Here We Go Again (OM&M/BMTH)

Four - Let's do something different.

I awoke to the sensation of someone jumping on me repeatedly.

“Come on, Amy! You need to get up. We’re here.” squealed Beka.

I flicked my eyes open quickly. “What, already? I just closed my eyes a few seconds ago.”

“Yeah funny how sleep works.” Beka said sarcastically. “We were all setting up out there for the show when Matt noticed you were missing, so I volunteered to go get you.”

“Nice of you.” I said, “I guess no one bothered to wake me up when we arrived.”

“Whatever, now hurry up. You look positively horrible, but you don’t have time to change or anything. Trust me, Matt is royally pissed. We have to be ready for sound check at 6 p.m.” We started the short walk to the venue at that point and she shut up.

When we got to the venue, she left me to complete whatever task she had been assigned before she had gone to get me.

My job title was sound engineer, which is basically a fancy way of saying I made sure all the instruments’ acoustics were balanced. It wasn’t that hard of a job actually. When I had first started, I got a few days training from the last guy who had the job, then took over from him.

I didn’t have much to do while everyone was setting up, too. I just had to check if the techs had hooked up the instruments correctly. My time to shine was during sound check and backstage during the concert.

I found my way to the venue’s soundboard. It wasn’t too shabby. I really hated it when Of Mice & Men had to play in shitty venues with even shittier equipment.

I messed around with it a bit just to make sure I could handle it. It was a fairly easy one to control, really. After I was sure I knew how to use it, I found an empty corner to sit in until everyone was finished setting up, just in time for sound check. All that was left was corralling the band members.

The order for the show was Pierce the Veil, then We Came As Romans, Of Mice & Men, and finally Bring Me The Horizon. So once again I got to wait around a bit before I had to actually do anything. That was cool because I got to hang out with the bunch of different people that made up the bands and their crews.

I observed the chaos of people prepping musical equipment from my spot on the floor. Everything may have been ready for sound check, but  we were still  a long way away from having everything set up for the concert. There were a bunch  techs and crew members and random people running around. Some were carrying heavy equipment, others were yelling instructions from one side of the venue to the other. Everybody was doing their own thing, and it was total pandemonium.

I loved it.

I looked over at the stage. Pierce the Veil was all ready to go and working on testing their instruments. I spotted Beka chatting with a few other people near the doors to the building. She noticed me and motioned for me over to her little group. But as I heading towards her, I was stopped by a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw Austin Carlile face-to-face with me.

“Hey,” I said, “What’s up?” I assumed he had a problem with his mic or guitar or something. I was kinda the go-to girl for problems like that, even though I wasn't a guitar tech.

“Umm hey, I just thought I’d let you know that Matt is fairly pissed with you, and you might want to avoid him for a while.” He said, looking almost amused. “I think he’s on the verge of actually physically hurting you, so you might also not want to screw up for a while.

“Thanks, I guess.” I cocked my head to one side and studied him. I was a tiny bit confused on why Austin would even care in the first place. We rarely talked; I knew him about as well as I knew Alan.