Week in Review

Ellery's Rock and Roll Camp...

The premise is simple, give a group of inexperienced 9 - 11 year olds a chance to play an electric guitar, bass guitar, drums and keyboards and to sing the classics (e.g. Led Zeppelin and The Who), set them up with a smoke machine, amplifiers and modest light show and see what happens.

What happens is incredibly loud (if you are a member of the audience), but is a hoot for the participants. Most amazing was the fact that you could almost pick out recognizable tunes at the hour-long Battle of the Bands Friday afternoon. (From a technical standpoint, the trick to one week guitar instruction was to teach each student how to play one note and then have enough guitars that you could arrange them sort of like those handbell-ringers...)

Ellery playing the bass for "The Immigrant Song" (Note the very stylish Rock and Roll pink and purple hair...Ellery dipped the ends of her ponytails in Manic Panic for the occasion!)




Ellery belting out "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "My Generation"

I'm pretty proud of her for that. Although the jury is still out on whether Ellery's vocal abilities favour mine (a croaker) or DH's (very passable baritone), she did volunteer to sing solo in front of a large group of adults and older students. Moxie makes up for a lot!


Clare had a eventful week as well, scoring a highly prized Green Belt at her Martial Arts Camp. (Pictures to follow later...I paid big bucks for the photo disk...darn it, I'm gonna post them!)

Gillian is over her cold and back at school/camp.

Oh and for anyone else who is keeping track of such things....45 days till the start of school.