MPC 60B (61X): I Wanna Rock! (Rock!)

MPC: 61X - From Your Point Of View

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Who would have thought it? I always did dream of the excitement backstage with between three and six of my best friends in the world at a huge arena while a crowd chanting our band's name. It turns out, though, that I was actually making that much, much harder than it really needed to be. No, I did the work alright, put in the effort, the practice, the dedication - all of us did, really. That wasn't how I got in my own way. It's really kind of silly when you think about it: the reason it took so long to hear a mass of people shouting my band's name was because I gave my band's name a hugely unnecessary number of syllables.

Haunted Threnody. Dumb, right? Well at this point it was too late to change it because that was how we were known, and boy, were we known, alright! I didn't exactly dream of playing in Terminus' Blackhat Amphitheatre growing up, but after walking into the place I knew I sure as hell would had I known about it. Screw Wembley! Forget Rock AM! Who needs Radio City? Jesus Christ, I'd felt like a dwarf just spectating in huge venues like those, but Blackhat made me feel more like a fucking ant. It wasn't just because I was invited to one of the biggest venues in the digital world either, though it was kind of that: when I say big, I mean literally, physically big.

The place was made for digimon. That's a no brainer, but what that implies is they have to seat people as short as a foot and as tall as, like, forty of 'em. Naturally there were a few restrictions about that, namely shorter digimon up front and bigger ones in back, but holy shit was this place massive. No wonder it was outdoors! No one could possibly build around digimon of that size and still keep a seating capacity of damn near 50,000 people. 50,000 people! Have you ever heard 50,000 people chanting at once? I sure as hell hadn't; biggest venue I ever walked into before then was back home, and it was maybe half that capacity. I also thought I never would because - well, we've circled back to my dumb as hell band name. I had the chance to use a new name with the new band and new, well, everything, but I sure wasted that, didn't I?

And yet, out of 50,000 digimon - maybe a few humans in there, too, with numbers like that - one of them must have found a way. Someone beside that person like how they did it and mimicked them. Probably took three or four or maybe more sources, though, because just one wouldn't realistically have rippled across the whole arena like that. The splash should have just died after spreading too far. It didn't. Soon enough fifty freakin' thousand digimon between six inches and sixty feet, with wings, with fins, with scales, with fur, with brown eyes, with black eyes, and with no eyes all found a way to synchronously shout the same thing over and over: "Haun-ted-Threnody-Haun-ted-Threnody," where each hyphen was a short pause. Hell, even I couldn't be sure how anyone would chant a name like that until I'd heard it.

"You fuckin' hear that?" Asked our synth - well, she can do most everything, but she's mostly on synth. Anyway, the Musimon Lila asked that, but it was obviously a rhetorical question, obvious because she had to shout her lungs out just to be barely heard over the noise.

"I betcha fuckin' Boston can hear that!" I barely managed to scream back to her.

"What are you guys talking about?" is what I think Shoutmon interrupted with.

"Oh, fuck it." I checked my watch. Showtime. "Alright, lock it down! You guys know what to do!" Everyone clearly failed to hear me, so I had to use hand signals to convey it was time for us to earn our ticket sales. The gear was set, plugged, and checked. Monitors were pre-levelled, and our opening was choreographed. Shoutmon finally got the message and used the cover of darkness to sneak behind his drum set. While the lights were still dark, one foot began to stomp the kick drum and high hat to the same tempo as the chants at a steady 4/4 beat. I watched Annette, the Lekismon, follow him after about sixty seconds of that. Unlike Shoutmon, she brought a nice bright spotlight and a bright green guitar that played a simple repetitive riff.

"Holy shit, I love Terminus already!" She didn't have to shout because she had a loud-as-hell microphone to carry her voice. The fact that she did was just to build excitement. "You beautiful people wanna see a rock show?" I thought there was an earthquake just then, but it turned out to be the sound of fifty thousand digimon shouting and slapping and stomping resonating through the floor. I damn near lost my balance from the shaking, too. I think Annette agreed with me that there was no need to build the anticipation beyond that because she didn't try to pump them up further like any other competent singer would have. She just dived right into the song.

Halfway through that stanza, Flamedramon wandered onstage without gauntlets so he could actually play his bass. Man, I never would have pegged him as a musician before Shoutmon came along, but after a few lessons and with an easy instrument he became what the band needed. Thank God he came out as a closet aspiring musician after all, though at the time I think he was jealous he was the only one of we three who didn't play. Additionally, Lila managed to sneak behind six different keyboards, two per side stacked, and didn't miss her cue for the first chorus.

There was no need for a second guitarist until the second verse. When Annette shouted about a power chord, I stomped a volume pedal and ripped one. When she sang about getting high on the solo, I bent a high note and held it. Man, I loved the text painting from that song, an anthem about just how great a rock show like this one was supposed to be. My heart beat like a kick drum. My ears rang like a platoon of telephones, too. But damnit, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

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Word Count: 1,131.