Live Reviews

Young guns

Battle of the High School Bands, Harpers Ferry, March 31, 2007

By JEFF BREEZE | April 3, 2007

Gerard Mellen

The windows at the front of Harpers Ferry are disorienting when a concert starts at 1 in the afternoon. With the sun bouncing off all of the cars driving past, it’s hard not to be distracted into looking outside, and that shatters the illusion that you’re in a cavernous nightclub checking out live bands. So as the third of four semifinal rounds in the 13th annual Battle of the High School Bands — an adjunct of sorts to the Rock ’n’ Roll Rumble that started the next night at Harpers — got going last Saturday afternoon, only the real stalwarts (parents, perhaps) stayed focused on the stage during sets by eight bands from places like Canton, Sudbury, and Needham.

High-school kids can be shy. Some bands were so lacking in confidence that their singers merely mumbled into the microphones, and the guitarist only gingerly touched his strings. Even the one metal band of the day — Framingham’s Cadaveryne — had their amps set at a volume that made it perfectly acceptable for grandparents to sit in the front row. Each outfit was showcasing someone who might become a decent rocker in the future, surrounded by the rest of the best his town/school had to offer.

The surprise came when Groton’s Gerard Mellen — a band, not an individual — took the stage. Suddenly we were confronted with indie-rockers who had both the confidence and the ideas to do more than mimic familiar influences. That raised the bar — and the overall energy level — for the groups who followed: Groton’s power-poppy Red Shift, Canton’s emo Jack’s Obsession, and Brookline’s garage-rocking the Dirty Fences.

Regardless of the quality of the bands (Gerard Mellen won), it was refreshing to see so many high-school kids working hard to produce new music. Here was evidence that it’s not just college students who account for the vitality of the local scene. There was, however, one big void in the afternoon of young rocking: there may have been a lot of girls in the audience, but there weren’t any on stage. The final is scheduled for April 14, with the winners receiving scholarships to Berklee College of Music’s summer program.