My kid rules
Click to viewLast week my son went to Rock Band Camp, which in and of itself is a fairly rocking concept, methinks. I would have loved this when I was a wee little laddie, although my mom would have still just thrown me into Vacation Bible School for the summer where I would learn to sing songs like Father Abraham and This Little Light of Mine rather than really practical musical knowledge like Dazed and Confused or or even Sunshine of Your Love. I'm not bitter. Swear.
At any rate, the boy has played cello in his school orchestra for the last 3 years and, finding that not quite up to his musical speed, has transitioned to bass guitar, which has been particularly perfect for banging out his aggressions towards us parental units in times of severe pre-teen crisis and turmoil. More importantly, he is continuing in his musical pursuit, of which he is rather talented, and learning to appreciate a broad basis of what is out there. As an example, after this experience, he proclaimed that new rock is just lame like Incubus and classic rock is really the best stuff out there. I swear he uttered this with only the most minute amount of hypnotic brainwashing by his mother and I.
He enjoyed his week so much that he is going back next week at the request of the camp director. These guys really are a class act. They let the kids have total musical freedom in their choices, as demonstrated by the emo 14 year old group who performed a surprisingly melodic original instrumental piece followed by the requisite guttural death rock anthem, the title of which I am obviously too irrelevant to have identified. They set up a complete touring rig including sound and lights and put on quite a show for all of us parents and the teenage groupies who went all swooney at their prospective rocker boyfriends. By the way, girls are all tramps.
Here are a couple other clips for anyone interested. The finale was an excellent tribute to the burgeoning rock attitude incubating within our young. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97QO8qYOOlk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mdoSHvyulc