Kindle Edition Download to your Nook (eBook) Amazon Barnes & Noble.com Tattered Cover Bookstore Category:  Young Adult/Teen Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers ISBN-10:  0316133108 Type: Fiction Pages: 304 Copyright: March 5, 2012 ISBN-13: 9780316133104 Price: $8.99 (eBook) Shy but talented Orion Taylor dreams of rock glory so when his Yet-To-Be-Named garage band has a chance to compete in the high school Battle of the Bands, he throws himself into his music. Just as he’s beginning to find his voice and confidence, his disillusioned older brother, Del, returns home and seems determined to sabotage his life and dreams. Can Ori learn to believe in himself enough to fight for his music, the girl he loves (and come up with a band name) before it’s too late? Ori Taylor is the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the Band To Be Named Later, a garage band he started with his friends. After years of being known only as the kid brother of sports star Del, Ori is looking forward to stepping out of his older brother's shadow, learning to perform in public, and rocking the Battle of the Bands contest. Oh, and maybe finally working up the nerve to talk to a girl in person instead of just over e-mail. But when Del suddenly returns from college, he expects Ori to step back into his role of little brother, just when Ori is starting to come into his own. With his confidence wavering, will Ori be able to overcome his stage fright and lead the band to rock glory? Will the Band To Be Named Later ever get a real name? Will their best performances remain in the garage? Denise Vega's deft exploration of brothers, bands, friends, and crushes promises to have readers tuning in page after page, because among all the ups and downs of being a teen, one thing's for sure: We all just want to rock on.         Excerpt My dad likes to joke that the first word I ever spoke was guitar, but apparently it was Del. Not Mama or Dada, like most kids, but the name of my older brother. I used to think that was cool. Because Del was cool. Sure, we had the usual brother stuff with shoving, hitting, and his yelling at me to stop following him and his friends to the tree fort, but it was Del who rescued me from Curtis Langford when he shoved my head into a bucket of muddy water and held it there when I was six, Del who told everyone at our elementary school I was going to grow up to be a rock star, Del who took me out to Chipotle the day he got his license before he went to show off to his friends. The same Del who, just yesterday, told me he probably wouldn’t be at my first official gig, even though he’d known about it for weeks and had been really pumped about it. “I put the word out,” he’d said back when I first told him about it. “Lots of people should be there. And we’ll have a big party after, even if it is a school night.” I’d thought that was so great because I knew he could charm my parents into agreeing. But now he wasn’t even interested in coming to listen to us, let alone arrange some stupid party. It was like everything before he quit college never existed—the times we hung out together or when I went to his games or he bragged about my playing. That brother was gone, and in his place was a guy who looked at me like I was an idiot for even playing the guitar and made fun of me for trying to make it as a musician. I shook my head hard, trying to get rid of thoughts of Del so I could focus, get myself to another place, the place I would need to be if I wanted to pull off this gig. I closed my eyes and concentrated. It took just a few seconds before I could almost hear the shouts and whistles, the applause, practically smell the fake smoke rising on the stage at Red Rocks Amphitheatre as… I look out over the crowd, framed by massive walls of red rock jutting into the night sky. I stroke my sleek black Les Paul, then slam into a killer riff that sends every girl in the front row screaming for a piece of me. The sound reverberates off the rocks that surround the seats, natural acoustics for our music. The music is pure and perfect; record execs will be knocking over one another after the show to sign us. I look out on the crowd, my voice hitting all the notes. I— “Ori?” —look back at my best friend and drummer, Nick “Call Me the Brew Man” Brewster, and— “Ori. Dude. You’ve got to come out now. We’re going on soon.” I blinked once. Twice. The Red Rocks stage dissolved. I wasn’t a rock star. I was a sixteen-year-old dork in a dingy bathroom stall, staring at the F-word scratched into the door in all its glorious forms. It took me a second to remember that we were at the FX Lounge on Mic Night Monday for our first official public appearance. And I was hiding in the bathroom.

Kirkus Reviews
Self-conscious Orion "Ori" Taylor is the front man for a promising, but nameless band in this teen drama.

Encouraged by some good local press, The Band to Be Named Later enters itself in a Battle of the Bands and subsequently auditions bass players while Ori works at strengthening his nerves. Confounding this process is the presence of his older brother, Del, who was once Ori's idol—until Del failed to keep up his grades while on a lacrosse scholarship at college. Humiliated to be back at home, Del takes his frustrations out on Ori. When a girl Ori is crushing on seems to throw him over for his brother, tensions run even higher. Vega has imbued her tale with well-developed characters—Ori's first-person voice is sympathetic, especially coming to life when he's singing and playing guitar. For all that, the tone seems unusually sweet, given that the novel's focus is a high-school rock band: How many 16-year-old boys confine themselves using phrases like, "What the heck…" in a peer-only environment? Moreover, as the strife between the brothers draws out, its protraction may lead readers to expect a twist or a more of a revelation than what actually manifests.

Nevertheless, readers will appreciate Ori's gently self-deprecating humor and the lively Web postings and texts woven throughout that help tell the story. (Fiction. 12-16)

Publishers Weekly
Ori used to idolize his older brother, Del, but Del has dropped out of college and is back at home making Ori's sophomore year hell. Now Ori never knows when his brother will turn on him, mocking his dreams of becoming a rock star. Those dreams are off to a good start: Ori's band has found a talented bass player, they are entering a Battle of the Bands competition, and Ori is hitting it off with Jane, a friend of the band's new bassist. But when Del sets his sights on Jane, and a rival band starts a feud with Ori's still-unnamed band, things begin to fall apart. There are few surprises in this coming-of-age story from Vega (Fact of Life #31), but Ori's honest voice will have readers caring about the outcome, neat though it is. Blog entries from the band's Web site are interspersed, giving an amusing glimpse of the drama among the band's budding groupies, while third-person flashbacks to Ori's younger days take readers behind the music—and behind Ori and Del's strained relationship.

School Library Journal
Orion Taylor is a pretty awesome musician. He and his friends Nick and Troy have formed a band to be named later. As Ori saves for his dream guitar, a Les Paul, and rehearses like a madman for the upcoming Battle of the Bands contest, he must also contend with his somber and antagonistic older brother. After being put on academic probation and leaving college early, Del is lashing out at everyone: his parents, his younger sister, and especially Orion. The band still can't agree on a name, but eventually settles on a rocking bass player named Gwyn, a deaf girl who can literally play by feeling the musical vibrations in her feet. She joins the group, and Orion falls for her best friend, Jane. When Del begins showing an interest in her and Jane seems as if she might be interested back, the real war between the brothers ignites. In this thoughtful tale, sibling rivalry is taken to the next level. Both Ori and Del prove to be likable characters in their own respective ways, and jealousy between brothers is hardly unheard of. A true strength of this title proves to be supporting character Gwyn, who is seamlessly integrated into the story without making her deafness debilitating.—Ryan Donovan, New York Public Library