Guitars Unplugged

I really wasn't planning on going tonight. Well I was, sort of.

Guitars Unplugged is a yearly/semesterly (not sure which) event. Basically, they get all the students in the school who are stinkin' awesome at playing guitar or have a band and said bands get to play on stage.

You have to pay to go see it. I had an FHE brother who was in it one year. He was inCREdible at guitar. No seriously, he could have been the best one up there. Tonight, I saw a kid from one of my classes who played. He was super duper amazing too. Sometimes it amazes me how talented some of the people at our school are.



Well, I've been to Guitars Unplugged before. I wasn't really planning on going tonight either. I didn't have friends who were going. I just went to hand out bracelets for our Student Safety Committee. People actually collect those silly rubbery bracelets people hand out all the time. I had people coming up to me asking for them and more for their friends. Funny...

Because I handed out bracelets they stamped my hand. So I got in for free. Something I was totally not expecting. So I stayed. For a little while. One of the guys got up to introduce his band.

"Hey there! We were going to dedicate this song to a special someone tonight.... but decided that might be too risky! So instead I'm dedicating it to all you people out there screaming!" And he began to play.

Guitars Unplugged is pretty cool with their effects. They had the lights and the smoke and the lasers. Partway through the song these white lights started going off all around the gym. "That's a cool effect. I didn't know we had that in our gym!"

Then I heard a noise. Sounded sort of like a buzzer, right in time with the music. "Wow, the buzzer and the lights go off together nicely. With the music. Nice! I didn't know they had such awesome effects."

And then I heard this woman in a formal looking outfit come through saying something about fire alarms in a panicked voice.

"Oh. Crap."

It took like two minutes for people to realize it was the fire alarms. All the lights and stereo equipment up front suddenly shut off. People were screaming, "KEEP PLAYING! SCREW THE ALARMS! KEEP PLAYING!!!!"

And then the loudspeaker system came on. "The fire alarms have gone off. We need to calmly evacuate the building. If everyone could calmly make their way to the nearest exit and--" Yeah, I didn't even hear the rest of that statement. When there's five thousand people in already energetic moods in one gigantic room with fire alarms going off, the word "calm" isn't even an option.

People weren't really freaking out or anything. No running or anything. We just all walked slowly out of the building saying to each other, "Well that sucks! Ruined a perfectly good song." But it was loud. Opposite of calm.

I have to say, I myself thought it may have been that "special someone" that the boys decided not to risk dedicating their song to tonight who pulled the alarm.

But it wasn't. Too much smoke got caught in some pipe. Five minutes later we were all back in our seats, excited as ever to continue the show. And the show went on.

And all was well with the world. The End.