YMCA Concert (finally!)

Well, wow. The much-touted, twice-postponed YMCA concert has gone from the realm of fearful expectation to 20-20 hindsight and vivid memories. Here's the short story, as related in a text message I sent at 7:10am Saturday morning:

24.5 hours awake.
20 straight hours
working on concert
stuff. 2 sunrises.
Good morning; I'm
going to bed.

And for the long story...
I got up at 6:30 Friday morning, Nate, Shannon and I left at 7:45, we got to the Hoffmans at 10:15, and we started working on stuff for the show at 10:40. At 7:40 the next morning I was also at the Hoffmans, the sky was light, all the speakers and cables and equipment were in their normal places, the big gym at the Y was bare and waiting for someone to start banging a basketball around in it...but much had happened in the interim :-)

I'll skip all the painful deals of loadup and setup. Basically, Nate was a HUGE help (he made it happen, IMO), and Shannon, Steve and Brian all worked very hard. We filled my wagon, the Chima's Bravada (sport ute), the Hoffman's minivan, and a monstrous gutted conversion van Mike had borrowed from First Assembly. Loading it all at the Hoffman's was a lot of work, so when we got to the Y and I heard people talking about "up" when I asked where the gym was, I was almost disbelieving. Sure enough, all that stuff had to be taked down a long "U" of hallway and up either stairs or an elevator. Help from some of the folks at the Y helped a lot, but it was still a long, strenuous process. It left my muscles teetering on the verge of cramping, my shirt sweaty, my feet and knees battered, and the gym full of stuff.

So far my fervent prayers during the past two weeks had been answered. We were in the gym, it was about 2 o'clock, and Steve already had the stage up. Everybody kept at their tasks, and the rig started coming together. The drums arose on their 3-foot platform like a glittering white monster, the stage got clothed in its black garments, racks and boards congregated at the sound booth, and soon a living creature of a thousand tenticle wires began to crawl through our gear. It was happening! The weekend was here, we were in the gym, and it was getting put together!

The happy times evaporated 'round about 5:30 when the 1400W power amp didn't work, everybody started drifting aimlessly, impending showtime leaned over and pressured us like a heavy weight, Screaming Silence (the opening band) arrived, and good honk, nobody's even sound checked the drums yet! I frantically took over the sound booth and started yelling orders while Mike troubleshooted other problems, and basically careened through that last hour or two with my brain bursting and confusion all around me. But finally we were done, Scott said we still had 10 minutes till 8 o'clock, and I surrendered. I left the sound booth, said hi to some folks, and ended up holding Elisa's new baby for awhile, which really helped calm me down. She was very cute, and from what I heard she was movin' to the music during the show :-)

In that brief interim between setup and Screaming Silence starting I got to collect my thoughts, and as I sat in my car changing into my All Stars I struggled with the realization that hardly anybody was showing up. I had been suspicious of the 200+ people the Y said would come, though the fliers handed out at the local 1000-student high school had excited me with the possiblity of this really being a big show. Now I was looking at maybe 25, 30 people, standing there dwarfed by our monster stage. I kept the thought at bay, though it had to brush through my mind to some degree: the concert was most likely bombing. I suddenly realized how nice the CoGA benefit concert had been, with its automatic draw of 150 school attenders and parents, and I figured local bands just have to deal with this, 'cause not every show's going to be big. So I faced the apparent failure, laced up the faded blue canvas, and went back up to the gym. Screaming Silence fired up, and the show began. (And I scurried to the sound board to help Scott fix the myriad sound problems that immediately started screaming out of the speakers)

One of the things that really juiced up the night was the 10 Pittsburghers who came to the show. Dad and Lisa drove 2 cars from Bethel Park, arriving a few minutes after SS started. Having friends from the 'Burgh brought a fun depth to the evening, and I was excited for them because, other than Dad, none of them had seen anything of Pure Boss except our album. It was cool to get to show them what I'd been up to all these weekends :-)

SS played a great set--lots of energy, some excellent songs, and great stage presence. We took a dragging 25 minutes to switch over things for Pure Boss, and finally we rounded up the necessary people, the music stopped, we were introduced, and I hopped up on the stage and walked over to the bass amp in the darkness. Strap over my head, chord in the jack, power up the amp, and grab my pick. Brian test-fired a couple guitar chords and I heard something about "ready to rock" from Steve's mic behind the drums. So we stood there on the stage, feet at chest level with the audience, silence and screams from the fans filling the gym. Look at Brian, smile, and start jumping up and down in time. He hits the chords, I come in with the bass line, and in a few moments the lights come on and we're playing -- trying to hit the right notes, trying to move around, trying to look up and look happy, and not really realizing at all that I was playing a rock concert with a band.

To me the show seemed to go pretty poorly. We kept losing bass or guitar, which utterly butchered several of our carefully-wrought arrangements, and from what I could see there was basically nobody out there, and they weren't moving around at all. The one encouragement was Mike's head, far above the masses at his feet, which I could see moving up and down and bobbing around. I appreciated his energy, but pictured him dancing alone in a bored scattering of people. We had lots of dead time between songs, and had to keep covering for technical problems. When at last we crashed the last crash at the end of "Ohio" and I stood up behind the drums, I was pretty discouraged. For two songs, "Beautiful Day" and "Hit the Wall," I had really "felt it" and had a great time. For the rest, it seemed like varying degrees of failure.

After the, as I staggered around talking to different people and starting to tear stuff down, God began to utterly change my impression of what had just happened. I brushed off Wes's ecstatic praises as his typical overstatement, and though Heather seriously said it was good, their opinions couldn't counter the weight in my mind. Then as I sat surrounded by cables fiddling with something or other, Mike came over and said "Dude, Screaming Silence couldn't stop talking about how much they loved you guys." I was stunned. As he elaborated (Mike? Elaborating? *gasp* :-P), my disbelief slowly had to give way. Heck man, Screaming Silence is like a real band! Those guys are good, and I respect them a ton. They're in a different league than us, in my mind, and here they were, raving about our show and starting to plan when they could hook up a concert with us. As Mike talked, a great weight lifted off my chest, and in its place came the glow of realizing that God had done "above and beyond all I could ask or imagine." I had asked plenty, pouring out prayers for the past two weeks, and here before my eyes, flying in the face of dying bass and lost guitars and trashed setlists and dead power amps, God was answering those prayers. I had lost faith and lost heart, but God's overflowing goodness came anyway. The glow of that moment of realization still sweetens my heart when I think of it. I don't know if we'll play with SS, or how big we'll become, or if we're even honestly any good at all, but right there God blessed us, and for that I am amazed and grateful.

Finally everybody left, the glow settled back in my mind, and teardown began to stare at us with bleary, bloodshot eyes. The warm humidity of the afternoon had given way to a blowing wet cold that chilled to the bone and some light driving spit from the sky to boot. The halls must be walked another 40 times, the cumbersome and overabundant gear must be hauled and loaded once again into the cars, and the poor girl from the Y had to wait around till we were finished to roll up the flooring and lock up the gym. Time rolled on meaninglessly as I worked alone carrying and loading most of the conversion van. I fought the weight of those speakers and boxes with a blind desperation, hunched there in the van's gaping metal interior. Everyone plugged away, especially at the staging, which took so long to move downstairs. Mr. Hoffman almost broke his wrist wheeling one load out, which was pretty scary. The one real bright spot in this time was when Lauren and Tori (sp?), who had stayed very late helping, swung back by and dropped off a bag of Chalupas and a flat of Dr.Peppers. Oh, gloriousness! The food made me realized the hunger I had been ignoring, and that sweet crisp enlivening Dr.P made me wonderfully happy.

Finally Scott, Diana and Philip left, we finished up the last bits, and closed down the Y. I sipped my Dr.Pepper as I drove home, one in the caravan of 4, and on the strength of that caffeine I went the rest of the night and morning. We unloaded everything at the Hoffmans, but compared to the trek to the gym, hauling stuff 10 feet into the garage felt like doing hopscotch. Then I settled down on the livingroom floor and started pulling, separating, winding, sorting and storing Mike's cables. We had to get the studio operational that night since Mike was going to Aero Team all day Saturday and Scott needed to record the soundtrack for the Easter dance program the following weekend. All Mike's stuff had been a disaster with all the practices and gigs of late, and now was the time to get it back in order. Mike worked on the rack, Steve and Brian kept unloading in the dark driveway, and I sat and plucked and wound and placed and sorted and set aside and organized. After some indefinite period of time all was unloaded and all the church stuff was set aside, so Mike, Steve and Brian drove to the church and wired it all back up. That was the time of stasis, when I basically mildly enjoyed the craziness of the situation. I was up ridiculously late, after having done a ridiculous amount of work, and still having a daunting amount left to do, and I liked that. Rarely do I work hard or do hard stuff, so I was content to let the silence pass by in the sleeping house while I kept plugging away. If it sounds like I'm impressed by myself and the work I did, well, I am :-P It's so dumb - even when I actually do something somewhat impressive, I'm so impressed by it myself it's ruined. Ah well - I'll never be Ken. Regardless of all that, that time really was pretty weird, and especially tearing down at the Y was pretty rough. Overall, though, I enjoyed the work and the weirdness, and was in a mildly happy and zone-out mood that morning. The strangest moment, when the magnitude of the time and work really hit me, was when I took some tools out to the garage and heard birds singing. I walked out to the doorway, and indeed there was the sky, lightening blue at the treetops. It was a new day, but it came after no break from the one before it. As only my second all-nighter, that was quite an odd biotemporal realization, and I savored it.

The work concluded up in Mike's room. Steve had gone to bed a couple hours before, down with a hurting leg. Brian had helped and helped, and at last it was down to Mike crammed behind the studio rack and me handing him cables as he called for them. We told Brian he could go and worked on, Mike babbling like a pothead and me handing him cables while moving as little as possible. At last the final patch cable was popped in and the studio was together. We pounded fists, staggered about a bit getting ready for bed, I sent the text message, and at last Mike retired to bed and I retired to a hot shower. The grand show was over, and the night I could not imagine had been done. Yay!

That morning Brian and Steve had soccer, and Mike was a ref for one of the fields, starting at 10. I decided that if 2 band members had to be up at 9:30, so would the third. Amazingly, after less than two hours of black dead sleep, I arose feeling rested, and feeling like there had actually been a night and today was a new day. Funny how the body works.

Soccer was cool, and I'm glad I went. Brian scored a goal, I got to talk with friends, and I got to be a windbreak for the poor freezing girls who had only hoodies in the bitter wind. I also got to go BACK and pick up Steve after he had ignored all attempts to wake him up on time :-P Ah well, I still love 'im. I got to meet Pepper, too - the Turner's new dog. Cute puppy. Sharp claws and teeth! After soccer the Hoffman household slept from noon till about 7pm. I arose from my impromptu power cable pillow in the livingroom at 6:30, smiling at the strangeness of a house full of sleeping people at dinnertime on a Saturday. Not much happened that evening at all. I don't remember if we had any kind of dinner, but I remember around 9:00 everybody watching the Chronicles of Narnia in the den. I wanted to do nothing at all except watch some brainless light movie--definitely NOT Narnia. I wandered around for a few minutes with absolutely nothing I wanted to do, and finally settled down on Steve's bed with a bowl of frozen fruit and an acoustic guitar. After an hour or so he came up and joined me, and we plunked around until about 11.

Sunday was pretty nice. Church especially was great. I was able to jump right into worship surprisingly easily, and I had several great purposeful conversations with folks. It was new members Sunday, and I was heartened by the joyous, love-filled testimonies shared by several of the incoming folks. It reminded me again of our ordination by God as His church, individually members of His body. I was spurred to consider what I could do to strengthen this church which God has put me in about 1/4th of the time. Great time :-)

Lunch was ok, though it was with a group that embodies everything socially that I am not. So I didn't say much, listened to the small talk, analyzed the Bose woofer above our heads, and heartily enjoyed the appetizer platter.

Back at the Hoffmans I entertained thoughts of going to the Murphys or somewhere and hanging out while Steve did these chores and stuff he had to do. But I ended up helping him load all the staging back in the van and put away the drum stuff. Then he and Mr. H left for the church and I became possessed with an inclination to do something purposeful to serve this family that had hosted me so much. The dirt-tracked entryway that had originally inspired this thought was already cleaned up, so I turned instead to the morass of Steve and Philip's room. All the laundry went in and on the basket in the corner, and I set up the whole drumset, getting it out of the basement where it really couldn't have stayed. It felt to good to do something and work some more, and seeing the wide open carpet and gleaming drumset in the room was immensly satisfying.

The day was capped off by me and Steve going to the Chimas to be with Brian and watch the video his parents took of the concert. It was fun, as always, to chill in the Chima's sweet house with its funny inhabitants. Mike arrived after an hour or so, and the four of us (plus Nick) watched the video in the basement. It was pretty nerve wracking, constantly fearing a mistake, waiting to see how it went, how it sounded from out front, what we looked like. I was tired from the suspense by the time the video was over, and then we sat around and talked and talked and talked about what to change and what we could buy and things we could do as a band. Finally my brain was overloaded with important things that I could do nothing about at the moment, and I asked if we could just stop, and please not watch the video of the benefit concert. It was rather overwhelming thinking about all that we could and should do to improve, but it was good to talk about it together. I just keep submitting it to God and praying that His will be done, not mine.

Monday morning was another wake-up-early-and-go-to-work-from-the-Hoffman's routine, and in two hours I found myself back in my homey office at Nova, dull from the weekend and staring at a stack of turbidity circle charts. I called Mom to let her know I had survived the weekend, and proceeded with the day. I caved to my craving for fatty, salty food and went to the Midway at noon for a salad and Dr.Pepper. I brought some work to do, and after finishing I hunched over a notepad and wrote out everything that was on my mind. Everything we had talked about with Pure Boss, financial stuff, projects at home...all the things that weigh on me and take up my brain's RAM. I felt better after that brain dump. And as I thought about all that was represented by those three pages I saw that I must pray hard for God to show me the priorities that He wants me to work on.

Aight, it's 2:15am, I'm sleepy, the couch is soft, and tomorrow I don't have to go in to work! I'm going to brush as quickly as possible, without disturbing my sleepiness, and curl up here on the ouch and close my eyes in sweet surrender. This is quite a detailed post, for better or for worse.

Good night,

--Clear Ambassador