The Last Show

The lights over the crowd lowered, and soon all that we could see were the bright lights that display the stage in our eyes and a smoky darkness that filled the room with outlines of figures in the audience.  Our hearts were pounding, and I got the feeling I always get at the beginning of a live show.  It's the feeling of looking down from the top of a skyscraper.  Some people can't handle it, but I love it!  For a few moments in time, we controlled everything.  What an exciting beginning to a necessary ending.

I was twenty-two at the time, and I played lead guitar for a small pop-punk band called Kelso.  We were about to start our biggest show yet.  It was on a side stage at a small local Dallas club.  We were the third out of four bands to play.  I often wonder what our limits would have been if we stuck together.

Ian, our drummer, had never played drums until he joined the band.  All he knew was that he wanted to be in a band, so he went out and bought a cheap little drum set. A year after he joined, he was by far the best musician in the band.  He led us through our short-lived musical careers.  If we stayed together and practiced more I have no doubt you would see him as a touring musician with a much bigger band. 

Craig, our bassist and one of two singers, was the creative one of the group.  He's another who wanted to be in a band, so he picked up the bass and started with us.  His first show with us was the first time he ever played bass.  We had to teach him our songs on the car ride to the show.  He had  a lot of thought and passion behind his lyrics.  Most of his songs seemed to be about girls he knew or wanted to know.  With a little bit of work and time, Craig would have been a sought after front man.

Tyler, our rhythm guitarist, another singer, and my brother, was the charisma of the band.  He had, and still has, an aura about him.  People just want to be around him.  Guitar came easy to him, and his voice had a deeper tone than that of Craig's.  He yucked it up on stage just as he does in life.  With a little more exposure, Tyler would have been the reason people would have come to see our band.

The combination of our ability, tone, and passion made for an awesome experience for everyone.  We loved being in a band together.  Music was our outlet.  It was our life.  We met friends that we would otherwise have never met.  We held endless conversations on bands, guitars, songs, live performances, and the emotion that came with seeing our favorite bands play live.  We also talked about where we could go if we practiced and stuck with it.

It helped that we were all best friends, because band practice usually consisted of yelling and cursing at each other.  We could get mad at each other at one moment, and then jump up and down with elation over a new riff or lyric introduced into the song.  There is nothing quite like the feeling of everything coming together in a tight-knit collaboration that the four of us created.  I still get goose bumps thinking about some of those practices.

We all knew our final day together as a band would come soon enough.  We didn't like to talk about it, though.  Craig and I were heading back to College Station at the end of the winter break to finish our last semester.  After that, we would start careers and move on with our lives.  Tyler and Ian would remain in Dallas and continue with their education.  What we did talk about was that we had one last statement to make.  The carefree days of our youth would end on this very night, and we did not plan on letting our youth fade away unnoticed.  We would go out as an explosion of musical enlightenment, energy, and passion. 

All of our preparation and hard work brought us to our final show.  Could this really be how we were to go out? The show was on a side stage in front of one-hundred people.  It was in a little brick room at the back of a smoke-filled club.  Most of the people were either in the other three bands, or they were friends of the other bands.  All of our good times and bad times as a band led up to this.  A measly one-hundred people would hear our final performance.  This was a less than desirable way for our years of practice, writing, lugging around equipment, and bickering over song choices to end.

I remember my hands sweating and my pulse racing.  I was about to get to do what I loved for the last time with my best friends even if it wasn't the way I wanted it to end.  We definitely made the best of it.  The four of us walked triumphantly onto the stage as if we owned it.  Our friends were there screaming and cheering as our band was introduced.  We all looked at each other, and we knew what was about to happen.  We were going to go out with a bang.

We played every chord with more heart and passion than we had ever played.  Every lyric was sung as though they were the last breaths our singers would ever breathe.  Ian's drum set had never felt such intense drum strokes.  Our heads bobbed with the beat, and our physical emotion was captured through perfectly timed jumps that landed in unison as if to emphasize each important chord.  The veins in our singers’ necks were prominent as they instinctively cried each word.

There may have been some missed notes, some erroneous cymbals hit, and an off-pitch vocal or two, but no one noticed.  The live show was what we lived for, and this was our last one. 

When the final note was strummed, and the tone rang out above the clapping and yells, we looked out at the audience.  This was the last time we would all be on stage together.  We exchanged casual smiles to each other as we unplugged our guitars and disassembled the drum set.  It was a bittersweet feeling as we walked down the stairs of the stage to hug our friends and family.

It's all over now.  As a band, we could have been big.  We could have made some decent money touring around the country playing clubs in front of thousands of fans.  We could have stuck together and spent every waking moment of our lives talking about music and all that implies.  Who knows what trouble would have lied ahead for us?  The life of a touring musician, especially for four young guys, isn't always the most upstanding.  We escaped at the right time. 

I'm glad we ended on that music-filled night in Dallas.  Since our last show, Tyler has moved to Myrtle Beach to become a fisherman. He loves it out there. Ian moved to Japan to become a school teacher, and Craig moved to Austin to become a golf course superintendent.  Craig and I reminisce over the times we had in our band.  He and I still work on side projects together.  It's only recording, though.  The time commitment is not nearly as much, but the rush you get from being on stage is not there.

I can't speak for everyone else in our band, but I am much better off now.  I do know that if we had stuck together, I would have never married my lovely wife of four years.  We have a home, and our first child is on the way. I wasn't happy with the way things ended at the time.  I thought we deserved much more than a final show at a mediocre club in front of one-hundred people.  I'm glad we got out when we did, though.  I wouldn't trade the gifts in my life now for anything. 



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