Chris Stimeling was a study in four-string stoicism on the stage at the 123 Pleasant Street music venue Sunday afternoon.
He was part of an outfit that called itself Chorus of Chaos.
The band, to the whoops and cheers from the audience, was happily living up to its name
It was tearing through the Quiet Riot version of “Come On, Feel the Noise,” the original hair-metal singalong that the boys in the Riot resurrected in 1983.
Yep, resurrected.
The original version was actually a decade old by then.
It was first a hit in the U.K. in 1973 for Slade, the British glam-rockers — but the boys in the Chorus likely didn’t know that.
Heck, none of them were around in 2003, even.
Most of the boys in this band are 12 years of age. You can bet your old Bob Seger “Live Bullet” CD that you’ve got at least two concert tour T-shirts in your dryer older than that.
They didn’t care who recorded it first.
All they knew was that it was their song for now.
Chris, meanwhile, was doing what most bass players do in such sonic circumstances.
He was standing in one spot, bearing down on his maroon-finish Epiphone axe, and rocking the root note right to the final, “We get wild, wild, wild.”
Travis Stimeling, his WVU music professor dad, gave a knowing smile in the direction of the stage.
He knows exactly what it’s like to play in front of a raucous, adoring crowd.
Even if his music of choice couldn’t be more opposite from that of his progeny.
The elder Stimeling is a performer, musicologist and author who directs the bluegrass and old-time music divisions in the College of Creative Arts at West Virginia University.
“Man,” he said, “I would have killed for a gig like this when I was his age.”
From the wings of 123’s tiny stage, another Chris gave a musical Amen.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Chris Russell said, grinning.
No argument there
Russell is the executive director 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.
Sunday was PopShop’s annual Rocktoberfest concert, the reason for all that above noise.
Seventeen bands in all were on the bill, and part of the admission price was a non-perishable item for Pantry Plus, a local food bank.
PopShop’s executive director is a kinetic, ultra-enthused percussionist who studied music at WVU and drummed for its famed Pride of West Virginia Marching Band.
After graduation, he sat behind the drum kit as a member of The Argument, the former Morgantown-based band that made a national name in the 1990s for its deft musicianship and sharp (occasionally daft) lyrics.
He and his bandmates were still touring when they founded PopShop in 2004 and plugged in at an old storefront in Osage.
Today, PopShop operates out of the former Woodburn Elementary School, near Sabraton.
The idea, he said, was to get people into music, in a fun way.
That meant learning songs, not scales, in the company of other people wielding instruments. You know: A band.
You’ll hear PopShop rock, PopShop country, PopShop jazz and PopShop pop.
Classes are in 6-week sessions and open to students from 8 years of age to adult. Visit PopShop on Facebook to find out more how it works.
Let there be rock
Russell said its creativity on a reverse-engineering scale.
Students first learn how to play a song, usually by memorization.
Then, he and other instructors start introducing music theory.
“We’ll say, ‘Hey, did you know you’re playing that guitar solo in the pentatonic blues scale?’ Stuff like that. We give the technique, then we give them the intellectual structure.”
Chris Stimeling gave himself his own music punctuation as he and his Chorus of Chaos bandmates left the stage.
“OK,” the bass player said. “That. Was. Cool.”
TWEET @DominionPostWV.
