Peel cop asks party to quiet down, comes back to rock out on the drums
There are few things more disheartening for a hard rocking teenage band, shredding tunes with amps turned up to 11 and a crowd jamming out, than the sight of a police cruiser pull up to the party.
Usually it means a stern warning at best or a ticket for a few hundred bucks (and a major buzz kill).
Teenage hard rock band Vinyl Ambush thought their fate was sealed when Peel police showed up at an outdoor birthday party gig in Mississauga Saturday night.
"We all figured it was going to get shut down," said Tom Bjelic, father of the band's 15-year-old bass player Corwin.
Instead, Bjelic recalls, the two constables simply asked that the band turn down the amps a bit. Then they stood and listened to a couple songs, and left.
About half an hour passed before the two constables returned to the backyard party on Cliff Drive.
Surely that was the end of the party, Bjelic thought, and the mood among the 75 or so guests sank for a moment, he said.
'I was hoping I could sit in on a song'
Then something entirely unexpected happened. He asked if they had come back to shut it down.
"'Well no'," Bjelic recalls one of the officers saying. "'I was hoping I could sit in on a song with the band'."
The constable took off his standard duty boots, sat down behind the drum kit, and proceeded to pound the skins like a madman to the band's original music, Bjelic said.
"Everybody was in shock. Nobody could believe what they were seeing," he told CBC Toronto. "Even the neighbours got into it. Everyone was so stoked to see it go down."
After a couple of songs, the constable handed the sticks back to the band's usual drummer, and gave the band — made up of young musicians from 15 to 19-years-old — some advice about how to make it in a tough industry. He himself had played in bands and recorded music, he told the crowd.
"The band is young and at an impressionable time in their lives. So as a parent, to see the cop interact with them and totally keeping the situation calm — the way it was handled was incredible," Bjelic said.
Often times these kinds of situations can become confrontational or police use intimidation tactics to end the party. Instead, Bjelic says, "They made it into a totally positive experience."
