Monday, January 9, 2006

They had come for a show, for a spectacle. They had come to scream, to pump fists into the air, to run into one another on purpose and call it dancing.

They were teenagers, mostly. Dressed in black, the only appropriate attire. Some pierced, some looking rough, but most of them baby-faced and thin. And they had come to a most unlikely place — Town Hall, home of tax collections and zoning regulations — to find what they were looking for.

For on that night, Saturday night, they had come to rock. Through the front doors, hang a right before the town clerk's office, run down the stairs and enter a basement-turned-temporary hub of heavy metal. Heavy in-your-face metal, in a four-hour, five-band event called Rockathon.

"It was finally something to do in Athol," said Mylissa Hamel, 17.

Finally.

At 5 p.m., they had amassed outside, cold and shivering. It might have been Town Hall, but regular show rules applied: Even if advertisements say doors open at 5 — and they had — the doors don't always open at 5.

Inside, the first band was still setting up instruments.

"This isn't a typical show for me. I'm usually not holding a hot tea before we go on," said Craig J. MacDonald, singer for the Worcester-based band Heyday, who is normally holding a cold beer before going on.

But in Town Hall, there's no liquor. There was, however, soda and water available. It was sold alongside baked goods, paper bags filled with popcorn, and $2 earplugs.

Aside from the music, everything about Saturday night was warm and fuzzy: a community event in Town Hall with all proceeds going toward revitalizing the building's Memorial Hall, middle-aged parents working the concession stand and high school students helping out for community service.

But the noise that would eventually rage through the speakers, rumbling the old, historic building? Not typical family-friendly fare.

"Maybe I'll be able to hum one or two of the songs by the end of the night," said Joanne Rich, 54, who filled all those bags with popcorn. "We'll see. I don't know if it's humming music."

And it most certainly wasn't. It was instead loud, thrashing, guttural music, the kind of stuff that quite literally can grab and shake you. It's an emotional expression for some, the soundtrack of nightmares to others.

But that was the genius.

Teenagers in every community will invariably complain that there's nothing to do, and public officials will counter with after-school activities and youth sports leagues. That just doesn't do it for everyone, though. Teenagers are more diverse.

But Athol figured it out. With the Board of Selectmen's approval and occasional funding, organizations are hosting shows in Town Hall designed to appeal to different age groups. You want civic-minded kids? Here's a start: Give them heavy metal, and they'll each give you $5 toward revitalizing Memorial Hall.

"They're just hungry for it," said Joshua G. LaMarche, who produced the show. "They need it. They want the entertainment."

Done, and done.

Finally, some time before 6 p.m., the doors swung open and the crowd flooded in — a gathering that would eventually pass 300 bodies, bringing in more than $2,000.

They clustered into groups or staked out spots near the stage, greeting one another with loud enthusiasm. Some have gone to the metal shows in Athol and neighboring towns; others prepared to experience live music for the first time.

Among the first-timers was 9-year-old Ryan Murcell from Orange, who kept asking people around him if they were in a band. He was star-struck already. He wanted autographs.

Suddenly, a friend of his ran over and announced that Ryan was too afraid to go toward the stage. He brushed it off, preferring to list his favorite bands instead. But when she said it a second time, he admitted the truth.

"There's like people twice my size," he said.

In anticipation of people like Ryan, the show's hosts had a few important rules: The bands will keep their language clean, and extra security will be around to make sure nobody gets hurt. Moshing was fine; violent moshing was not.

The bands were unfazed, particularly with the bit about clean language.

"People can't tell what we're saying anyway," said Ray Gibson, guitarist from the Fitchburg-based band Sever The Time.

If they could have been understood, the evening might have been even more engaging. When else, for example, has anyone entered Town Hall and screamed, "To the gods I spit and flash my finger in deep disrespect. You've yet to breed creation that I can't wreck?"

Surely, if anyone has said something close to that inside the building before, it had to do with taxes. But no matter: It was Heyday's opening line.

More shows like this will follow. There are dozens planned in the building this year, featuring different types of music and for a variety of causes. The next heavy metal show, Rockathon II, is Feb. 18.

Despite the setting, children attending their first show weren't missing much authenticity. With the lights dimmed, the basement of Town Hall — named Liberty Hall — had all the trappings of a local rock show: makeshift lighting, a low stage, a reverberation so thick it feels touchable.

And anyway, the locale worked in their advantage. Bands such as Heyday normally play at bars with age limits. If they're not in an environment like this, it's not always easy for a high school student to watch heavy metal.

That's not to say the bands remain elusive. Saturday's show happened to be the second town hall appearance for Mr. MacDonald of Heyday. The first was years ago, at the Milford Town Hall, when he played with a band called Thundercock.

During the show, somebody spray-painted the band's name on the building — and so ended Thundercock's short municipal-musical career.

Face the stage, and it's all rock. But turn around, and there's that concession stand with its wholesome baked goods.

Near it sat Zachariah Durling, 13, and two friends.

"We need to escape the noise. We're more hippies than headbangers," he said.

For those willing to bang heads, though, the venue was just fine. It even worked for Christopher Cox, 18, a guy steeped in the local heavy metal scene. At regular shows, he may blend in; at Town Hall, with his two lip rings, painted fingernails and long black coat that could double as a cloak, he seemed misplaced and overly potent.

But he said a show is about the people, not the place. Town Hall is not above being rocked.

"As long as it's not overrun by little kids, it's fine," he said. "A few little kids doesn't ruin it for us."

As Heyday took to the stage, one of those little kids, Ryan from Orange, came bounding up the stairs.

"I did it!" he said, holding up a yellow flier covered with the scribbled autographs of band members. "It's awesome!"

From his safe distance, he looked down into the darkened room, at the back of which Heyday was bathed in red and yellow lights. Slowly, as if wading into a cold ocean, he made his way back down the stairs for a better look.

He stayed there for a minute, leaning against a wall, and then came running back up.