Every good band scene needs a focal point – a store, a club, or a gallery – a venue around which budding musicians gather to tell war stories, jam, share ideas, make plans.

Punk-era London had Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s ‘Sex’ boutique, around which whirled and emerged the Sex Pistols, and Adam and the Ants, among others.

In Manchester, England, in the 1980s, the Hacienda was the breeding ground for groups like The Stone Roses and The Happy Mondays.

Dip Set, Harlem’s oldest record store, was the central point of a musical and fashion movement that became known as hip hop and went on to change the sound of artistic expression all over the world.

In Sammamish, that central point appears to be Moore Brothers Music, a music store that doubles as a venue for music lessons and meeting place for developing bands.

In fact, many of the best young bands in the city, like Letters and Lights, Sons of the Nile, With Honest Eyes, The Voltz, and If I Were A Gladiator, made their first tentative steps toward the stage at Moore Brothers, taking lessons when they were almost too small to see above the drum kit.

Five years after brothers Scott and Troy opened the store, they are putting together a concert that will showcase a number of the bands that they fostered. That concert will take place in front of the store this Saturday, July 25, from noon to 6 p.m.

But just as gigs like this are examples of the strength of the local music scene, it also highlights a matter of great concern for young musicians wanting to take that next step and move out of the garage and on to the stage in their home city – there is nowhere to play.

The music scene in Sammamish is suffering from a lack of venues suitable for all-age gigs. With many of the bands featuring members as young as 9 and 11, local bars and restaurants are not suitable, and so these bands are being forced to travel to nearby cities to play. Or they are not playing at all, a fact that Scott Moore said is threatening such a valuable creative outlet for young people in Sammamish.

He recalls going to see backyard shows, hosted by the parents of young band members, as there is nowhere else for their children to play.

“And teens don’t know too much about how to get organized, in terms of getting to the councillors and letting them know that a music venue, like a teen center, is something that is important to them,” said Troy Moore.

While I was talking to Scott and Troy in their store on Tuesday, hearing stories of Moms driving their children to places like Tacoma for jam sessions and gigs, in walked Eric Knudsen.

Knudsen, who is about to enter his senior year at Eastlake High School, had just stopped in to the shop to pick up a few things before hitting the road to continue a tour of California and Oregon with one of his bands, Letters and Lights.

Knudsen, who is also a member of local band Honest Eyes, can attest first hand to the difficulties faced by young musicians in Sammamish.

Having lived in Bellevue before going to school on the Plateau, Knutsen said he had an understanding of what other venues were out there. But for many, the goldfish bowl of places to play seems too small a world.

“For most new bands, they play their first gig at the firehouse, bring a few friends along to watch, and then often that’s about it,” he said.

The firehouse to which he refers is the Old Firehouse Teen Center in Redmond, a venue with an illustrious musical history, having housed some of the first gigs for now legendary acts Modest Mouse, Elliot Smith, and Death Cab for Cutie.

“From the firehouse, if the band keeps going they usually play KTUB (Kirkland Teen Union Building), then Ground Zero in Bellevue,” Knudsen said. “After that, there are a few places in Seattle, like Studio 7, that has all-age shows for new bands, but not many.”

What do all of these places have in common? None of them are in Issaquah or Sammamish, a fact that Scott Moore said he is worried the city is not doing very much about.

Scott has been working closely with the Boys and Girls clubs in the area to promote the concept of a teen center at the existing Sammamish Library, but acknowledges that a venue suitable for all age gigs is still some years away.

Meanwhile, the list of promising young musicians continues to grow, and includes local phenomena like Mitchell and Anthony Schmidt, the 9 and 11 year old blues duo that has already begun writing their own songs. Or bands like Ironix and Sons of Nile, members of which have yet to make it to high school but have a good number of gigs under their collective belts. Jeffrey Harrison’s band The Voltz are all around 11 years of age.

One third of the population of Sammamish is under 18, so it stands to reason that the concerns of the area’s teenagers should be high on the list of concerns of the city.

A number of councillors and city staff have spoken in the recent past about the importance of facilities such as sporting fields, but beyond the annual Teen Fest, little attention has been paid to other outlets, like music.

Finding and developing the right place to play requires thought and planning, due to noise and transportation issues.

“At Ground Zero, pretty much every show we do somebody calls the cops,” Knudsen said. “We have to stop playing at 11, because there are apartments nearby, and an old folks home. We need somewhere where we can get loud if we need to.”

For more information on Saturday’s concert, go to www.moorebrothersmusic.com , or see the story in last week’s Reporter.