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Fats: May 17
Article published Sep 12, 2006
The Record- 209 Music Section
Written by Ian Hill
Lincoln teacher-musicians ready to rock as Ed and the Educators
A group of teachers who started a rock band to entertain their Lincoln High School students are taking their act outside the classroom.
Ed and the Educators will perform Friday at Lincoln Center Live. An Oct. 20 date is scheduled for Fat's Bar and Grill on Pershing Avenue.
"It's exciting. ... We've been doing really well," said Ed Bonilla, 34, an English teacher at Lincoln High who doubles as the band's vocalist. Ed and the Educators cover classic-rock tunes such as Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" and David Bowie's "Suffragette City."
The band's roots lie in an e-mail Bonilla sent five years ago seeking teacher-musicians to open a Lincoln talent show. Bonilla sang in the Stockton punk band the Nice Tries until the group broke up last year.
Paul Griley, 41, an English teacher and bassist, and Craig Pearce, 54, a physical education teacher, track coach and drummer, responded to the e-mail. Griley, who also is part of the Sacramento-based R. Mills Band, was the only other member of Ed and the Educators active in music.
At the talent show, the band played songs such as the Ramones' "Rock 'n' Roll High School" and Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)." The latter opens with the famous lyric: "We don't need no education/we don't need no thought control."
"Education-type music," Bonilla called it.
Guitarist Clint Menasco, 26, joined last year while student-teaching at Lincoln.
He now teaches history in the San Joaquin County one.Alternative program.
Menasco said he gets a variety of reactions when students learn he's in Ed and the Educators.
"Some of them think it's cool, a teacher in a rock band," he said. "Others are more like, 'What is this old guy doing playing in a rock band?' "
Pearce said Ed and the Educators allows him to forge a bond with students. After Menasco joined, Pearce suggested to Bonilla that the band begin performing outside school.
The band plans to keep performing locally as long as it continues to be fun.
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