"I ran into my room, and I fell down on my knees, well I thought that 15 was gonna be a breeze

I picked up my guitar, to blast away the clouds

but somebody in the next room yelled, ‘Turn that damned thing down!"

-Alice Cooper, Teenage Lament ‘74

I was talking to Jesus the other day. It’s part of my probation, you know. And I said unto him, "You know what the future is, JC?" He does, of course, it’s his job. But he gave me an inquisitive, condescending smile anyway. "Teenage girls with guitars", I told him. He furrowed his brow, mulling it over. "The future of rock and roll is teenage chicks?" That’s right, the Naz is hip to the patois of the streets. "No, Jesus", I corrected him. "Teenage girls with guitars are the future of everything." And there was silence, just for a moment- and then there was Rock. As if in grand prophecy- or perhaps just pure coincidence- Noelle’s self-released debut, ‘This Summer’ hits the streets. Almost demonic in it’s catchiness, this record, as if it just knows you’ll be living with it for a long time. Sounds like the Primitives moved to tears by the stunning musical prowess of Motley Crue. The world, or at least the world around Waltham, Massachusetts, falls instantly and hopelessly in love. Part of the reason is the girl up front. The singularly named Noelle - a Waltham High student, a tomboy hiding her budding beauty behind an ’89 grunge look, a 15 year old rock star - sings these songs of boredom and bmx bikes and sneaking out of the house to party on the hill with the boys in the band with an authentic bratty teenage monotone, and she treats her guitar like a bitch, to be dealt with harshly. And although controversy abounds- the band has yet to record one of their own songs, after all - it’s a fair bet to say that in a year from now, your younger sister will be sporting a Noelle t-shirt, your younger brother will have Noelle’s picture taped up in his locker, and the youth of this embattled nation will finally be set free from their angst and self-imposed misery. This American teenage rock and roll machine is running at full speed, baby. Stand back.

"Ok, here’s the deal." Adam Rourke takes the floor, as he often does. He’s the chief propagandist, the prime mover, the king daddy Cadillac in this story of youth and flash. Watch him go. "Dave Pino, he writes a lot of songs." Dave’s the guitar slinger in Waltham the band. You know them- they’ve got their own cheerleaders, and they have somehow managed to make it perfectly acceptable to sound like Platinum Blonde. "We’re all friends with Dave, I played drums on a lot of the demo recordings of his songs. He had all these great songs that he wrote, you know, from a long time ago, that he never used. Then, I knew Noelle from the neighborhood, and I walked in on her once when she was singing, and I was like, ‘Shit, she can sing’, and I got the idea to have her sing one of Dave’s old songs. They were basically just throw away songs that he wrote just to learn how to write pop songs." Any accusations that Noelle are some prefabrication cooked up by Adam and Dave as some sort of teenage scam are summarily dismissed by the band. "Some people make fun of us, you know, because we don’t write our own songs, but a lot of people don’t write their own songs", Adam explains, " and you know what? These songs have a vibe, and people respond to them, they’re in tune with the vibe." This, then is the chewy center of Noelle’s story. It’s about a girl, her band, her friends, and the city they all live in. It’s remarkably similar to the 1978 Movie of the Week, ‘Corvette Summer’. Maybe no Corvette- Noelle can’t get a driver’s license for another year- but it’s absolutely Made For TV. "So, we tried one out, and it sounded awesome, and we decided to record some more, do a whole cd. When we almost finished recording, we decided that we’d better get a band together."

Mike Vasquez shines for miles when he speaks. He’s the kind of sweet natured suburban headbanger that considers his newly acquired liquor license a right to rock, who figures in mirrored shades as a fashion necessity. "You’ve got have these when you’re in a band. Aviator sunglasses." Mike’s a stone cold bro, as we say out here in the teenage wasteland. "Yeah, so they needed an A-list bass player, so I joined", he says. "Before he joined, Mike wasn’t even really a bass player", Adam points out. "Yeah, but I was just so into the songs, that I was like, "hey, I want to be part of this.’ I already played the guitar, so it wasn’t that much of a jump." There was already a guitar player in the ranks- Pat Maceneany. Onstage, Pat likes to whip his shirt off before they hit the chorus of the first song. "He takes off his shirt, because of the sweating." Adam again. " It’s kind of gross, I know. He wore his shirt once, and he was just drenched, It was real uncomfortable and gross, so he just takes it off all the time now." Mike smiles. "I take my shirt off occasionally. Even at practice. It’s rock and roll, man."

"The vibe of these songs, I think the people in Waltham pick up on more than in other places", Adam tells me. "I don’t know, it just seems like we tapped into the vibe of that city." Ask Waltham’s tourist bureau where to go for a little sight seeing, and they suggest Lowell, the next town over. It’s a bedroom community, as real estate sharks like to say, nestled in the hills between the highway and the wilds of Watertown. A place to rest, on your way to somewhere else. But like any suburb that you can take a bus to from the city, it’s caught between two worlds- 2002, and the more prosaic 1982."Waltham is like the Hotel California", Mike deadpans. "Waltham’s a ‘towny town’, you know. And there’s a college there, so there’s lots of ‘outsiders’. We’re the outsiders." I’m searching for the elusive atmosphere of the city, and what I conjure up is the last half an hour of ‘Dazed and Confused’ stretched into perpetuity. Muscle cars, Led Zeppelin, underage drinking in the woods. "Yeah", Noelle enthuses. "There’s a lot of that." Adam nods in agreement. "On Prospect Hill, to be exact", he says. "We ride our bikes around alot. Noelle has to, she can’t drive a car yet." Laughter all around. "Prospect Hill is the highest point in Massachusetts this side of Route 128, or something like that. Anyway, there’s a big tower at the top, and if you climb the tower, you can see all of Boston, and all of Western Mass." Noelle smirks like the cat with the canary. "It’s perfect for parties." Of course, there’s the issue of Noelle’s tender age to address. These guys are obviously leading the poor girl astray. "Noelle can hang with the best of them", Adam says. " And she can punch pretty hard, too." "Yeah", Mike agrees. "Noelle’s pretty tough." It’s clear that, unlike most young suburban hipsters, Noelle the band are perfectly happy in their hometown, and they blanch at the concept of moving away and slumming it on the streets of Rock City. "A lot of people say, "I can’t wait to get out of Waltham", Adam explains, "and I’m like, "Why? You’re just going to be back in two years." Noelle has an even more micro-cosmic view. "I hate when people at school say that Waltham sucks, because every other high school is way uncooler than Waltham High."

A fair share of Noelle’s buzz has been focused on Noelle the girl, partly because of her age, and partly because of her detached cool. When I ask her what it is that a 15 year old girl likes to listen to these days, she rolls her eyes. "Well, this 15 year old listens to classic rock, and uh…music, and stuff." Our talk gets around to her signature stage look- hair engulfing her face, hiding the girl behind it. "There’s a whole story about the hair, but I don’t know if Noelle wants to talk about it", Adam tells me. "I just don’t want to make a big deal about it", she shrugs. " I’m just blind in this eye." Noelle pulls back her hair, so I can see her right eye. It looks just like the left one, fearless. "People think we’re making it up", Adam says, "but she’s serious. She’s got like, a burnt cornea." I take another look, searching for some sign of weakness that’s just not showing. "Ok, stop looking at it, it’s gross", Noelle instructs me. "So, I can’t see out of the eye anyway, so I don’t even notice of I have hair in my eyes. It doesn’t make any difference to me." I ask her how much of a handicap it is. "Not much. I think I might have a little problem with depth perception, though." That’ll make it a little hard to jump off of risers. "Yeah, we think about that", Adam says. "But we’re thinking of other things we could do on stage. "I volunteered to light my legs on fire", Mike casually offers, "but our manager said no. Fire codes, ooh", he laughs. Noelle the girl, meanwhile, is still working on her stage presence. "I try not to talk, because I say gay shit, and everybody looks at me like I’m an idiot", she tells me. " I get really embarrassed, and these guys are like, ‘You gotta say stuff’, and I wish I could, but it just sounds ridiculous." I ask her if it’s hard to play guitar and sing at the same time "Well, I suck at both", she says. " So no, it’s not that hard."

"We were at Guitar center in Natick, we were trying out cabs." Adam spins a tale of Noelle’s nearly instant fame. "We were in the back room, and there were all these high school dudes, that were lingering around when Noelle was playing. I said, I think those guys have crushes on you from school or something’, and she was like, ‘Shut up!’ But they kept leaving and coming back. About an hour later, they finally came into the room, and they said, ‘Hey, do you guys play in that band Noelle? And we said ‘Yeah’, and they said, "We saw you at the VFW, you were awesome!" Such scenes are becoming more frequent for the band. Shows are packed, and record label reps are lurking in the crowd, looking for a ride on the teenage money train. The band, however, remain mostly unaffected. "It’s kind of cool that when labels come to see us play", Adam says, "because they usually buy us food. Man, that’s great." And so, we end this story on a high note, the brink of a wide open future, a future that Adam’s already constructing in his fevered imagination. "I’ve got a second album in my head already, and the songs are just as catchy, if not more so, but a little bit more complicated, a little bit more grown up. A little bit more of a ‘feel bad’ feel, but just as catchy, and just as good. Then, I think by the third album, we’ll have a natural flow." he says, all in one gulp. "Then we could record our own ‘Dark Side of the Moon", Mike jokes. "Yeah, real experimental", says Adam. "Our third album will be called ‘Noelle 4".