OMT vignette

Sonic Silence

My heart raced with excitement just before we stepped on stage. My memory flashed back to the rehearsal we had an hour ago. It took us three try’s to get it right then and that was only in front of the other bands now it was in front of a crowd of strangers. We made a dramatic entrance as the announcer spoke “They say just before a sonic boom there’s SONIC SILENCE”.

The drummer clicked us off. Click, click, click, click, and our bass player came to life and played. I waited for the part where I started playing while I looked into the audience and estimate how many people there were. There were a lot more than I expected. It was like a sea of random faces. Then my guitar sprang to life as I started to play. It started off great we were almost like a recording. Then came the second verse which we weren’t very confident about. Our singer started to sing but it was like someone had stolen the right words from her memory. We realized she must have forgotten the lyrics and was improvising which was fine except the rest of us couldn’t figure out how long to play the verse it was like suddenly the whole world had changed.

Luckily after looking around at my band mates confusing faces we came to a silent agreement to start the chorus. We blazed through the chorus like a wild fire and continued onto the bridge. We played the bridge as the singer sang then came time for my guitar solo. I had been practicing it all week, but suddenly my mind went blank like someone had erased the chalkboard that was my memory. So I had to improvise. I was so nervous my hands were shaking like an Eskimo in the arctic so it was extremely hard to finish the solo.

The rest of the song was perfect right up until the ending which we hadn’t practice as much and in rehearsal we had done terrible. At that point everyone was lost. Everyone was following some one else like a confused conga line of doom. Then thankfully the drummer found an opportunity and signaled the ending.

We didn’t exactly know where to exit on the stage so we just left from the way came. We saw the other bands and they said “good job” and we wished them good luck and headed for the exit as excited as a little kid on Christmas morning. We confessed all of our mistakes and how relieved we were that the show was over. After all the bands had finished playing their songs everyone came outside and we reflected on how awesome everyone did. The energy after that show was intense everyone was so excited and relieved. The parents to pictures so they could remember the moment, but I knew I wouldn’t need a picture to remember this experience.