If you've been following this blog for some time, you may see a common theme in all of the true recounts of my life. I'm not exactly a person who exemplifies the classical qualities of femininity. I wouldn't exactly be described as "graceful". I'm that girl that's pulling the underwear out of her ass (what we referred to as a "Melvin" when I was growing up) at church on Sunday. I'm that person that goes to talk to a guy she likes with food on her face or something hanging out of her nose. That's me. That's exquisitely me.
One time in college I was so excited to see one of my favorite punk bands play a house show in town. So excited. At the time I was a college radio station DJ and News Director and I may have been one of the few people at the station to play this band's music every week on my show. Loved them.
My friend Jon and I went to the house show together. We looked so cute wearing our Chuck Taylors and ironic t-shirts or whatever the hell was stylish in the hipster crowd at the time. I felt full of life that night. We got to the show and I was uncharacteristically social. We tolerated the opening band of which I didn't quite understand. A lot of scream-core. I was friends with the bassist and guitarist of the opening band and appreciated their talents, but I just didn't know what to make of the lead "screamer". That's neither here nor there, but anyway. Finally, after paying our local-band-listening dues, the headliners came on.
The audience wasn't too large for a house show, but we all squeezed ourselves into the living room area and were in close quarters with the band. Jon and I were standing towards the front. We danced and danced like we had never danced before. And then towards the ending of the show it happened. The band was rocking out and I guess the guitarist decided to get kind of fancy and stepped into the audience during one of the songs. And I don't know what happened next or how it happened, but I was smacked in the forehead with the head of the guitar.
For those of you who may not be familiar with guitars, the head is the part at the end of the neck where the strings are twisted around knobs and is used to tune the guitar. So, there are these knobs and strings sticking out the front of the head, which coincidentally merged with my head.
I remember seeing the guy's face right after he accidentally smacked me in the head. I was still standing but had experience that cartoonish blacking out with the colorful stars sort of phenomenon. The guy's jaw dropped. I think he was still playing, but he was shocked that someone's head somehow found its way to his guitar, muchless an awkward little college girl who so obviously didn't look like she belonged at this punk show.
After they finished the song, the dude was like, "are you okay?! oh my god!" and me being the good sport that I am, I laughed it off and gave him a thumbs up like, "hey, no big deal". Meanwhile my head was pounding and I was still a little out of it. But you can't be a wimp at a punk show. And I wasn't going to play the victim card.
I'm glad the incident didn't result in me having to get stitches or a CT scan, thankfully. I just had a lump right in the middle of my forehead for a few days, but it wasn't horrible. I was hoping the band would like, give me a free shirt or some free vinyl, but they had run out of their own merch and instead donated some vinyl to the radio station. I guess that was cool enough. They were some nice guys.
No comments:
Post a Comment