Inside Look: Thomas Paul

Age: 31
Years at Rock Camp: 1
Hometown: Idaho Falls, ID

Thomas Paul at 31 can usually be described by his students as being “pretty much a genius.” He was born in Idaho Falls and went to Idaho State before he dropped out. He realized that what he wanted to do was to help teach music to kids. He works at a charter school helping nine and ten year olds play music and learn the fundamentals of being in a band. He plays many instruments but likes to sing the most.

Levi Cecil is considered to be his “favorite” student and also his “best bud,” along with all the other students. When asked about his favorite place to play a show, he noted that the Great Pacific was “of course” his favorite place.

Thomas listed his hobbies as running, playing basketball, and other “normal guy stuff.” He really likes to watch movies and cited that Grease 2 was “so much better than the first.” He also recommends that both Batman movies with “either Jack Nicholson or Heath Ledger are good ones to watch.” Thomas Paul in his first year at camp is a much loved and respected person.

By Sarah

Inside Look: Skyler Norwood

Age: 29
Years at rock camp: 3
Hometown: Portland, Or.

“My worst fear? Being physically unable to play music.” Skyler Norwood says. Then he goes quiet for a second, thinking, “babies are also my worst fear. They are slimy, and just in general they’re scary.” This quote shows that, behind his big glasses and musical talent, he can be not only serious, but also really fun. Skyler is in his third year at the rock camp and is beloved by the campers here.

Skyler works as a producer at his studio in Portland, his hometown. He is also in the band Point Juncture, WA. Being in the band has gotten him a very interesting tattoo and a story to match. It is his “heart to elk tattoo that I got at four in the morning.” He goes on to tell that, though he wishes he got it on different terms (like in the middle of the day when the other band members had gotten the same tattoo) he still loves it.

Skyler plays many instruments, such as the guitar and the vibraphone (along with lasers!), but thinks that the drums are his favorite thing to play and says that he is “all right” at them. Clear blue happens to be his favorite color and Wilson—his bandmate and fellow counselor—is his favorite student. He also loves to play at the Great Pacific. And he is just happy to be “rocking it with the students.”

By Sarah Saenz

Inside Look: Miranda Dabel

Age: 28
Number of Years at Camp: 2
Hometown: Idaho Falls, Idaho

As a student coming to the Pendleton Rock and Roll camp this year, you are greeted by a group of diverse counselors. With all the differences, each is brought to the Pendleton Center for the Arts for the same reason: To help inspire kids to get into music. If Rock Camp somehow turned into a Rock and Roll High School, Maranda would easily end up with the yearbook superlative of “Coolest/Best Hair”. Her red orange pixie cut stands out all on its own.

When not helping out with the camp, Maranda can be found slinging coffee or working in her garden—she says she has around twenty different kinds of vegetables. She listed bass guitar, guitar, mandolin, xylophone and kazoo—thrown in because she found it funny—as instruments she liked to play. Of course, if she’s able to play instruments, she must have a band, right? Actually, she has a couple: Heroes & Villains and Advisory.

Throughout a person’s musical career, many artists have a particular show or moment in music that stands out for them. I asked Maranda what hers was, and she had no problem recalling a show she had played in her home city of Portland. She had been playing with her band Heroes & Villains, and even though she explained her feeling of being on top of the world with words, the look on her face clearly explained it all. The happiness she had at that moment was not only her own, she said, but it was shared with the rest of the band and the crowd. “The audience was so quiet, you could have heard a pin drop,” Maranda explained, thinking back.

It’s easy to see that with Maranda, music isn’t just simply something she listens to in the car to fill in awkward silences, it’s a passion. From camps to concerts, she’s in it for the love and has come to rock camp to help share that same passion with the kids. She says she just wants to help her students “find love in music.”

-Paige Snively

My Problem With "Special Edition" Re-Releases

These days in the music world, we all know that there is a little thing called “the Internet” that is getting in the way of sales. There are some people that choose to use their favorite file sharing network to get the tracks and albums they want, instead of paying for the CD itself. Artists and labels thought that they were one-upping us when they thought to re-press their albums into new and improved “special edition” disks packed with bonus tracks and unreleased b-sides. This, above all things, aggravates me.

First of all, even if you do re-release the album, do you think that those of the music community that downloaded illegally in the first place are going to go out and buy the album this time? It would be so much easier to just wait for the few hundred people that did buy it to upload it onto the Internet. Free and easy.

Secondly, if I were a true fan of the artist and went and bought the album the first time, I wouldn't appreciate the record company trying to take advantage of that. If the artist goes along with it, I personally feel that they are only in it for the money instead of the love of the music. The true fans are the ones that show up to the shows, not the ones buying everything that the band puts out—like miniature dolls created of themselves. If they wanted to try and make money on b-sides, they could put the individual tracks up on iTunes instead of putting out a re-release. Honestly, I would probably just go to LiveJournal and ask around until I found the new tracks instead of putting up another twenty bucks or so to basically pay for a bunch of songs I already own.

In the end, illegal downloading is never going to go away. So, all of this leaves me with the question, “Why even bother with re-releasing an already pressed album just for a few more songs?”

-Paige Snively

Don't Be Too Quick To Judge

BY: MELODY JUSTICE

Boys Like Girls, from Boston Massachusetts, is a four-piece alternative rock/emo band. If you're a fan of bands like Cute Is What We Aim For, Hit The Lights, or The All American Rejects, you'll most likely be into these guys. They're also the most down to earth guys I know and they don't let fame get to their heads.
When I first met them I really didn't know who they were, to me they were just some opening band for Cartel—but I instantly fell in love with them, even before they started playing. As Bryan was strumming on his bass guitar his blonde hair flew every time he swung his head, and John (on the drums) was never without a smile on his face. You could tell they loved what they were doing. The band's sound was different than everyone else's: It wasn't too much of any genre, it was just right, the lyrics fit perfectly with the melodies they played.
They say being on the road is stressful. In an interview with Alternative Press Magazine, frontman Martin Johnson said “The 'glamorous' lifestyle of bus touring isn't all it's made out to be. Once you're in a bus, a lot of freedoms you never knew you had are gone.” I think that they enjoy it still, though, because in another interview (also with Alternative Press) Martin says “It's been a blast, but it's draining.” Draining or not, they're still good to their fans.
So think twice about judging Boys Like Girls, because one minute you could be listening to a funky upbeat song like “Dance Hall Drug” and the next you could be listening to the much softer “Thunder,” don't just assume that the song you hear on the radio by them is what their whole CD sounds like—give them a chance!

Mosh Pit Experiences

Every rocker loves the feeling of a live concert. From the ear splitting loudness to the nostalgia kick you get when the band plays your favorite song—but there is nothing like a mosh pit. Every ounce of adrenaline starts pumping throughout your body and you completely lose yourself in the moment. Although there are many amazing things that come with a mosh pit, sometimes situations go horribly wrong. We interviewed a few campers and even a counselor about their worst mosh pit experiences.

The first camper we questioned was Chris, and his answer definitely did not lack an edge. He was at Sounds of the Underground—a festival at the Gorge in George, Washington—when he got a vision he will not soon forget. While watching the band Emure, he saw that a guy had fallen in the pit. Apparently nobody bothered to pick him up and a larger guy that was moshing in the pit ended up jumping on the fallen guy’s neck. Needless to say, he didn’t end up shaking it off and just getting up on his feet. Actually, the impact of the jump broke his neck and his spinal chord pierced through his skin; thus causing his death. This was easily one of the worst stories we heard.

Eddie, a guitar player at camp, was at a show that he was playing in at La Grande. He had needed to talk to a bandmate, so he decided to just go into the packed crowd and find him before his band’s set time. He got behind his friend, but merely yelling was not getting his attention, so he decided to push him. His push was the first domino to fall. Pretty soon the whole crowd was a huge pit, and in the end, Eddie had intentionally started a mosh pit for the show.

Another horrifying story came from another rock camper named Trevor. It was a Bad Religion concert, but he didn’t even have to be in the pit to witness the scene. Just on the edge of the stage there was a large chain-link fence wrapped around the band, creating a cage so that crowd surfers couldn’t rush the stage. One man decided to climb the chain link and was pulled off by the back off his shirt. Trevor says the man fell, and somehow wound up having his jugular ripped from his throat.

On a slightly lighter note, Andy, a camp counselor, had gone to a Less Than Jake set at the Warped tour and someone had put a trampoline in the pit. As you can imagine, it quickly turned into chaos as everyone was launching themselves from the trampoline. With the music blaring and the trampoline bouncing, Andy became totally disoriented—he said that he had gotten turned around at least twenty times during the show. He wasn’t the only one: At one point, the whole mosh pit fell over. Imagine being squished between a bunch of guys and having no choice but to fall down with everyone else. Even though everyone could have just gotten mad about it, people just started helping each other up and got back to moshing.

Lastly, we talked to Aislinn about her worst mosh pit experience. She was at a From First To Last show, in the front of the pit, when she saw a guy get hit by a swinging mic. The mic had cut his face and blood got onto her new white band shirt she had just bought at the show. Even as one of the less intense stories, we can all agree that spending money on a band shirt just to get it stained with some random guy’s blood would really ruin a good mosh pit.

From deaths to bloody shirts, a mosh pit can be a horrible place to find yourself. But the rush you get from being in the pit easily makes the risk worth while. Hell, what would a rock concert be without getting to jump with the beat of the bass drum while rubbing against a bunch of random people? Not fun, that’s what.

-Paige Snively

Inside Look: Chris

Age: 18

Number of Years at Camp: 3
Hometown: Pendleton, OR

Chris came to Pendleton's Rock camp this year, not expecting too much out of the week. Mostly he came to see what he could “pull out of his butt” musically. He recently started a band--mainly just a bunch of friends playing together. In that band (they don't have a name yet), Chris plays his twenty piece drum kit, but for the camp he's only going to bring about half of it. His drum kit is an assortment of different brands that he's bought over the years. He started playing drums when he was around eleven years old.

Not only is Chris a radically stellar drum player, but he also sings, screams, growls, does the popular “pig squeal” and plays the piano, bass and guitar. Chris wants to attend Gonzaga college in Spokane. “I would like to become a music producer, or a politician.” he said.

For now, his life is very in tune with the music community. His older cousin is in the band Vanna, and he even had the chance to play the drums on tour with them for a month (their drummer had broken his arm just a bit before the band started their tour). His cousin promptly called him up and asked if Chris could play for them, the remainder of the tour. He ended up playing six shows, earning nearly seven thousand dollars, and playing at venues in Seattle, Spokane, Portland and California.

Chris is obviously an already successful musician. But “It's mainly a hobby for me,” Chris says. “I like to play music because of the feeling I get from playing it, not because of where it could take me.”