'School of Rock' Comes to My House

Most kids today grow up in homes that are childproofed for their own protection. My kids grew up in a household that was Andrew Lloyd Webber-proofed. Not a note of Lord LW's lugubrious bombast ever penetrated my daughters' defenseless ears. This was not a proactive choice on my part. It was just so
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Most kids today grow up in homes that are childproofed for their own protection. My kids grew up in a household that was Andrew Lloyd Webber-proofed. Not a note of Lord LW's lugubrious bombast ever penetrated my daughters' defenseless ears. This was not a proactive choice on my part. It was just so.

Lea and Sara could (and can) hear pretty much any kind of music around our place, from Miles to Moby to Mina, the venerable Italian pop star. They can hear real Puccini and pseudo-Puccini but not Andrew Lloyd Webber's ersatz Puccini. I just don't play it. No doubt ALW is a fine fellow. (Though I did meet him once and came away with my dubiousness reinforced -- an encounter I wrote about in a book some years back, EVER AFTER: The Last Years of Musical Theater and Beyond. You could look it up.) In any case, I can't say that I've given ALW and/or his music even a minute's thought in a very long time.

Not until my daughters began clamoring recently to see School of Rock.

All right, I thought, it was a funny movie. All right, without Jack Black, it's probably going to be less funny. All right, with some guy imitating Jack Black it's probably going to be painfully less funny. And the music is by Andrew Lloyd Webber. All right already! All right.

I got the tickets.

The Webberian bombast begins at the volume levels, unsurprisingly. From the get-go, School of Rock is pretentiously LOUD. It's a cheap signifier. For over the hill rockers and over the hill listeners, ROCK=LOUD.

Of course, ALW has made a career (and several fortunes) out of cheap signifiers. His ability to latch onto the most commercial ideas and run them straight into the ground musically until we all holler "Uncle!" clearly is an ongoing gift. School of Rock will make a lot of money. The kid actors in it are great. They play their own instruments (as ALW himself informs us in a smarmy voice-over just before the curtain goes up). The adorability of these kids+instruments will sell this show. Parents in the one-percent stratum will take their kids to see the kids and the instruments and then see themselves onstage as the over-privileged kids' parents behaving badly and feel guilty and tell their friends to go. The book, by Downton Abbey's Julian Fellowes, no less, is cynically manipulative, and the music more than matches it.

All of which, of course, is irrelevant where my kids are concerned. What I thought about School of Rock is irrelevant. My girls adored it. "This is so awesome!" Lea shouted at me over the sonic roar of ALW's retread rock, as sound bites from The Who and Cheap Trick and so many other overfamilars recycled through the Winter Garden Theater.

Beside her, Sara nodded wildly, beaming.

"Why awesome? I asked them both later, when they could hear me.

"It's the first show we've seen together where there were kids in the audience my own age!" Lea, who is almost 13, replied with perfect hyperbole.

"It's the first show where the story was about kids and what they really feel!" Sara, who is 10, added.

"It's the first show with really loud rock and roll!" Lea crowed.

"I've never been to a show with such loud music," Sara mused. "I kind of liked it. But I had to get used to it."

"What is your problem with Andrew Lloyd Webber?" asked Lea suddenly. "Is all of his music like this? I mean, now I want to see Phantom of the Opera!"

"You too?" I asked Sara.

"Maybe," she replied after a moment. "Let me think about it."
~

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