Josh Kim, who will be a junior this fall at Gunn High School, has some simple advice for any student who wants to be in a band.
"Just make sure everyone you know knows that you do what you do, and you're interested in being in a band -- and you're good at guitar or whatever."
It worked for him.
He was sitting in Spanish class when classmate Peter Dietrich sauntered over and asked him if he wanted to join his band. Dietrich, now a senior, needed a singer, and had noticed Kim in the school's choir.
"It had never even crossed my mind to be in a band until some guy walked up and asked me," Kim said. Now the two, along with senior Evan Reiss, have been playing together for almost a year as "Legaro." They play at local "Battle of the Bands" events and are planning to promote their demo at clubs in San Jose this summer.
Performing is "lots of fun -- we get a good response and it's a rush to play in front of people," Kim says of their experience.
Although most youth bands characterize their music as punk, or simply rock and roll, a wide variety of sounds are represented. The youth band scene ranges from rockers, like Kim, to more traditional groups such as the Gunn Jazz Combo, which plays local gigs during the summer.
"There's definitely a scene. Just by knowing I'm in a band people come up and talk to me who normally wouldn't. There are lots of people to jam with. I don't know so much about talent but there's a lot of people who want to jam," Kim said.
Other high school students have a different take on the Palo Alto youth-band scene.
"There's a very small scene, but its so underground its hard to find it," said Jason Brownstein, a sophomore at Menlo-Atherton High School.
"Yeah, there should be a local venue, or something," added Alex Moledoc, a sophomore at Palo Alto High School.
"If you think there's nothing here (in Palo Alto), you should try Menlo Park," Brownstein said.
Geoff Franklin, a June graduate of Paly, characterizes the scene harshly: "Everyone here is just posers and they drive their BMWs and they think that they're from the ghetto and just listen to rap."
Franklin, Moledoc and Brownstein, plus David Hazen (Franklin's boss at the Jiffy Lube on El Camino Real), constitute the band, "Joy's Panic." In the few months they have been together they have managed to put together a CD, "Gonna Get Cha," and have played the Paly quad a few times.
Their songs' themes range from burning down a McDonald's, being unable to keep appointments, stealing a microphone from the robotics team (they later returned it) and suicide.
"We're making live music until we get established and then we can worry about being socially conscious and playing songs about the rainforest. We're just making fun music," Hazen said.
Joy's Panic members agree that Gunn is more supportive of music than Paly, and are disappointed with other Paly bands that only play famous songs instead of writing original music.
"They're a bunch of posers," Franklin said.
Elle Stacy, a Gunn senior and punk aficionado, agrees that the lack of a venue for student musicians hurts the Palo Alto band scene.
"I think that if there was a place it would have a turnout. It would have to be in the right place. Paly and Gunn are like two different worlds -- there's no communication between the schools," she said.
"The only way it would work is if the youth could go crazy, tag on the walls and play loud music -- if it was for youth and run by youth, not adults, and if it was allowed to be a little run-down.
"Just because the bathrooms aren't sparkling doesn't mean it needs to be shut down. I think that the youth would test it to see how crazy they could go and if they could go crazy they'd come back. I think Palo Alto needs it."
Stacy concedes that some teens do play at Palo Alto's teen center, "The Drop", at the Mitchell Park Community Center, but complains that the atmosphere is not really appropriate for punk music.
"They have some pretty cute, tiny little bands. It's small and not really a great venue (for punk music) because its a community center. It's like a gym and they make it dark and bands come and sell their CDs," she said.
Stacy likes punk music in part for its "sense of community," but says she has to travel as far as Berkeley to find good shows. "I'd discovered (in punk music) something I was really into, a place where I could be me and belong. But that's not around here. ...There's only like two punker kids at Gunn."
Stacy sees Palo Alto's affluence contributing to the lack of a punk scene.
"There's nothing for kids to do here, but most of them don't really get into the small-band scene. Lots of them have money and they spend it going to larger concerts. A lot of people from my school are going to BFD," she said, referring to the large, mainstream concert at Shoreline Amphitheater.
"They've got their weed and rich cars so they're satisfied."
Ben Sanders, a senior at Gunn next year, disagrees. "They way I look at it, the one underground thing that goes on these days is the punk scene," he said of the dominant influence on his band, "Choji Moji."
Although he describes his band's sound as mainly "silly," he notes a heavy punk influence.
"We play everything from video-game music to punk, improv, emo, metal, classic, punk covers of classic songs, classic covers of punk songs. Everything," he said.
Sanders met his band-mates -- Paly graduates Bobby Burns, Chris Webber, Scott Benson and the late Adrian Heideman -- at the Palo Alto Children's Theater. Hiedeman died in 2000 as a freshman at Chico State University from consuming too much alcohol at a fraternity party, but Sanders said they still consider him a member of the band.
"We just started goofing around, recording on the computer," Sanders said. "We're a bunch of nerds. That's what its all about.
"Eventually we started playing real music, working with Bobby Burns, and combined into one mesh of loving goodness."
The band has been having "surprisingly good luck," Sanders said, describing one after-school performance at Castilleja School. "We were all set up on the lawn when everyone started coming out of the classrooms, and we started playing. It was great. We were even allowed to be there."
Choji Moji also has preformed at Paly and Gunn, and has even had one paid gig at Molotov, a San Francisco bar. The bar owner's son was fixing Burns' water heater and noticed that he was in a band. So he asked Burns if he would like to play at his dad's bar. They've been invited back.
Despite a lack of consensus on the scope and magnitude of the Palo Alto youth band scene, there is unanimous agreement that as long as there are youth who love music, whatever the style, they will find others to play with.
"Music is just fun," Kim said. "You can play by yourself, and that's a lot of fun, but playing with other people takes it to another level."
E-mail Kyla Farrell at kfarrell@paweekly.com.
