Director Staci Johnson began acquainting the bulk of the cast Wednesday with the couple of the eight or nine ensemble numbers most are expected to participate in during the show, in particular "We Go Together" and "Greased Lightning."

Many cast members were absent, some of them being Marysville Charter Academy of the Arts students finishing "hell week' rehearsals for Sentimental Journey, a revue of songs and dances from the '40s, '50s and '60s, which opens Thursday for a two-day run.

As Johnson went over the songs, line by line, appreciation grew for the writers and performers of those seemingly simple songs from the Golden Age of rock 'n' roll. Those songs were not as easy as they looked. Every silly syllable, every subtle "shewa-de-bop-bop" has its purpose in the melodic structure.

"See the 'da' in the 'ka-ding da-dong'?" Johnson said, referring to the scripts in cast members' laps. "Got to have that, or it doesn't come out with the 'rama-lama, lama-lama ding-dong'."

At issue was the heart of doo-wop, the urban song-style created by "corner boys" in the ghettos, black and white, in the major cities of the East Coast in the 1950s - in crucible neighborhoods like South Philly, North Baltimore, East Brooklyn and West Hoboken.

The kids on the corner -- .a.k.a. "block boys" -- were small groups of three and four lifelong pals hanging out on the stoops on hot nights or under the street light in front of the corner mom-and-pop that was the mercantile and social hub for those too young or too broke to get into the jive clubs and gin mills a few doors down the block.

Choir-trained, all heart, totally soul, but generally lacking musical instruments, they sang a cappella and made the sounds that laid in the bass lines, provided the harmonies and stabbed in the punctuation points of early rock 'n' roll.

As rock swept the nation's generation and the stacks of wax piled higher and higher at WNEW, WBAL the Big KIDD the kids down on the corner were but a borough and a dream away from the talent scouts' offices and only 100,000 watts of Radio POWER!! from a Top 40 hit.

Now how is Staci Johnson gong to teach the spirit of doo-wop to 30 kids living two generations away from that innocent age when three girls could pay $3 , squeeze into a sound booth at Palisades Park and do a one-minute vinyl demo that could -- with a little luck, matching dresses and maybe a darker shade of lipstick -- swing them a recording contract? How indeed.

"I want to hear those consonants. B, T, G. Nice and sharp. 'We Go To Gether'. Don't sing 'shaaa-naaa-naaaaaa.' Sing 'Sha-Na-Na,'" Johnson barked, snapping her fingers on each note.

The kids gathered in co-director Pierrette Jensen's living room seemed to have the beginnings of the energy that forms the core of rock 'n' roll. They've seen the movie. They've heard the songs. But do they understand the underlying driving force of bedrock rock 'n' roll?

Watching the four kids playing the "Burger Palace Boys" there may be a chance. A very good chance.

The group includes the good-looking but shy Matt Monaco, serious Tyler Brand, likable class cut-up Jasper Oliver and the seemingly rockin'est, rhythmest of the quartet, James Wilton, who -- had he gone to high school when his grandparents did -- would doubtless have earned a power gym class nickname like Jukebox James, or Wanton Wilton.

With some good casting choices Johnson and Jensen have managed to put together the quintessentially typical, most-likely-to-be-fondly-remembered gang of tough-talking-but-soft-hearted rock 'n' rollers from the graduating class of 19Whenever.

"All the songs you're going to hear in this will remind you of another song you've heard," Johnson told the cast. "Because that's what Grease! is -- it's an homage to rock 'n' roll."