pampelmoose Dave Allen of Gang of Four’s Music and Media Blog

This week the Third Annual Pendleton Rock Camp takes place. It’s a week-long event and I am out here in Eastern Oregon volunteering along with members of Point Juncture, WA, Laura Gibson, Casey Jarman, Paul Collins of Beirut and many more. It’s free for the kids and they love it. This morning, Day 1, I spent a couple of hours teaching young bass players the vagaries of my sloppy bass style and taught them to play Damaged Goods while explaining that you don’t throttle the neck of the bass, you find the balance - they ignored me and started to play all at once…..they’ll get there. Tomorrow will be a GarageBand session on the laptop to build some drum loops and have them come up with cool bass lines. These group sessions take place for guitar, vocal and drumming as well as horns and strings, all over the Pendleton Arts Center’s building. Casey meanwhile is teaching erstwhile rock journalists the tricks of his trade. I have shot tons of video footage so stay tuned to see the kids in action. The future of rock starts now….in Pendleton. Hell, Yeah!! Here’s a video from last year with one of the kids’ bands playing Iggy Pop’s ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog.’ The whole thing was kicked off by Peter Walters who founded the camp. There’s more info here.

Here’s the full line-up of musicians volunteering:

Rock and Roll Camp 2008. Monday, July 28-Friday August 1

Peter Walters, Point Juncture, WA, Paul Collins: Beirut, Laura Gibson, Thomas Paul, Dave Allen, Levi Cecil: Heroes & Villians, Leviathan, Maranda Dabel: Heroes & Villians, Advisory Scott McGee: Loch Lomond, Nick Jaina’s Band, Randy Bemrose: Junkface, The Metal Shakespeare Co., Aaron Miller: Deer and the Doe, Jeremy Hadley: Velella Velella, Invisible City Booking, Rachel Blumberg: Norfolk & Western, M. Ward, Bright Eyes, and ex-Decemberist