Wow…
Saw this a while ago. Fucking phenomenal. There are a lot of great covers that Aaron O’Keefe’s students perform.
The real School of Rock.
That is so cool
not impressed.
From Nashville Scene magazine:
“Aaron O’Keefe’s Middle School Rock Ensembles Will Make You Want to Quit Music”
Posted by Adam Gold on Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 4:07 PM
Not to make assumptions, but if you’re a Nashville musician (and that means most of you) or a fan of Nashville music (which means some of you), you’re no stranger to what I call Music City Exceptionalism, the belief that every note evaporated from the local talent pool is blessed like holy water and becoming of heavy-handed, hyperbolic sanctimony. It’s the prevailing consensus that not only does our musical shit not stink (contemporary country excluded, of course), but that our shits an incomparably awesome, fragrance-of-roses-trumping bouquet of musically scatological wonder to be snuffled up and wheezed through the nostrils from atop a magical velvet beanbag perched on a rhinestone-encrusted pedestal resting upon the Ryman stage.
Yeah, we’ve arguably got some kick-ass shit happening around here. But what nobody can deny is that with a surplus of pro-gear, pro-attitude stage and studio rats, Nashville certainly has the best cover bands in the world. Guilty Pleasures, My So-Called Band, The Long Players, Mayhem and the rest. But hot damn if they can hold a candle to the precocious wunderkinds under the tutelage of Ohio middle school music teacher Aaron O’Keefe students of the Buckeye State’s Loveland, Maineville and Lebanon Music academies who recently traveled to Nashville’s Tracking Room to school our session vets with impressively executed covers of some pretty fucking hard songs.
Check out O’Keefe’s Kiddos’ cover of alt-prog standard-bearers Tool’s answer to Rush’s 2112, 46 and 2 (above). Not only does the boy behind the skins nail Tool dude Danny Carey’s ejaculatory avalanche of dizzying tom-tom flourishes, he does it with far fewer tom toms. And the singer handles Tool singer Maynard James Keenan’s angsty caterwauling without sounding like an irate customer service caller.
Seriously, the not-totally-heartless among you will love it. …
But did anyone teach those youngsters how to slay Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast? Because holy fucking shit, watch this:"
Ok, this is ridiculous. These kids are amazingly talented and obviously have a great teacher. According to posts on YouTube, the singer, Kala Scarpinski (same singer as the Tool song above), is 11. All I remember from that period of my life is that I was pretty clueless, certainly not tearing up alt-rock and R&B classics like I was born to do it.
These kids can shred like nobody’s business.
awesome!!!
These kids are killing it. I hope we get more from them later down the road and not just covers, but new material. I can’t stand the soft techno shit being played today.