I knew this New York Times’ piece in the Style section was coming. And here it is for all to read (if you missed it during the week. I did. DUH. Thankfully, Teen Spirit told me about it Saturday evening).

I noticed the Times’ photographer at last week’s Rockin’ Teens Showcase at Liberty Heights Tap Room. Steve Depulla, owner of the place, mentioned that the Times’ had interviewed him earlier in the week. The hype for Care Bears and Fiasco is pretty intense — DO THESE KIDS HAVE PUBLICISTS OR JUST FAMOUS PARENTS?

The newly named "Kid-core" scene is no longer just cute — it’s a real scene with managers and coaches and publicists and everything. The fact that it’s one more thing to analyze about crazy New York City parents just adds to its news worthiness for the Times and New York Magazine. Breast feeding, school frenzy, managing your kid’s rock band…

The Times’ piece was heavy on the ‘children of celebrity angle.’ It turns out that the band from Sag Harbor that showed up at Liberty Heights a few months back, Too Busy Being Bored, was fronted by Forrest Fire Gray, 14, whose dad was Spalding Gray. The Times’ also name-drops that Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbin’s son is in another Brooklyn teen band, The Tangents. The Times’ is definitely going for the celeb angle big time.

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: THE children whispering and fidgeting in front of the stage at Union
Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, looked like any kids awaiting, say, a
storyteller. Then Zora Sicher and Hugo Orozco, the two 11-year-olds who
make up the band Magnolia, climbed onstage and broke into a
hard-driving original song called “Volume.” It was clear this was not
quiet time.

“Wooooo!” a dreadlocked
woman shouted from the back of the room, where a crowd of adults, many
in vintage concert T-shirts and cardigans, looking like kids
themselves, cheered and sipped bloody marys.

A clump of
teenagers looked on appreciatively during the set, part of a showcase
of all-kid bands on a Saturday afternoon this month at the CMJ Music
Marathon in New York. When the Magnolia duo paused to adjust their
instruments — Zora on guitar, Hugo on drums — a babe in arms wailed.
“Are you crying because they stopped, honey?” Mom cooed.

For
this set of performers and audience members, indie rock is as familiar
as a lullaby. “We like punk, classic rock, metal, riot grrrl,” said
Hugo, an elfin-face sixth grader from Brooklyn, who was given her first
drum set at 7.

Magnolia, like other bands on the Union Hall
bill — Care Bears on Fire, Tiny Masters of Today, Fiasco, Hysterics —
is more than a novelty act. It is developing a following on New York’s
burgeoning under-age music circuit, where bands too young for driving
licenses have CDs, Web sites and managers.

“Oh my god, there’s
like a huge, huge kid-rock scene here,” said Jack McFadden, known as
Skippy, who booked the show at Union Hall. “It’s really very indicative
of Park Slope, since so many of the parents who live around here are
hip and have these hip little kids that they dress in, like, CBGBs
T-shirts.”

It makes sense: in this family-friendly part of
Brooklyn every other brownstone seems to house creative professionals
who urge their children to march to — or become — a different drummer.

Nearly
every weekend 10- to 17-year-olds play shows in the afternoon at bars
like Union Hall, the Liberty Heights Tap Room in Red Hook and Southpaw
in Park Slope, which has begun a teenage rock series, the Young and the
Restless. In Manhattan there are all-ages shows at the Knitting Factory
in TriBeCa, Arlene’s Grocery and afternoon Death Disco parties at Cake
Shop on the Lower East Side.

“They could call it kid-core,” said
Rich Egan, the owner of Vagrant records in Los Angeles, who signed the
New Jersey-based band Senses Fail as teenagers and is wooing a younger
band he first heard on MySpace.

Preteens and teenagers have
found success in bands almost since the birth of rock. The Jackson 5,
Hanson and New Kids on the Block were all big-selling acts, formed by
parents or impresarios. But those acts recorded mainstream pop. The
latest kid bands are emerging in the traditions of garage, hardcore and
indie rock, a reflection of their hipster parents’ tastes and their
1980s and ’90s CD collections.

Hugo’s mother, Molly Gove, who
said she was in a few riot grrrl bands herself in the ’90s, enrolled
her daughter in the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York, where
children 8 to 18 learn the playlist of bands like Bikini Kill and the
Pixies.

Across the country kid-core acts have emerged, including
a pair of brothers 8 and 11 in Detroit, who play with their father in
the Jack White-produced band the Muldoons; sisters 12 and 14 who make
up the Seattle-based duo Smoosh; and the Nashville-based band Be Your
Own Pet, which toured with Sonic Youth in the summer.

Many
teenage rockers connect through MySpace, where they post sample tracks,
videos and announcements of gigs, as well as leave one another messages
of support. In a message to Magnolia, Forrest Fire Gray, 14, whose
father was the monologuist Spalding Gray and who is the frontman of Too
Busy Being Bored, wrote, “Can’t wait to play with u guys.”

More
than a few of New York’s baby-face rockers have famous parents in the
entertainment business, who have encouraged their children’s artistic
streaks and served as role models for professional success. Lucian
Buscemi, 16, the son of the actor Steve Buscemi, along with Julian
Bennett-Holmes and Jonathan Shea, both also 16, have become something
like the kingpins of the Park Slope kid-rock scene, ever since their
band, Fiasco — previously known as StunGun — became the first youth
band to play the Liberty Heights Tap Room.

Pale and thin, with fluffy manes of rocker hair, Lucian and Julian
are also partners in a record label, Beautiful Records, which has
recorded Care Bears on Fire and Magnolia, using equipment that Lucian
was given for his eighth-grade graduation, soon after a baby sitter
introduced the two boys to ’80s punk.

   

“We were into,
like, Rancid and Blink 182 at the time,” said Julian, cringing at his
junior-high lack of cool. “That ended when we heard Minor Threat.”

Many
kid-core bands cite that hardcore act from the ’80s as a big influence.
The adults who attend kid-rock shows couldn’t be happier. This is the
music they loved as teenagers. “This is the first generation of parents
who have grown up listening to rock ’n’ roll, so they’re thrilled about
it,” said Stephen Depulla, the owner of Liberty Heights Tap Room. Not
least because it provides an opportunity for bonding.

Kathie Russo, Forrest Fire Gray’s mother, said she and her son swap music like friends. “I suggested he cover ‘Angie’ by the Rolling Stones,
and he introduced me to Modest Mouse and the Vines,” she said. “Last
night we were in the car singing along to Audioslave. I can’t imagine
that with my parents.”

She also probably can’t imagine her parents acting as roadies, which many of the young rockers’ moms and dads do.

The
most prominent band on New York’s junior-varsity rock scene is
Hysterics, a “psychedelic” quartet founded at the artsy St. Ann’s
School in Brooklyn. The week after performing at Union Hall at the CMJ
Marathon, the band members gathered at the studio of Jeff Peretz, their
manager. Mr. Peretz also guides the Tangents, whose bass guitarist,
Miles Robbins, 12, is the son of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.

Members
of Hysterics discussed their coming gig, a party for a new Valentino
perfume, which was organized through a friend of the fashion
photographer Pamela Hanson, whose son, Charlie Klarsfeld, 17, is the
group’s guitarist. The evening, at 7 World Trade Center last Thursday,
turned out to be a pileup of celebrity children with music careers,
including the DJs Lola Schnabel and Mark Ronson.

“Are we going
to get swag?” asked Josh Barocas, 17, the quiet bassist, whose enormous
Afro speaks of a somewhat louder interior personality.

“What’s swag?” Charlie asked.

“It’s free stuff they give to famous people,” Mr. Peretz said.

“Every teen band in New York wants to be Hysterics,” he added. The
group was discovered two years ago, when a science teacher at St. Ann’s
posted one of its songs on his blog, and its cool factor rocketed after
signing a record deal with independent v2. The company took the
musicians for cookies and milk at the City Bakery. As high school
juniors and seniors, they are old enough for the gesture to be ironic.

NOT
so the Tiny Masters of Today. On a Friday evening in November, Ada, the
bassist, 10, a slight girl with a heart-shape face, was reading “Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” at Piano’s, a Lower East Side bar,
while waiting to go on with her brother, Ivan, 12, the lead guitarist.
(Their father requested that the family name not appear in print to
protect the children’s privacy.)

After the set, during which
they performed, among other songs, Ada’s mournful “Pictures” — “It’s
about my friends in second grade and how awful they were to me,” she
said — an adult in the audience called the band “the new Raincoats,” a
reference to an experimental British act of the late ’70s.

Ivan
is familiar with their music, although he said he prefers louder stuff
like the Stooges. “And I’m really into Apollo Sunshine right now,” he
said, perched on a bar stool and chewing thoughtfully on a cocktail
straw. “I go through phases.”

Their father has worked for the
indie label Caroline and once pulled the kids out of school early to
see the White Stripes. His children’s affection for indie rock, he
said, is a reaction to mainstream tastes. “They’re rebelling against,
like, Walt Disney.”

Or maybe Britney Spears. “Our parents had
the Clash, the Who, Bowie,” said Alana Higgins, 17, the bassist for the
band Modrocket. She was at a Dunkin’ Donuts in the East Village near
the space where her band rehearses.

“The scenes back then were so much better. Rock music now — it’s upsetting. Our kids are going to look back at our music and it’s going to be like —— ”

“Kelly Clarkson,” interjected Alice Blythe, 17, Modrocket’s singer.

The
kid-core sound is far less slick than the pop and R & B that
animates “American Idol,” either because the musicians are just
learning to play or because their musical influences trace to the DIY
roots of garage rock.

Tiny Masters of Today was on the Oct. 11
cover of the British magazine Artrocker. “They’re making this kind of
primitive, unprocessed, unfiltered music,” their father said.

It
was that sound that attracted Russell Simins, the grown-up drummer in
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, who found the Tiny Masters on MySpace last
year. He now accompanies them on drums during live sets.

“They
have this unadulterated way of saying things, ” Mr. Simins said,
sipping a beer at Piano’s. “It’s perfectly not thought out. They don’t
have angst. Or their angst is simpler: it’s about being precocious and
being kids who want to have fun and eat ice cream or about being bored.
They’re not asking why they’re bored,” he said with a laugh. “They
don’t have, like, existential malaise.” When Mr. Simins plays with the
group, his hulking 36-year-old frame is a perfect foil to the
children’s Lemony Snicket-character bodies.

He insists that he
is not actually in the band, even though he’ll be on their coming
album, which will also feature guest appearances by Fred Schneider of
the B-52s and the singer and songwriter Kimya Dawson.

And Mr.
Simins occasionally practices with them at home in Cobble Hill,
Brooklyn. “Sometimes I’ll stay over for dinner — you know, pizza or
spaghetti or quesadillas or whatever,” he said. “Like I’m a kid.”