For Those About to School of Rock

by A.J. Daulerio

My seven-year-old son loves drumming, particularly the loud, cymbal-heavy style, which would prevent most parents from buying their children a complete kit, but I’m a pushover, so we got him one last Christmas. He’s played it every day since, to the point where the high hat is bent enough that it can never close again. He’s also popped the kick drum pedal spring several times already. We’ve tried to put a 20-minute limit on his playing, but it’s always a fight to get him to stop. We usually say it’s to give the neighbors a break, but sometimes, even though he’s pretty good, it is for us because we don’t want to listen to him run through another version of “Never Fight a Man With a Perm” by IDLES. (I love my boy and love that band, but we’ve heard that song played a dozen times per day since February.)  But we also want him to keep his enthusiasm, so he’s been enrolled in numerous School of Rock camps for most of the summer.

School of Rock began as an after-school program in the mid-’90s to help kids between 7 and 17 learn to love music through individualized lessons on various instruments and in groups. The real breakthrough in the curriculum came when its founder, Paul Green, encouraged jam sessions among the students. School of Rock existed before the 2003 Jack Black movie, also called School of Rock, was released; Green considered suing the filmmakers, but reconsidered once he realized how great it was for business. There are now 307 School of Rocks worldwide. Four of them are in Los Angeles (five, if you include Burbank).

The whole premise of the camp is to give young kids a fun environment to learn the basics of three-chord distortion-heavy rock and introduce them to the fundamentals of musical collaboration. The performances at the end of the week usually consist of one kid who can legitimately play and the rest just trying not to break their instruments or have a meltdown due to stage fright. My son usually stands out—in a good way—but I can also tell he gets frustrated by some of the less interested campers mangling “Seven Nation Army.” 

School of Rock is a pretty loose operation—it’s not like any of the instructors are chucking cymbals at campers’ heads a la Whiplash—but I was a little surprised when I showed up early for pickup one day at how militant one of them was about breaking down the equipment. This heroic 20-something woman with a nose ring and Buddy Holly glasses was doing her best to teach a roomful of cantankerous and overtired 7-10-year-olds how to properly roll cable. There is an art to this, and it brought me back to the long days I spent interning at recording studios in the Philadelphia area my first couple of years out of college.

I had some elaborate fantasies about becoming a producer or an A&R rep for an indie record label in the hopes that maybe one day I’d become a big shot who was credited with making Philadelphia “the next Seattle.” (I had a small Rolling Stone article about Maverick Records’ A&R wunderkind Guy Oseary taped up in my bedroom as motivation.) I wanted to determine whether I was built more for the business or creative side. I was sure it was both, but I must act humble. I was blissfully undecided.

My father constantly discouraged me from this path, always lurking with a reminder that I should have a backup plan for when my dreams are inevitably destroyed. He suggested teaching English, “computers,” or a profession requiring a master’s degree. I told him I wanted to stay in the music industry, even though in the year and a half I had spent “working” in it I’d only been paid a handful of times, mostly in takeout food, sometimes in CDs and band merch, and one time in weed. Once, a studio manager gave me $100 for doing an overnight session with some crappy local band, and it was one of the best moments of my life. “I’ve finally made it,” I thought. 

But the money was less important to me than working next to professional musicians, preferably famous ones. The fastest way to get in on those gigs was to learn how to break down equipment quickly and properly roll the cable. But that also meant I had to be a gofer during every session and that I had to perform tasks outside of the studio, some of them beneath human dignity.

These are my notable interactions with rock stars between 1996 and 1998 when I interned at two recording studios in Philadelphia, primarily Studio 4 in Conshohocken and Sonic Recording Studio off Delaware Avenue. 

· Dropped off laundry for one of the members of the band Dishwalla.

· Accidentally popped Duncan Sheik in the face with a wind screen while I tried to attach it to the mic right before he performed an unplugged session of “Barely Breathing” for radio contest winners.

· Mashed up ear mite medicine and mixed it into wet food for Sheryl Crow’s dog, Scout.

· Drove to Sam Ash to replace a busted drum head for Charlie Benante from Anthrax. 

· Was asked not to “look directly” at Fiona Apple.

· Had to pretend the head of Ruffhouse Records was “unavailable” when Richard Marx called.

· Sat in the studio for almost 12 hours to help DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill organize the records he wanted to sample. (He was mesmerized by the Rocky soundtrack.)

· Purchased many grocery items from 7-Eleven for Ugly Kid Joe. 

· Cleaned up the upstairs lounge area after several very intoxicated members of the band Urge Overkill left a huge mess. 

· Saved a parking spot for Michael Franti.

· Was asked not to attend a G. Love and Special Sauce session because I had the “wrong energy.” 

Eventually, the lack of payment and the little knowledge I had gained did wear me down, and I had to stop being a full-time studio rat and go back to waiting tables instead. I tried to intern at Matador Records in Manhattan, but I was commuting from my parent’s house in the Pennsylvania suburbs, and I was less available than the dozens of young NYU kids who could hang around all day. Guy Oseary came off my wall soon after that. 

My son begins School of Rock’s “Introduction to Songwriting” next week. I hope he maintains his interest long enough for me to tell him all my stories and how much I loved hanging around the studios all day, overstimulated by coffee and cigarettes, and never getting paid for any of it. I want to tell him I once scraped the tape off the board that made Led Zeppelin II. I want to show him how I can roll cable. And I’m eager to tell him backup plans are a complete waste of time.