Rocking in the Cafetorium

July 26, 2009 1:37 PM

What was the name of that band that played the school assembly hall in 8th grade? Free Fare.

What was their deal? They played a free show during the school day, and a pay show in the evening.
I assume they were interested in keeping me off drugs? Yep, and to watch out for bullying. They probably wouldn't mind if you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, either.
They talked about Jesus in public school? Yeah, at first, but later not so much.
Where'd they come from? They were one of many bands, including Shalom, Freedom Jam, The Edge, XL, and now New Anthem and Shade Tree, produced by Young American Showcase since 1969. Free Fare itself lasted for at least 20 years, with a rotating membership.
Did anyone famous ever come out of that? Sort of.

And I can see this on YouTube?
1984 "Sunglasses at Night"
1984 "California Girls"
1987 "Jump"
1987 "Love Will Find A Way"

posted by He Is Only The Imposter (25 comments total)

Not Free Four?
posted by Afroblanco at 1:39 PM on July 26, 2009

Pretty sure I saw them in 1974 or thereabouts ... Grade 9, Vancouver. Good covers of great songs (Layla among them as I recall) ... but I sure felt embarrassed for them and pretty much everyone else in the room when they started on their Jesus rap.

Thanks for the memory, however weird.
posted by philip-random at 1:43 PM on July 26, 2009

I was in middle school in the early 90s. There was a very similar band to this that put on a show every year or so. They also had the Jesus-lite/don't do drugs/no peer pressure bend to them. I think they were called "Arc" or "Arch." I wonder if they were part of the Young Americans program as well.
posted by Dr-Baa at 1:49 PM on July 26, 2009

I'm not sure if it's related, but in my freshman year of high school we had a guy give a presentation in our auditorium about how smoking is bad for you and how you'll get cancer and die if you smoke. He ended the seminar by telling us that we should always work to make our lives better and that "Jesus Christ is apart of that". He told students to talk to him after the lesson if they wanted help to keep from smoking or learn more about Christ.

By the end of my senior year, everybody I knew smoked.
posted by Avenger at 1:57 PM on July 26, 2009 [2 favorites]

The Edge came to our school, Shrewsbury High, Massachusetts, in, umm, 1987? 1988? First they played a half-hour assembly during school hours - basically just a workmanlike cover band doing lite hard rock. We loved them. I was maybe a freshman? My science teacher, Mr. B, made fun of me for banging my head. They told us, "Come on back later tonight for a full show! There's not going to be any sermon, any boring lesson, any BS like that. It's just going to be ROCK AND ROLL!" Of course we all came. They rocked! They played all our favorites!

And then, about halfway through the show, when they started the sermon/boring lesson/BS part, we left to see if we could track down a doobie, but the guy we knew was not at Friendly's.
posted by dirtdirt at 2:14 PM on July 26, 2009 [8 favorites]

I'm Fran, and I'm a woman!
posted by DecemberBoy at 2:19 PM on July 26, 2009 [3 favorites]

Careful - www.youngamericanshowcase.com contains a piece of obfuscated javascript at the end that pulls down crap from from a site that Chrome isn't exactly happy with:

"Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer. [...] Over the past 90 days, fruits.lemonia.ws appeared to function as an intermediary for the infection of 562 site(s) [...] this site has hosted malicious software over the past 90 days. It infected 226 domain(s) [...]"
posted by effbot at 2:26 PM on July 26, 2009

(maybe someone could add "potentially malicious" to the list of flagging reasons?)
posted by effbot at 2:29 PM on July 26, 2009

Mod note: Looks like someone snuck some sketchy javascript into the youngamericanshowcase.com source. I replaced the "rotating membership" link with an archive.org mirror of the main page of that site, and replaced the "Jesus" link with a google cache. Proceed to actual site at your own risk, etc.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:54 PM on July 26, 2009

I never saw them but my younger siblings did. I believe they played at the local middle school somewhere in the mid-80's.

I remember hearing something about one of the band members doing something with an underage girl? I don't know what the details were of even if it was true... it could easily have been in the league of "Mikey being killed by pop rocks and Coke" or "spider eggs in Bubblicious" but I hear of these guys from time to time and I've always wondered if it was even remotely true...
posted by orbis23 at 2:57 PM on July 26, 2009

They came to my school back in the '80s. I thought they totally rocked until I went to see Judas Priest a few months later.
posted by Knappster at 3:02 PM on July 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

I remember the Edge as well. They played at Jefferson Middle School in St. Charles, MO. They did rock. I'm pretty sure they played some Guns & Roses and Poison. I even bought a t-shirt.

Man, I thought then that I was cool in my EDGE t-shirt. Now, sigh, now I realize what a fucking dork I was.
posted by chillmost at 3:05 PM on July 26, 2009

Sorry about the evil links everybody! Thanks Cortex!
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 3:13 PM on July 26, 2009

Okay, so I guess the band members aren't in 8th grade. Sheesh.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 3:53 PM on July 26, 2009

I saw them, or someone with exactly the same methodology, in 1983, or thereabouts. I think their biggest cover hit at the time was Van Halen's "Jump", which caused all the 8th graders to stand up and rush the stage...for some reason. Once they got there, they sort of stood still and listened. My geek squad of friends managed to avoid the rush, and were left sitting around near the underclassmen, who looked as confused as everyone else.
posted by thanotopsis at 4:10 PM on July 26, 2009

Fast forward.
posted by Rykey at 6:59 PM on July 26, 2009

Good grief, that cover of "Jump" was almost as bad as the real thing...
posted by benzo8 at 7:41 PM on July 26, 2009

When they came to my school (in Ohio) they were billed as "The Band From California!"
posted by straight at 8:56 PM on July 26, 2009

I remember seeing these guys in the late 70's. They did a cover of "guitarzan" featuring one member dressed up as Jane. In 8th grade, drag and monkey humor was where it was at.

Also, the first year I saw them, they were all about "stay off drugs," and didn't turn to the "accept jesus" business until you paid money to see their after school concert. Even then it was just a mention because, like all good gigs, this one really seemed to be first and foremost about making money.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:57 PM on July 26, 2009

Man, I thought then that I was cool in my EDGE t-shirt. Now, sigh, now I realize what a fucking dork I was.

Wear it now and you'll be cool again.
posted by johnny novak at 12:10 AM on July 27, 2009

When they came to my school (in Ohio) they were billed as "The Band From California!"

When they came to my Junior High in Arkansas they were "The Band from Florida!"
posted by MrPants5000 at 2:09 AM on July 27, 2009

I still have my Free Fare badge and bandanna (signed by the band members circa 1986-87) squirreled away in a bin with a bunch of other school days detritus. Apparently, one of the guys was a cousin of one of the students or something, which was how they got the gig playing in our high school gym in the cultural black hole that is Virginia. I was already firmly in thrall to plinka-plinka electronic music, but I still loved this show.
posted by gargoyle93 at 7:25 AM on July 27, 2009

....Huh. We had a band come to my high school and play covers of rock songs, but it was a COMPLETELY different pitch - that band was made up of Army Reserves members, and instead of trying to get us to come-to-Jesus or stay off drugs they were there in case any kid wanted to talk to them about enlisting.

This was in the mid-to-late 80's, eastern Connecticut, if that's a data point.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:41 AM on July 27, 2009

I am so jealous. All we got was Up With People.
posted by Cookiebastard at 9:17 AM on July 27, 2009

I think we had Free Fare at school assembly too, plus a bunch of other lite-hard-rock-come-to-Jesus bands. And I went to public school! Don't these bands raise a church/state separation issue?
posted by jonp72 at 11:15 AM on July 27, 2009