And the kiddies
will lead them

Monster Dudes bring the fanciful chaos of a children's fantasy world to rock.

By George Chen
San Francisco Bay Guardian

AT A WAREHOUSE show in Portland, Ore., the high ceilings and a three-foot stage look even huger when looming over a 5-year-old boy playing drums and then tackling his bandmates, who crawl on the floor in sleeping bags, making monster sounds. The mix of masked men and electronic noise has been old hat for a while – throwing an earmuffed moppet into the equation changes the rules of engagement.

That performance was my first exposure to Monster Dudes from Boise, Idaho. Something in the group's anarchic improvisation seemed particularly liberating, involving as it did a father-son team engaging in a sort of fantasy performance closer to playtime than pay-to-play. The father-son component of the group, Jeremy "from Boise" and Venec, respectively, have been touring since December 2003, when the latter was only 4.

Some things that seem basic for most adult bands become much larger issues in the kid context, such as how long a 5-year-old can realistically go on tour. "He will be able to go on tour, and then come back to school and pick up where he left off.... Plus, while on tour he learns an immeasurable amount of otherwise inaccessible things," Jeremy wrote to me in an e-mail. "I'd rather his social life not be exclusively with 'grown' humans."

Some might question the wisdom of bringing children to shows of a less than Raffi-ish nature, let alone a full tour, to which Jeremy responded, "Before we begin any trip, I very seriously ask Venec if he is certain that he wants to go out again. Thus far he's been down.... He has, however, put a cap on the length of time away from home, at five weeks."

It was only after that particular moment that I began noticing signs of a kiddie rock movement. There's the New Jersey-based Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, an actual family, with Mom projecting slides found at yard sales, the preteen daughter playing drums and singing, and Dad playing piano and coming up with songs about the slide show subjects. Such a collision of novelty factors might seem a total cutesy mess, but it is intractably charming despite the odds. There's also the 12-ish Seattle duo Smoosh, which cuts the parents out of the equation and just lets preteen girls rock the drums and keys.

When I mentioned this article to friends, more band names and works in progress were thrown out for inclusion: Icky Girlfriends, from Albany, are a gaggle of tweenage cross-dressers who worship the Icky Boyfriends and recently played an Oakland house show with Monster Dudes, alongside a trio of neighborhood boys karaoke-ing to Crunk Juice. There's also the Portland Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls (www.girlsrockcamp.org) held every summer. It includes a series of music workshops geared toward girls (and some bands with boys in them as long as girls make up the majority) between 10 and 22.

Monster Dudes have a fantasy element that is treated ironically in, or completely missing from, adult bands. The group is ostensibly led by their youngest member, although Monster Dudes enjoy busting out the spastic art punk jams, occasionally leaving Venec to improv on the microphone. When I asked Jeremy about the approach to their performances, he assured me over e-mail, "Performance may reflect life in some miniscule degree, but it is most certainly not reality.... Our shows are playtime; we're kind of incidentally doing it for an audience."

When children are involved, moments of awkwardness still throw the typical audience-performer relationship into question. At an Oakland Monster Dudes show in January, a drunken heckler called out for Venec to "get crazy," at which point the 5-year-old looked confused but took the outburst in stride.

While it's no news that children have become increasingly marketed to, the notion of a self-created children's fantasy world appeals to both precocious kids and adults who are trying to reject the corporatization of childhood. It's hard not to imagine what revisionist rock parenting could do for a generation coming up, especially in a weirdo punk scene where many people arrive with strained family relationships, and it makes sense that a new generation of parents would want to share their love of music with their offspring, though maybe it's odd that rock, the domain of the teenage outcast, has made the transition to healthy family bonding.

"It just so happens that I'm still doing what I have always been into, and my child is similarly interested," Jeremy offered. "If I were a hunter, and Venec was into it, we'd go off into the mountains together and shoot stuff bloody.... Instead we're on tour. Playing music together is just another thing that people do to share time."