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The American adult has at his disposal a nearly infinite number of alternate realities: baseball fantasy camp, poker fantasy camp, space camp (yes, it's for grown-ups too) — the ostensible appeal being a Choose-Your-Own-Adventurish taste of a more glamorous life that you passed up.
Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp is a five-day, $8,500 traveling program that enlists musicians from bygone bands like Bad Company, Kiss and Winger to transform amateur would-be musicians into pretend rock stars. Campers audition to determine their skill level — all are welcome, "no musical experience necessary." After being divided up into bands, each with its own rock-star counselor, the campers rehearse for four days before the week culminates in a "Battle of the Bands" at the casino-like Times Square nightclub B.B. King.
Until about a year ago, I was a singer, keyboardist and bassist in a band called the Isotoners. We played for big crowds at the tip-top of the bottom tier of New York venues. We got good write-ups in various alt-weeklies and magazines, including this one. But by 2005, my bandmates and I had deadlocked in a clichéd ego war that drove our band to a dramatic and ludicrous end. In our final days, the mood was so acrimonious that we were dividing our set lists for each show to equally reflect each band member's songwriting, just to avoid confrontation. Only a week after playing a College Music Journal showcase — with potential for national exposure — it was all over. I no longer think of rock and roll as the stuff of fantasy.
So when I was invited to Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp — not as a seasoned performer, but as a reporter — I arrived with a cynical notion of the rock experience. I hadn't anticipated that spending time practicing and performing in the bubble of fantasy, without power struggles or bad blood, would remind me that playing rock and roll in a band is a dream for many people, some of whom would be my bandmates for the next five days.
Day One: Making the Band
I arrived at the Gibson Showroom in Hell's Kitchen for registration at 12:30 p.m. sharp, but rock and roll, in atypical fashion, appeared to be running early. Gibson is located on the bottom two floors of the old Hit Factory, the recording studios where thirty years ago Stevie Wonder recorded Songs in the Key of Life and three years ago Missy Elliot recorded "Pass That Dutch." On the floors above, a condominium conversion is underway. Outside, directly above the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp banner welcoming the new campers, was a larger sign offering passers-by a chance to "live in the house that rock built."
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| Outside the B.B. King club in Times Square. |
I picked up an itinerary and a badge. The itinerary said we'd be auditioning for the celebrity counselors ("Don't be nervous! This is fun!") who'd divide us into bands. Later, there would be a welcome party where they'd announce the band rosters. The badge had my photo on it, with the words ROCK STAR printed above it in capital letters.
Just then, a guy introduced himself to me. It was Howard Gordon, forty-seven, a real-estate attorney and developer from Teaneck, New Jersey, eleven years married, father of two, and unless his badge was lying, a ROCK STAR, just like me. The two of us enjoyed an awkward silence. Uh boy, I thought, if we're going to suspend disbelief, we've got our work cut out for us. Kara, one of the six perky, young "tour managers" — the one who most resembled Jessica Simpson — handed me a card with a number on it that indicated when I'd be auditioning to the Monkees' "Daydream Believer."
As I mingled, I discovered that not everyone at rock camp was a corporate serf pining for his virile past. One of the youngest campers, a twenty-year-old student from Chicago named Dominic, was dressed entirely in black save for the flame-job on his Converse hi-tops and the white Cramps logo on his T- shirt. He liked to play classic rock on his duct-taped hollow-body guitar "old style, like George Thorogood," one of his heroes and a rock camp "guest star." Dominic had sold the engine of his old Chevy Blazer to pay for camp, figuring that if he wanted to, he could "always build another one."
And there was thirty-three-year-old Tim Olsen from Queens, who'd won his ticket to rock camp on a classic-rock radio contest. He'd given up professional opera singing for the more stable life of an insurance accountant. When he said the word "accountant," Tim made a Gene Simmons-tongued rock face and gave me the horned hand.
It soon became clear that many campers were actually talented. It also became clear that if I never hear Cream's "Crossroads" again, it will be too soon. The last campers auditioned to Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild," and drummer Max Weinberg, of Springsteen and Conan O'Brien fame, took the stage to give props to the youngest camper, sixteen-year-old drummer George Schmitz from Kansas City, who nailed every lick of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll."
George, a quiet, straight-A kid, has played drums since he was twelve. He's in three bands back home, one of which had recently been signed to a small indie label. George's dad, John, told me that he and his wife were not looking forward to telling their son that he wasn't allowed to go on tour.
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Say what you want about Kip Winger studying ballet back in the day, the man can wail out a mean "Purple Haze" while holding down a wicked bass line.
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"Fortunately, we didn't have to," John said — George's band broke up before the ink dried on the record deal. As consolation, George's parents sent him to rock camp instead. At the last-minute suggestion of his wife, John, a guitar player with a band of his own, decided to join him and make it a bonding experience.
We broke for dinner, after which it was time to announce the audition results. As each rocker/counselor came to the mike to announce his band's line-up, his career was highlighted via pre-recorded audio. Eventually, a soft-spoken man with long hair and long limbs trotted up to the mike and called out his band roster. "Ben Lerman on bass," he said. It was Mark Slaughter, whose eponymous band's two-year stretch of MTV glory stirred only vague memories.
Counselors took to the stage to jam, and say what you want about Kip Winger studying ballet back in the day, the man can wail out a mean "Purple Haze" while holding down a wicked bass line.
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