Real punk-rockers don't need no education, but suburban Atlanta booomer parents are paying $495 a week so their kids can learn to shred, snarl and brood onstage. The L.A. Times reports (free registration required).

...along the halls of a Jewish day school outside Atlanta, children of the suburbs were being instructed in speed-metal, death-metal, ripping, shredding, maniacally insane guitar solos, and jumping onto the bass drum for dramatic effect without hurting yourself.

It is a sign of the times that parents in the Atlanta area are lining up this summer to send their children to Camp Jam...under the direction of Jeff Carlisi, former guitarist for the arena rock band 38 Special...

..Carlisi said..."...I have parents coming up to me and saying, 'I just want to thank you for what you've done for my child. You've changed them.' "

...The truth was, many of these campers looked like they would be more comfortable in Little League. The first time they were asked to stand onstage, said one instructor, some trembled.

That day, the counselors sat together and, in a single, intense hour, grouped them into bands. The rest of the week proceeded like a particularly loud psychology experiment.

Hey, what are kids for?

This part is priceless.

....Josh Bell, 11, stood in front of vocal coach Felicia Sorensen, singing, in the voice he had cultivated in a church choir, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Kurt Cobain's grunge anthem. He sang in the sweet tenor you might expect from a young Harry Potter.

"A mulatto," he sang. "An albino/ A mosquito/ My libido."

Sorensen...and Josh were working on anger.

"Remember," she told him, "You're a rock star."

Later at a performance for parents, Josh is transformed.

...fronting the band Sheep, he sang "Smells Like Teen Spirit" — "I feel stupid, and contagious/Here we are now, entertain us" — with such an aggressive roar that the crowd came to life, hooting and clapping. From her seat on the bleachers, his mother, Mary, wondered aloud if he might be possessed.

Before the performance, he had warned her she might be shocked by what she would see in him that night.

"He said, 'Don't worry, Mom, I've learned a new song,' " Mary said. "And he asked, 'What's a libido?' "

Josh, Josh: that's Week Two.

Tip: Jack R. Payton.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at July 13, 2004 08:20 AM

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