Published: June 22, 2007 01:34 pm      

NEWFANE: Band members who played concert on school roof can't walk at graduation

Inspired by rooftop concert pioneers Jefferson Airplane and The Beatles, four teens decided their freshman year that they wanted to offer a similar performance at their school as a senior prank.

What they didn’t plan on was misdemeanor charges and banishment from this weekend’s graduation.

Aaron Brown and Christopher Florio, both 18, and Paul Giazzon and Jesse Jolley, both 17 — who together form the garage band The Heads — pulled off a musical senior prank, bringing their instruments onto the Newfane High School rooftop and playing rock songs for their fellow students June 12.

The Heads were hit with criminal charges, and all four members have been barred from Newfane High School’s graduation ceremonies.

On Thursday, the boys gathered at Jesse’s house to practice their music and found themselves fielding calls from several media outlets. Florio said he received a call from the television show “Inside Edition.”

All this attention is a far cry from what they expected.

“We’re not trying to make a huge deal out of it,” Jesse said.

“We didn’t even think we were going to go through with it, really,” Giazzon said.

The prank took three days to pull off. On the first day, they went up on the roof to scout the location and look for electrical outlets.

“We had to make sure that we could do it,” Florio said.

Once they figured out the logistics, the teens spent the second night getting their instruments onto the roof of the school. They covered their equipment with a tarp and left it there until early the next morning.

Jolley’s father, Rick Jolley, said he knew something was up when Jesse stayed out late that night. He found it especially odd when Jesse got up at 5:30 a.m. and left the house, much earlier than usual.

“Early in the morning, we drove up and we walked through the woods, and then walked along the back side of the school,” Florio said. “We just climbed up there and just started playing.”

The music started just as the school busses began arriving at 7:20 a.m.

Because they had told a select few people about the secret concert, there were some students in the crowd — like their fellow senior John Winkowski, 18, — who were cheering and “pumping their fists,” Giazzon said.

Winkowski said everyone he talked to thought the performance was a pleasant surprise.

“When I was talking to other people about it afterwards, they were like, this was actually really good, because nobody knew about it,” he said. “All the other pranks and stuff, it always got around, but this one was kept really under wraps, really quiet. Everyone was happy with it.”

Not everyone in the crowd was happy, however. Giazzon said he saw school administrators and Sheriff’s Deputy Joe Flagler, the school resource officer, were all yelling at them to stop.

“They were all down there (saying), ‘If you don’t get down from there, you’re going to get arrested,’ ” Giazzon said. “We hit it, and we just kept playing.”

Florio said the band was going to stop as soon as someone came up on the roof to stop them.

“Since they weren’t up there, we had to jam,” he said. “We knew we were in trouble.”

They got through two songs — covers of “Dead Leaves in the Dirty Ground” by the White Strips and “In Blue” by Nirvana — before they were literally unplugged by school administrators.

“They were swinging the cord around,” Giazzon said. “Everything was plugged into one cord. They just grabbed the cord, and that was it.”

Sheriff’s deputies arrived shortly afterward. Jesse said he heard the deputies tell school administrators that the prank wasn’t “that big a deal.”

Even so, the boys were each charged with third-degree criminal trespass and issued appearance tickets. They are scheduled to appear at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Newfane Town Court. If found guilty they face three months in jail or probation.

The boys all admit they knew they would get in trouble, even though they believe it was a harmless prank.

“We didn’t even really break into the school,” Jesse said. “We weren’t really trespassing because we were supposed to be there.”

Rick Jolley said he thought his son’s prank was “a pretty cool idea.”

“Nobody’s getting hurt,” he said. “They weren’t really trashing the place. ...I don’t understand the criminal trespass charge.”

According to the sheriff’s department report, Principal Steve Burley requested criminal charges be pressed against the teens.

Burley said he had no comment on the incident.

“I'm not at liberty to discuss issues of student conduct and student discipline in public,” he said. “There's a lot of privacy issues regarding that.”

Niagara County Sheriff Thomas Beilein said Burley had the right to press charges.

“They were given the chance to come down from the roof and refused to come down,” Beilein said. “(This is) not from our orders, but from the principal’s orders.”

Beilein added he didn’t see the “newsworthiness” of the story, alluding to bigger stories such as the number of U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq in recent days.

This incident was just a routine trespassing complaint, he said.

“The persons have a legal right to press charges, and this is what the school chose to do,” he said.

The teens say they have been banned from graduation ceremonies, but each one said the prank was worth it.

“It was definitely picture-perfect,” Brown said. “It was exactly how I expected it, how we all expected it.”

When they appear in court on Tuesday, the boys say they’re hoping for leniency.

“We’ll just tell them what we did,” Giazzon said. “Hopefully they’ll see the good in it, instead of the bad.”

Contact reporter April Amadon at 439-9222, ext. 6251.