The Dares

by Jamie Kiffel

Imagine giving four nine-year-olds, electric guitars, and a drumset. Now imagine, if you can, taking out the earplugs… moving your hands from your ears to your cheeks… and saying, “Holy God, they can rock..”

Burlington, Vermonters The Dares – twin brothers Jim and Matt Peterson, and percussionists Mallory Langlois and Sarah Ransom – “dare to play,” and oh my Lord, they succeed. If half the signed musicians today cared enough about their instruments to keep a beat this bright and a rhythm this real, the top 40 stations of America wouldn’t need to repeat the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears 740 times a day for lack of something genuine to perk our ears. In fact, if the nightly Grateful Dead Hour took out five minutes to spread the genuine, unjaded joy of youth that these fourth graders beam through their exuberant drums and grinning guitar licks, maybe the legions of “retro-hippies” would be inspired enough to get off their hemp-clothed derrieres and mobilize for something more useful than a Phish Phest.

Let’s put this into perspective. These kids are at least four years away from shaving, and they’ve already made music that they really believe in. Half the bands of the ’80s never even got that far. Of course, the vocals are… well, undeveloped. Like a group of cupcake-eaters racing for the slide, these four shout it out. But with musicianship this good, their childvoices merely project them into cultdom, with a fabulous possible destiny on many college stations. After all, we may not sound like that anymore… but don’t we wish we could get back to those bright Oreo days every now and then? It’s now for The Dares. Let’s vicariously hop on their musical trip into Candy Land.
(Re-Petes Music, peterson@nvtredcross.org)