Kids' rock

Although one should never use Blue Peter as the ultimate barometerof popular culture, it did feature a telling item a number of weeksago when four fresh-faced schoolboys from Cambridge were invited onto showcase their band.

The name: The Hammers. The look: a mini-pops version of JudasPriest. The influences: "Bono and Marilyn Manson," trilled thesupremely confident eyelinered vocalist. The sound: an unholy heavymetal racket the likes of which has never before shattered thereverie of the Blue Peter studio. The result: classic Before TheyWere Famous footage for the days when one of them grows up to be aproper rock star.

Thing is, these lads can have been no more than 12 - clearevidence that the average age of the hard rock fan is definitelyfalling.

Heavy metal has always been the terrain of the spotty adolescentbut, in the last couple of years, the unstemmed tide of nu-metal andskate punk bands infesting the charts is attracting an increasingproportion of young teens and even pre-teens to their increasinglychild-friendly form of rebellion. Slipknot, Green Day and theOffspring led the way; now younger acts such as Linkin Park and Sum41 are lowering the average age of the peer group even further.

"You used to only be able to hear rock music after nine o'clock onRadio One, now you're hearing it on a WWF soundtrack," says DonaldMcLeod, of Glasgow-based rock promoters CPL. "These days, kids aremore aware of what is happening in the music business than they everwere, because it's more accessible."

There are now a plethora of channels through which youngsters canaccess their favourite eardrum-shredding sounds. No computer game orextreme sports programme would be complete without a chundering metalsoundtrack. MTV's "alternative" channel MTV2 plays wall-to-wall nu-metal, rock bible Kerrang! rivals Smash Hits in the playground and,above all, the computer-literate 11-year-old can swap info with hiscontemporaries on internet message boards.

No school is complete without its "mosher" contingent (goth toyou, grandad). As the teenagers who congregate outside Glasgow'sGallery of Modern Art to skateboard and paint each other's nailsblack will tell you, it's a lifestyle thing. Thanks to MarilynManson, it feels a bit dangerous and covert - in fact, it's a massmarket youth tribe. "It's fashion now," agrees MacLeod. "There's hipnames and hip brands to go along with the music and it's totallymarketable."

MacLeod organises a weekly diet of rock gigs in Scotland, fromGlasgow's metal Mecca, The Cathouse, right up to SECC level, and haswitnessed the changing demographic first hand. Five years ago, anunder-18s concert at the Barrowland was a rare event; these daysoperating an over-18s only rock show would be unthinkable. Evensmaller club venues such as King Tut's have regular shows with anover-14s door policy and accompanying restrictions on the sale ofalcohol. Just over a year ago, The Cathouse launched its successfulunder-18s rock club, Voodoo.

The rise of creche rock has other implications for the live musicscene. While the mums will happily chaperon their daughters to aWestlife concert, a father/son night out down the SECC, though notunheard of, is not so common. Anyway, who wants some old guy with anIron Maiden T-shirt and biker jacket cramping your style?Essentially, this leaves the concert promoters looking after thekids.

The issue of the safety of minors at metal concerts was discussedat last year's International Live Music Conference and has evencropped up as a storyline in the new series of ER (babysitter losesyoung charge at a Metallica show - ouch).

"If you're attracting a student-upwards audience, they are muchmore capable of looking after themselves, but as the audience getsyounger, the potential for injury is greater," says Phil Mead, thedeputy director of events at Glasgow's SECC and proud father of a 15-year-old mosher.

Spurred also by the death of a fan during Limp Bizkit's set atlast year's Sydney Big Day Out festival and the fatal trampling ofnine audience members at 2000's Roskilde Festival, a coalition ofScottish promoters, venues and security firms are currentlyformulating a policy to highlight and combat anti-social behaviour atgigs. From now on, anyone participating in the time-honoured punk/metal tradition of crowd-surfing faces possible ejection from theshow. Signs warning of the dangers have been deployed at gigs and itis hoped that eventually tickets will carry a "no crowd-surfing" logoand information on appropriate conduct.

"You can't ban it," says Mead realistically. "And sometimes peoplecome over crowd-surfing if they are in need of medical support, so wewouldn't want to stop that element. It's trying to keep it to atolerable level. We're trying to educate and be positive about it, toget the kids to realise that it's in everybody's interest not to doit, rather than be heavy-handed. "

McLeod agrees. "We don't want to be ogres and issue the TenCommandments of going to a gig. I don't think zero tolerance works.The bottom line is for the kids to enjoy the show as they've donebefore. We're looking after them now and hopefully encouraging theminto the rock environment so years from now they are still listeningto that type of music."

Forthcoming metal shows include Puddle Of Mudd, The Garage, 10February; Slipknot, 14 February, SECC; Sum 41, SECC, 11 March; andSystem Of A Down, Barrowland, 30-31 March. All Glasgow.