Youth rocks

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Perhaps the genre may survive...

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School of Rock rollin’ into Mercer
12/14/2005
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Column By Alex Richmond


Those who say callously that rock is dead send shock though my system, which is probably what happened to people of other faith when John Lennon said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.

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Rock is not dead. Rock lives. And it lives on in the most obvious form of our society’s future.

I’m not talking about the music industry. I’m talking about kids.

Since 1998, Philadelphia has been host to the Paul Green School of Rock, which came to be quite a while before the Jack Black movie, thank you. It’s a place where school-aged kids can tap into their inner rock stars, and really learn what it means to be a musician (which can be mutually exclusive; Ashlee Simpson, I’m looking at you).

Now there are several locations of the school; in NYC, Bucks County, Cherry Hill, and soon to come, the Paul Green School of Rock is coming to Pennington, though some people like to fancy it up and say Princeton.

Green’s manifesto is to help students learn an instrument -- something like electric guitar, bass, drums, or keyboards. Yes, they have cowbell -- and then play rock songs live, in front of a crowd, with lights, sometimes smoke machines, and lighters held aloft.

The kids have played Led Zepplin, Sabbath, "classic" rock, meaning Boston, Styx, Foreigner, and punk classics like the Ramones. They shred. They kill. They bring the house down. And they are so dang adorable it kills me.

In case you missed it, there was a killer documentary out this summer called "School of Rock," directed by Don Argott.

"School of Rock" might have cleaned up at Sundance, where it was nominated for best doc, or at the Oscars, were it not for two other great docs out at the same time: "Murderball" and "March of the Penguins."

The highlight of the film of which was founder Paul Green taking a batch of kids to Zappanale, a Frank Zappa festival in Germany.

Original Zappa band member Napoleon Murphy Brock played with a group of Green’s students at Zappanale, and kowtowed to them. Praised them, on his knees. That means a lot. One cannot argue with Green’s results: He gets the best out of his kids and any rock fan, or highly skilled musician, as in the case of Napoleon Murphy Brock, can recognize the skill along with the effort.

Philly rock star Mike Morpurgo will be heading the Pennington rock school; he’s toured the world with his bands Dandelion and Laguardia, but has recently retired from touring, moved to New Hope, and decided to teach full time.

Green said, "My schools are run on the strength of personality, and not just mine. I add local flavor to make the schools a little different from each other."

The Philly school Green describes as "an armpit. Cherry Hill’s in a strip mall, but what isn’t in South Jersey. Our San Francisco campus is amazing, it’s in Union Square, opposite the Chronicle building."

Green hasn’t seen the Pennington location yet, because it hasn’t opened for business yet. Got kids that love music? Get in on the ground floor. Check it out at SchoolofRock.com, or come out and see the kids play at Conduit this Sunday. Don’t forget your lighters.

The Paul Green School of Rock All Stars play at 3pm Sundayat Conduit, 439 South Broad Street. All ages admitted.

-- Alex Richmond is a columnist and staff writer for the Trentonian. She may be reached at arichmond@trentonian.com.