Smash the Guitar for Mommy

ATLANTA — A small hand appeared at the door, followed by a small boy, his black T-shirt falling almost to his knees. He looked around at the other children and asked, in the bell-clear voice that precedes puberty: "Is this the punk class?"

It was. The teacher, the 20-year-old guitarist for a band called Genghis Tron, was introducing a roomful of students to the throbbing power chords that form the backbone of punk and heavy metal.

A few doors away, a professional voice coach was helping 14-year-old Cory Blanchette rehearse a song he had never heard: "Should I Stay or Should I Go," which was recorded by The Clash eight years before he was born.

And in every direction, along the halls of a Jewish day school outside Atlanta, children of the suburbs were being instructed in speed-metal, death-metal, ripping, shredding, maniacally insane guitar solos, and jumping onto the bass drum for dramatic effect without hurting yourself.

It is a sign of the times that parents in the Atlanta area are lining up this summer to send their children to Camp Jam, a $495 weeklong day camp under the direction of Jeff Carlisi, former guitarist for the arena rock band 38 Special, which had major hits in "Hold on Loosely" and "Rockin' Into the Night."

In his weaker moments, Carlisi wondered whether his concept (the camp's motto is "No Canoes -- Lots of Rock") would find the right audience in a culture that has moved away from high-voltage rock 'n' roll.

But the 9- to 17-year-old campers who showed up here recently wore their hair over their eyes and spoke with reverence of Jimmy Page. Their taste for hard rock had been nurtured by baby boomers -- parents able to see heavy metal as a wholesome, enriching after-school activity.

"Ten or 20 years ago, you wouldn't have been able to do this," Carlisi said. "Now I have parents coming up to me and saying, 'I just want to thank you for what you've done for my child. You've changed them.' "

Carlisi, 51, can well remember the age of the guitar hero, when Duane Allman and Eric Clapton were worshiped as gods. Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, Carlisi and his bandmates in 38 Special wore their hair long and their shirts half-buttoned. Like Lynyrd Skynyrd, a band they often played with, their solos were so intense that, as one ardent reviewer wrote in 1984, "Double-Barreled Howitzer might be a more accurate moniker for this six-man musical assault team." Intensity, Carlisi said, "was a kind of doctrine for us."