Today was long. I was rudely awakened after a mere 4.5 hours of sleep, making it pretty hard to be excited, however hard I tried. I don't remember any part of the morning before getting into my car, short of waking roommate Jonny up. Apparently he also was tired, and decided to miss class. Problem is, he almost missed our gig downtown. I had about 15 minutes to make it to the PSU campus to be 'on time.' Doable, except they decided to do some construction on my route. So I was 20 minutes late. The good news was that others were already there setting up. "For what?" you might ask. Why, En Fuego Week, of course! For those of you who don't habla espanol, "En Fuego" means "on fire." It's the time of the year where all the "religious" groups on campus come together for a week of various activities. Today was the highpoint of the week, with a free all-campus BBQ happening in the park blocks (quad equivalent). Hamburgers with all the fixins, drinks, "gift bags" of some sort, and, of course, live music. Which is what brought me to campus. "The Guys," who are sometimes going by the name Eightsweek (if you're from OSU and went on the winter retreat, this is the band that was there), were asked to come downtown and play their music during the BBQ. That's right, worship music blaring across the entire campus while hundreds of people sat and ate their lunches. On the most liberal and anti-religion campus in the state. Bring it.
PSU does have a pretty nice little setup. There's a small stage in the center of the park blocks, with bench-type seating around it in a semicircle. People are always there, and several hundred of them. Bands play from time to time - most aren't very good, but it makes for a cool atmosphere. When you add free food to the equation, there was no telling how many people would be there. I didn't get an actual count, but please believe me: it was a lot. The line was consistently over 100 people long for an hour and a half. So we manage to get setup, do a rough sound check, and start the set. I think it went pretty well. There are some nice advantages to playing outside, namely there's no walls. Stage volume is the curse in any concert, and with no walls nearby, all that "bad" sound was just shot up into the sky. No echo, no sound bouncing around...total control. Rare.
People didn't seem to know what to think. The music sounded good, but the words were rather blatant. I'm actually kinda surprised no one protested, threw stuff, or picketed. Or knocked a speaker over. That would have been expensive. The event went remarkably well. It was a little bit of a strange feeling producing worship music in a non-worship setting. Not sure what I think about that, but if nothing else, it was a lot of fun. That counts, right? I'm trying to get some pictures, but since I don't have a digital camera, I'm waiting for others to send them to me. There's potentially some video too, but we'll see. I was really hoping to get a recording, but didn't have time to arrange the gear.
After that it was my one class, which I slept through. Didn't mean to, but I was exhausted at this point from both not sleeping and the load-in and load-out we just did. Oh, and I hadn't eaten anything yet today. In a brief moment of consciousness, I hear him end the class. That is, after our pop quiz. Doh!
Then it was 2 hours to kill. I got some food, talked with some friends, and did some email. You know, time killing stuff. Then it was time to set all the gear up again. Since we had gone through the trouble of bringing a complete system to campus anyway, the PSU Crusade group asked us to lead worship there. So the gear goes back up, another sound check, another set. Really liked this one because people seemed to appreciate it. They're used to just the acoustic stuff, and a full band can just be so much more powerful sometimes. Anyway, good time had by all. Bob Monaco spoke. Maybe more on that some other time. After the meeting, another tear-down, load-out and then time for a good old fashioned game of Ultimate. One cool thing about PSU is they have a really nice soccer-sized field for general use. Has the good fake turf that looks/feels like blades of grass. And lights. And just totally there for the using. So we got our game on. Always fun, but, ugh, I'm out of shape! And that pretty much brings me home and to this screen again. What did you do today?
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