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MSU Rock Camp helps young bands perform at The Loft

June 30, 2015

A lot of kids dream about becoming rock stars growing up but very few of them actually get a chance to live out this dream. Thanks to MSU’s Community Music School, for one week in June, kids get the chance to live out their dreams and be rock stars. 

At Rock Camp, students in grades seventh through 12th get a chance to form their own bands and spend the whole week practicing for their own concert at the end of the week. The student bands practice and perform popular rock songs from 'Highway to Hell' by AC/DC to 'Hungry like the Wolf' by Duran Duran.

Rock Camp was started in 2009 when professors in the music school at MSU, who were also involved in the community music school, had an idea to start a rock camp and they asked the members of the band The Outer Vibe to help run it. 

“Word got around that there was a music student who had a band,” said Lisa Kacos , member of The Outer Vibe and one of the camp mentors. “They looked us up and invited us in for a little bit of an interview discussion just to brainstorm and they ran the idea by us and said do you think you would be interested in helping us start a school of rock and teach it.” 

The members of The Outer Vibe serve as the mentors of the camp and, along with helping the student’s practice music, they also teach students different skills that are involved in running a band. 

“We teach them what we have learned from being a band, everything from running your website, to writing songs, to getting along together as a group and booking yourself shows,” said Kacos. 

One of the key points that Rock Camp tries to get across is that doing music, for a living, is a viable option and you can perform, with a band, and make enough money to live off of without being famous. 

“I can definitely see myself in five years as someone in the music industry singing for potentially a living,” said Loren Todd , a student at Rock Camp. “I think the rock camp really cemented for me that this is something that I could do and that this is something I would like to do.” 

The final performance for all of the bands at Rock Camp was held at The Loft in Lansing and all of the students in the different bands were responsible for selling their own tickets to the performance. Each of the student’s bands performed two songs and after their performances The Outer Vibe got on stage and performed their own music for the crowd. 

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