The Dominion Post
Might as well make a paper airplane out of your birth certificate right now, if you don’t mind.
Or, at the very least, you can stash it under the distortion pedal, for, say, the next two minutes and 12 seconds.
For that matter, do people really need to know that you were a high school junior in the winter of 1976 when “Blitzkrieg Bop” first began busting eardrums in study hall?
Nothing stays in style like a good-old (goofy) three-chord rock ‘n’ roll song.
Such as the above from the Ramones, which was covered Sunday afternoon by a band that took its name — Avada Kedavra — from the nastiest, most snarling spell in all of the Harry Potter Universe.
At the Morgantown music venue 123 Pleasant Street, Avada Kedavra was casting its spell over a phalanx of smartphones there to get it all down, digitally.
The drummer counted off and the band hit it: “Hey, ho, let’s go!” “Hey, ho, let’s go!” “Hey, ho, let’s go!” … and so on.
And that above business about age? Well, the band doing the “Hey, ho, let’s go!” on Sunday still has a bed time. Its members average around 9 years of age, meaning that you probably have at least two concert tour T-shirts in your dryer older than they are, collectively.
Getting a gig
From the wings of the tiny stage, Chris Russell whooped, clapped his hands and bopped to the Bop in the direction of the even-tinier assemblage making all that noise there.
“They’re killing it,” he said. “Rock and roll.”
“Blitzkrieg Bop”: Two minutes, 12 seconds and maybe, a lifetime of memories.
Russell is a co-founder of PopShop, a Morgantown-grown School of Rock designed to give a gig, and the joy of jamming, to musicians of all ages and levels.
He’s a 40-something percussionist who studied music at WVU and drummed for its famed “Pride of West Virginia” marching band.
Later, he said behind the drum kit as a member of The Argument, the former Morgantown-based band that made its national name in the 1990s with musicianship and humor.
He and his bandmates were still touring when they founded PopShop in 2004 and set up shop in Osage. Today, it operates out the former Woodburn Elementary School, near Sabraton.
The idea, Russell said then, was to get people into music, in a fun way.
That meant playing songs, not scales, in the company of other people wielding instruments. You know: A band.
“That’s what it is,” he told The Dominion Post previously. “How do you learn again? By doing.” Classes are held in 6-week sessions and are open to students from 8 years of age to adult.
Russell and the other instructors match them up, by age, into bands — with a focus on playing, and collaborating.
You’ll hear PopShop rock, PopShop country, PopShop blues, PopShop jazz and PopShop, well, pop.
Barre chords and a community’s beating heart
Because this is a community of budding musicians, Sunday’s performance at 123 Pleasant Street was all about the Morgantown community and its surrounding environs.
Twenty-three bands took the stage at 123, and part of the admission price was a non-perishable item for The Pantry Plus, a local food bank.
Rock ‘n’ roll nourished the soul of Carlo Arthurs on Sunday. Carlo, 9, plays lead guitar for Avada Kedavra, and said he would have kept jamming until bedtime had the concert bill allowed.
“I played barre chords all through ‘Blitzkrieg Bop,’ ” he said, with a glow akin to a Fender Twin. “Just like the Ramones.” His dad, Josh Arthurs, a guitarist who also
gigs around town, laughed and ruffled the young rocker’s hair.
“I guess I’m gonna have to start managing his image now.”
