“Judas!” cried someone from the carpeted, block-strewn floor. Mrs. Felton, the third grade teacher, looked at the kids with contempt.
“I don’t believe you!” she yelled.
Felton turned to her band – Alicia, Timmy, and little Sheldon Cho – and strummed her $150 electric Loog guitar forcefully, stalking across the room like a lion enraged.
“You’re a liar,” she screamed. Another strum along the Loog’s three strings. She played open chords because they were easier for the kids to learn. Sheldon was playing his blue electric Loog and Timmy was on the mini-xylophone. Alicia was warming up her recorder.
“Play it totally super loud!” she yelled, nearly cursing.
“Please!” she added.
She began to sing:
A-tisket a-tasket
A green and yellow basket
I wrote a letter to my love
And on the way I dropped it.
The crowd went wild. Mrs. Felton had finally gone electric, bringing rock and roll to the benighted halls of PS 103 in the Bronx. Although arguments raged for years over the true value of electric guitars in grade-school rock, one thing was clear: the new electric Loogs – a mere two years after the launch of the first, acoustic Loog guitars for kids – were an absolute hit. A new, easy-to-learn, child-centric guitar sound was born and grade school would never be the same.