The horror: when mum and dad go back to rock school

Students of the Park Slope Rock School wait before performing on stage at La Bellevilloise concert hall in Paris. [Photo/Agencies]

It is every teenager's worst nightmare－or so you would have thought. Mum and dad up on stage belting out rock anthems in front of your friends. The horror!

A few days before they face the toughest audience imaginable－their children－the graduates of what is touted as the world's first rock class for parents are joking about what's the more nerve-wracking, this or childbirth.

"Can't you see me shaking?" says Philippe Chabert-Marcon, whose 11 and 12-year-olds are already veterans of Paris' Park Slope Rock School.

But it is too late. The tickets have been sold for their first gig at a hip venue in the French capital.

To pile on the pressure, British pop star Jarvis Cocker is in the audience, one of several musicians to have enrolled their children in the school.

Yet when the moment comes, their kids are on their feet with everyone else as the parents tear into "Born to be Wild".

"Wow! They were really great," shouts nine-year-old Matthew Langlois who had performed earlier on the bill, awe-struck by his mother Michelle, who said she hasn't sung with such abandon since she stood in front of the mirror as a teenager.

Struggling to be heard above the cheers, Langlois, 48, says, "It's a real high. I still can't believe how far we've come."

When the group was put together less than four months before, only two band members could really play their instruments. And as Chabert-Marcon, also 48, admits, his "electric guitar has been gathering dust in the basement for nearly 30 years".