Turning it Up to Eleven

The music room is at maximum capacity, as students hurriedly bring in extra stacks of chairs to accommodate their audience. There’ll be less room on the dance floor, but at least those have been eagerly anticipating the Rock School’s latest showcase event will be able to experience the growth of both the program and its students to its full effect.

The Rock School program is unique in that it is the only program in the Lower Mainland that, in addition to the musical curriculum, also includes a woodworking portion of the course. It allows the students to construct and design their own guitars and basses, and many performed with their own creations that night. In addition to this, all avenues of the creative process are explored: from the song writing to the performance itself, the students are given a well-rounded perspective of the music as an art and an industry. Their show that night was essentially their midterm mark, with all bands being graded on both their sound and stage presence.

The myriad of genres being performed is a reflection on the students’ differing talents, but each set flows with astonishing smoothness into the other. Many performers, in fact, played in or guest starred in each other’s bands.

The night began with Calm Through the Chaos, a metal band performing numbers such as “Basketcase” and “For Whom the Bells Toll”. Next was the indie-folk duo Kyle+Noah, who played “Robots” by Dan Mangan, “City of Angels”, “Comin’ Home”, as well as debuting their original song, “Motion of the Ocean”. For their final song, Kyle was joined by Jordan Young of Boston Sushi for the duet, “Lucky”. Crudely Drawn was next, performing covers of “Your Guardian Angel” and “Could Have Been a Lady”, as well as their original songs “I Procrastinate”, “Intergalactic Highway”, and “Friend Ship”. Next was A Chance of Wolves, playing a fun and varied set ranging from Taylor Swift’s “You Belong to Me” to “Yoshimi” by The Flaming Lips. Solo artist Riley Davis took to the microphone next, to Switchfoot’s “This Is Home” and The Fray’s “All At Once”.

It was then Boston Sushi’s turn to dominate the stage and the music room with their powerful covers of “Hand Grenade”, “Moving to New York” by the Wombats, the Foo Fighters’ “But, Honestly”, “Use Somebody” by the Kings of Leon, and “The Fixer”.

Finally, the night’s whirlwind of musical styles concluded with the death metal band Manufactured Faith, performing “The Fading Line”, “Beneath Dying Skies”, “Apex”, and ending the show with the song “This Could Be Anywhere in the World”.

THSS’s Rock School program has proved time and time again that when it comes to their passions, they are absolutely fearless; both on stage and in their music. From here, they will continue to pen their original songs, and are currently working on recording and compiling a CD of their work. Judging by their growth and maturity from the beginning of the year to this halfway point, they promise to bring their performance to another whole new level at their year-end show.