Rock ‘n’ roll lives
The Sandridge house in Ivy is an unlikely home for rock ‘n’ roll. A yellow Labrador runs laps in the backyard of this cedar-sided ranch home with a mountain view while two girls, just home from elementary school, bounce a kickball back and forth on the patio. The SUV and a full-size pickup parked in the driveway share matching license plates: “HooMomy” and “HooDady.”
It looks like a suburban utopia, but on a recent Friday afternoon something wicked begins to rumble in the basement. There’s the buzz and crunch of an electric guitar, wet bubbles of bass notes and crashing drum breaks. Underneath the Sandridge living room, The Wave is rolling in.
The Wave is drummer Avery Sandridge, 13; guitarist Willie Denton-Edmundson, age 13; and bassist Marsh Mahon, who just turned 16. The band kicks off an afternoon practice with a rendition of the Jimi Hendrix tune “Fire,” with an opening hook and heavy drum fills that give Avery a chance to rattle the plates stacked in her parents’ cupboard. The band runs through a couple more songs—an original tune called “Tiger,” composed of lines from William Blake’s poetry, will appear on a record the group is recording at Charlottesville’s Music Resource Center. They also do a sing-along version of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” that’s actually a cover of Guns N’ Roses covering Bob Dylan’s 1973 hit.
Former G’N’R guitarist Slash is one of Willie’s musical influences; after earning money playing guitar on the Downtown Mall, Willie purchased a Gibson Les Paul, Slash’s axe of choice. “The guitar is pretty old,” Willie says. “It was made in 1998.”
After the last strains of fuzzed-out guitar fade out, Sherry Sandridge barrels down the stairs, carrying a stopwatch. In the old rock ‘n’ roll story, Mom is supposed to tell you to get a haircut, turn off that godawful noise and clean your room. Not Sherry. She’s got advice about the setlist.
“That puts you at about 18 minutes, and that’s with all the fiddling around in between songs,” Sherry tells The Wave. The band, which formed two years ago to perform Aerosmith’s operatic anthem “Dream On” at the Henley Middle School talent show, is preparing for their biggest gig yet—a Battle of The Bands hosted by ACAC to promote a teen night at their rec center on Four Seasons Drive on Saturday, September 10. Not only will there be hundreds of teenagers assembled to hear
six teenage bands, but first prize is a check for $1,000.
“The sound cuts off at 20 minutes,” says Sherry in a voice like a track coach, “so it looks like you can do four songs.”
Things sure have changed since the late ’60s, when shocked parents called Mick Jagger the devil incarnate; when the Rolling Stones blew through town last week, a lot of parents probably took their kids as a history lesson. Raised by parents who lived the rock generation, The Wave and the rest of Charlottesville’s young teenage bands spend their afternoons kicking out the jams, crammed in among forgotten sports equipment and boxes of outdated wardrobes, and moms and dads don’t seem to be covering their ears or keeping an eye out for Satan. As their kids learn the joys of working together and making a huge racket, they’re also helping to keep their parents’ rock ‘n’ roll dream alive.
The basement tapes
Thomas Reid, 14, pulls off his socks and kicks back in the basement bedroom of his friend and bandmate, Cory Fraiman-Lott, 13. The posters wallpapering the room offer a pretty good insight into the music of their band, The Safety Scissors. The Ramones looking like street toughs in the late ’70s perfectly complement The Hives, a contemporary band playing the latest revival of a back-to-basic genre known as “garage rock.” There’s also a giant blow-up of the cover art for Nirvana’s 1991 album Nevermind, a naked infant swimming toward a dollar bill on a fishhook. On a table is a stencil pattern for a Safety Scissors t-shirt that reads, “Run with us.”
The band members, which also include Edward Rubin, 13, and Ben Hunt, 15, are all students at Buford Middle School, except for Hunt, who attends Charlottesville High School. “When people ask what kind of music you play and you say ‘rock,’ it comes off as, like, we play heavy metal and worship Satan or something,” says Thomas. “I say that we play upbeat music….but we’re not the Osmonds.”
Like other young teenage bands, much of the Safety Scissors’ set list reflects their parents’ record stash.
“My dad has tons of CDs and records,” says Cory. “He was always listening to the Ramones and stuff. Yeah, he’s old. One of his favorite bands is The Who. Now, that’s one of my favorite bands.”
Cory’s father, Eric Lott, is the prototypical cool rock dad. His unkempt blonde hair isn’t quite as long as his son’s wavy purple-dyed mop, but he does play in his own local band, Zag. He taught Cory how to play drums, and he introduced the Safety Scissors to the heavy metal thunder of Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix—on vinyl, no less.
“They play boomer music,” says Lott, laughing at how 30 years ago any self-respecting rock band wouldn’t be caught dead jamming on tunes their parents like. Now, Eric and Cory bond over The Who and The White Stripes the way other sons and dads might share an affection for the Dallas Cowboys.
Charlottesville’s teenage rockers aren’t like the Sex Pistols, yearning to tear down everything that came before. Instead, they approach rock like dutiful apprentices eager to study at the feet of masters like Jimmy Page and Keith Moon. “We missed the great rock by a good 20 or 30 years,” says Thomas.
The Safety Scissors find their link to rock ‘n’ roll history in the basement practice space that adjoins Cory’s room. The basement has been rock’s hallowed ground since the mid-1960s, when bands like The Count 5 inspired the term “garage rock” to describe bands of suburban teenagers playing loud, simple music with youthful abandon. Those kids drew on The Who and the Rolling Stones to create garage rock, which spawned punk, which became independent (or indie) rock, then grunge and The Hives and The White Stripes, on and on, rock without end, amen. The death of rock has been proclaimed many times, but as long as there are teenagers and basements, rock ‘n’ roll isn’t going anywhere.
Besides the instruments, amplifiers and earplugs stacked against packing boxes and old hockey sticks, the Safety Scissors keep a list of band rules taped to a window in the basement that keep the members in line, including “No fighting, no matter what,” and “No fake quitting. If you quit, you’re out for good.”
In their basement, the Safety Scissors, like other fledgling bands, learn to work together and find the space to write out their own rock ‘n’ roll stories. “My life is in there,” says Thomas. “The best thing about being in a band is that you have all your random anecdotes about what happened, like the time we made Ben wear a toga.”
Thomas’ random anecdote, by the way, is the story of how he became the first Safety Scissor to get clocked with a bra, which a classmate brought to throw onstage during a recent show at the Gravity Lounge. “This big red bra hit me right in the face,” he says. “I couldn’t stop laughing.”
Like a rolling stone
Once upon a time, rock ‘n’ roll was a moment. Every rock fan has one—a moment when a song pushes all your buttons in just the right way, when the fantasy of rock ‘n’ roll comes true.
These days, of course, rock is more than just a joyful moment—rock is also a lifestyle industry. The idea that personal identity can be purchased is perhaps most forceful among teenagers, who (in case we don’t remember our own teenage years) spend lots of time and money establishing which groups they belong to, and which ones they don’t.
On Saturday, September 10, Charlottes-ville’s hipsters-in-training showed up to the Battle of the Bands clad in the now-classic rock uniform—t-shirts and jeans—announcing allegiances to the tribes of Guns N’ Roses, Rush, Sublime, Led Zeppelin, Green Day, the Rolling Stones and Homer Simpson. ACAC also passed out glowing hoops the kids wore on their heads or around their necks.
Only teenagers were allowed into the gymnasium, where a disco ball hung from the ceiling above a stage flanked by massive speakers. Parents were allowed to watch from a weightroom overlooking the gym. After 49-year-old Peter Doby helped his 14-year-old son, Graham, and his band, The Deltas, load their equipment into the gym, he retreated upstairs with the rest of the parents.
Like many of the rock ‘n’ roll dads, Doby had his rock moment in the late 1970s. “Me and a buddy were living in Florida,” he says. “We quit our jobs and started jamming, playing in bars. It was a lot of fun.”
Doby’s rock ‘n’ roll dream may be over now, but he had a great seat for his son’s own moment. Just minutes into The Delta’s set, a fuse blew, the amplifiers lost power, and everything went silent. Acting fast, Graham launched into an epic drum solo while ACAC staff fiddled with the electronics. When the juice was finally restored, the audience screamed as The Deltas launched into a medley of songs mostly written a decade before they were born: “Stairway to Heaven,” “Voodoo Child,” “Day Tripper,” “Keep On Rockin’ In The Free World” and “Back in Black.”
“That’s what we’ve been trying to tell them,” says Doby, “that Kurt Cobain wasn’t the first guy to write the song that starts out quiet then ramps up.”
Next up is The Wave. “Are you ready to rock?” asks Willie Denton-Edmundson. The screams confirm the kids are, indeed, ready. Willie has apparently done his homework on Slash. He has perfected
the technique of tossing his blond hair
to and fro to accompany a guitar solo, a move that prompts more high-pitched screaming during their performance of “Tiger.” After the song, the kids crowded in front of the stage all toss their glo-hoops in approval.
Willie’s mother, Liz Denton, supports his musical talent; still, a mother must be concerned when her son takes cues from a former heroin addict named Slash. “I looked at some of the guitar magazines he reads, with an eye to the values that are in there,” Denton says. “The main value is that you have to work hard. I don’t see any negative influence.”
The Safety Scissors worked an encore into their 20-minute set. After their performance of the “Scooby-Doo” theme song, Cory says: “Cheer if you want to hear one more.” The cheers came, and the Scissors launched into a cover of the 2002 song “United States of Whatever” by Liam Lynch.
After the show, reviews are mixed. Alex Peterson liked The Sixth Element, a band that brought their own trailer and played fast-paced punk songs. “They didn’t do the same old songs,” Peterson said. “They had a lot of energy.”
Graham’s drum solo led Katheryn Scott to favor The Deltas. “They had a good recovery after the power outage,” she said.
When the judges had their say, though, the $1,000 first-place prize went to The Wave. They seem to be handling the windfall with maturity. Instead of blowing their winnings on a cupcake bender, they’re using the prize money to have their debut album, Dreamers, professionally mixed.
“We have a song called ‘Dreamers,’” says Willie. “It’s what we want to do when we grow up. Play in a band.”