids don't have that many options to play in front of family and friends, because so few places are available," said Diane Young, who regularly books all-ages shows at The Center for Arts in Natick. "Clubs are not interested. They won't make any money without drinking." The center is one of the few local venues that welcome teenage bands. Every six weeks, Young brings in up to four young bands on Friday nights, gives them access to the center's stage and professional sound and lighting system, and even pays them $25. "They just love it," she said. "They do all their own promoting, set up CDs and merchandise, and sell them. "I don't think people realize the hard work that goes into being a band," Young said. "Practice, songwriting, a website, CDs, recording, merchandise -- it's like a whole business, every aspect besides getting up on stage." For those who stick with it and have the ambition and musical chops, the WBCN/Berklee College of Music Battle of the High School Bands is the area's top competition. Now in its 11th year, this year's battle was held over a few weeks in March and featured 32 groups playing original music for a panel of music industry judges. Held at Harpers Ferry, a scruffy Allston nightclub, the battle was the first opportunity for many bands, mostly from the city's western suburbs, to play on a real stage in front of music pros and crowds from outside their hometowns. "Kids need a venue to play in and have to be heard," said Alan Rotberg, a longtime Boston music veteran who founded the battle, modeling it after the long-running WBCN Rock-n-Roll Rumble for college-age bands. Rotberg said the Boston suburbs produce many promising bands that are much more sophisticated than bands 30 years ago, both in terms of talent and music business savvy. "The Berklee [College] people were blown away by it," said Rotberg. "There's definitely talent here, without a doubt." Even at the high school level, many bands have also developed their own websites, made T-shirts, and recorded CDs, he said. Pandafied, a ska-influenced band of six Needham High School seniors, took the battle's first prize in early April. "There were so many good bands," said bassist Chris Taurasi, 18. "We were happy just to be there." Pandafied's members hope to make a name for themselves on the Boston rock scene in the fall. First, of course, they'll have to finish high school. But then all six plan to attend area colleges, and four will even share an apartment. "We're really trying to push this as a career," Taurasi said. On May 27, The Center for Arts in Natick will host four of the other eight groups that reached the finals of the high school Battle of the Bands. One observer, however, questions whether classes and parental support for rock fit with the music's true spirit, with its core values of rebellion and self-expression. "I think it's great for kids who want to learn to play music, but once you open the door, you need to go on your own path," said Ted Drozdowski, a blues guitarist and rock journalist who writes for Guitar World, The Boston Phoenix, and Boston magazine. "Otherwise, rock becomes diluted to the level of show tunes," he said. "You have to be smart enough and intrigued enough to make that next leap." While technical training can be helpful, eventually young people have to develop their own style and sound to be taken seriously as musicians, Drozdowski said. That means listening to a lot of different styles of music and keeping an open mind. "While you're teaching somebody the basics, instructors have a responsibility to encourage them to listen to John Coltrane or Hank Williams," he said. "The most important thing is to have wide ears." With the heavy community emphasis on athletics, suburban youth rockers say they sometimes get lost in the shuffle. "To an extent, we're the odd man out," said Chris Bigelow, 18, a guitarist in Pandafied. "So much emphasis is on sports, and [that] leaves every person who wants to pursue music on their own." He estimates there are nearly 20 bands at Needham High. "A lot of parents don't encourage music, because they think they won't make it," said producer Jeff Hall, who owns a recording studio and record label in Medway. He offered free studio time to the winner of the high school battle. "The caliber of talent has been incredible in the last few years," Hall said. "These kids are good, really good." PRESS menu