One of the cool things about working with kids is that everything is new to them. It also means that you end up feeling really freaking old.
My school has a program for at-risk students to help them not drop out of school. My kids are all sixth graders, so I’m hoping that the extra two hours of me time they get will actually have some kind of effect on them. The program itself is very ill-defined, so I’ve used these last couple of weeks just to hang out. After all, I’m not going to expect 12-year-olds to tell me and their peers why school is difficult for them at 8 in the morning right away.
So I started it by showing the kids some of my favorite comics, and then I showed them this blog. They thought it was cool that I get music directly from record labels. I think so, too.
I tried to introduce them to some punk. They weren’t that impressed. If the lyrics were a little more age-appropriate, I’d probably hand them the Seaway/Safe To Say split, which is out today from Mutant League Records.
Thing is, I despised pop punk in middle school — Good Charlotte, Newfound Glory…they weren’t at all authentic in my eyes. (Somehow, Sum 41 counted.) But I didn’t really have the courage to dig deeper into the punk lexicon.
Seaway and Safe to Say strike a good balance between pop punk and grittier stuff. (Safe to Say describes itself as “melodic” punk, which I guess is a way to avoid questions about guyliner brands.)
Both of these bands are comprised of babies (or really baby-faced guys.) They’ve got their chops down. I’m looking forward to the coming years when they’ll have more to talk about than their high school crushes. But for now, I’ll be singing along happily with their anthemic punk.
Speaking of my babies, my 12-year-olds would like you to know that they enjoy listening to “the classics” — like Usher and Aaliyah. Since when did being 24 make me so old?
If you like what you hear, both bands have free music available on their Bandcamp pages.
UPDATE: Content removed due to DCMA complaint.
Seaway —
Facebook,
Tumblr,
Bandcamp
Safe to Say —
Facebook,
Bandcamp
