Hark, hear the guitars!

NEW YORK -- Imagine if Jack Black's exuberant "School of Rock" character blended his love of hard-rock theatrics with the grandiose timelessness of Christmas carols.\nHe'd probably dream up something a lot like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which has snowballed into one of the hottest live acts in the country thanks to its arena-packing annual holiday tour -- an elaborate rock opera replete with lasers, power ballads and a warm-and-fuzzy G-rated message.\nThe Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which boasts a stable of 15 singers, an orchestral string section and a rock band, tosses various musical genres -- pop, folk, blues, Broadway and hard rock, among others -- into a mix of original pieces and standards. The group recently began an eight-week, 117-show cross-country tour, its biggest ever.\n"Whenever you start a band or an album, you always kinda hope it'll grow and be a success, but Trans-Siberian has grown bigger and gone so beyond anything that we could have ever imagined," Paul O'Neill, the group's earnest founder and composer, told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "It wasn't even on our wish list."\nO'Neill added: "One of the magic things about the arts is if you get it right, it can jump over every single wall that people put between (themselves). ... I mean, seeing that diversity of the audience is better than the money -- don't tell the promoters that, don't tell Atlantic (Records) that. It really, really is."\nO'Neill, along with composers Robert Kinkel and Jon Oliva (a lead singer for the metal band Savatage), formed the Trans-Siberian Orchestra in 1996 after the success of Savatage's single "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24," an amped-up medley of "Carol of the Bells" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." The group, also known as "TSO," released its top-selling debut album, "Christmas Eve and Other Stories," that same year. Two more yuletide-themed discs followed: 1998's "The Christmas Attic" and 2004's "Lost Christmas Eve."\nTSO broke up its seasonal trilogy to put out a Christmas-free album, "Beethoven's Last Night," in 2000, and another one is in the works. \nChristmas, though, is clearly working for them. The group's 2005 winter tour racked up nearly $24 million domestically, surpassing top-grossing tours by Paul McCartney, Pearl Jam and Gwen Stefani, according to Billboard figures. \n"The band does unbelievable numbers, and sometimes it scares us sometimes," O'Neill said. "Whatever it is, we don't want to blow it."\nAt first glance, O'Neill, who's produced albums by Aerosmith and Savatage, doesn't appear touchy-feely enough to command such a hot holiday ticket: He wore a tough leather jacket and tight black jeans to his interview. And then there's the long, '80s hair.\nHe took on the "larger than life" subject of Christmas, he said, because it had the potential and scope to captivate an audience. But it was an intimidating venture. "When you're writing something for Christmas, you're literally competing against the last 1,200 years' worth of musicians. ... For me, that was the biggest challenge," he said.\nO'Neill's strategy? Interject musical numbers with narration to weave an inspirational story. That's where the yarn-spinning elements of Broadway and rock operas from The Who pop in. Add pyrotechnics and voila!\n"Every time we tour, we tear the whole thing apart, build it from scratch and try to add new toys and devices," O'Neill said. "You know, most bands when they tour will have one or two laser machines. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra has 10.\n"I know I drive my poor management crazy because they're like, 'Paul, the budget! The budget!' Yeah, I think it's either go into rock 'n' roll or be an arsonist"