Monday, 2 November 2009 at 21:19

Last Friday, CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology) held a competition called School Stars for bands from various different schools to compete for a spot in the lineup of CIT’s MicFest concert a month later.

After Bec (vocals), Joel (cello) and I (piano) auditioned our Evanescence cover ‘The Last Song I’m Wasting On You’ for limelight, our music teacher suggested we should enter as a band.

So after much procrastination, Bec and I began to prepare for our 10 minute performance, approximately a week or two before it was set to happen. We used an original piece I’d somewhat finished writing (it had no cello part, and only chords for the piano) called Your Sky. We also decided to perform The Last Song I’m Wasting On You again, a particularly lazy move on my part, as we originally performed that with Cassi in 2007.

I wanted to also perform one of Bec’s originals. She was incredibly self-conscious about her original songs (which was ridiculous, as they were far less pretentious and corny than anything I’d written) and wasn’t sure which one to pick, reluctant to pick any at all. She eventually began teaching me a song she’d written (whilst she was still arranging it) on piano several days before the performance, and we reluctantly rehearsed over and over until it was decent.

Last Friday, CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology) held a competition called School Stars for bands from various different schools to compete for a spot in the lineup of CIT’s MicFest concert a month later.

After Bec (vocals), Joel (cello) and I (piano) auditioned our Evanescence cover ‘The Last Song I’m Wasting On You’ for limelight, our music teacher suggested we should enter as a band.

So after much procrastination, Bec and I began to prepare for our 10 minute performance, approximately a week or two before it was set to happen. We used an original piece I’d somewhat finished writing (it had no cello part, and only chords for the piano) called Your Sky. We also decided to perform The Last Song I’m Wasting On You again, a particularly lazy move on my part, as we originally performed that with Cassi in 2007.

I wanted to also perform one of Bec’s originals. She was incredibly self-conscious about her original songs (which was ridiculous, as they were far less pretentious and corny than anything I’d written) and wasn’t sure which one to pick, reluctant to pick any at all. She eventually began teaching me a song she’d written (whilst she was still arranging it) on piano several days before the performance, and we reluctantly rehearsed over and over until it was decent.

One day Bec came to school telling me about how... [THIS PART OF THE BLOG HAS SINCE BEEN CENSORED, AS IT HAS SINCE BECOME A BAND SECRET] ...so we decided that would be our official name. Embarrassing.

About 3 or 4 days before the performance, it seemed appropriate to tell Joel that he’d been entered into this thing, and we rehearsed together for the first time a day before. Bec arranged Joel’s part for her untitled song, Joel remembered his part for The Last Song I’m Wasting On You, and I told him just to improv on Your Sky.

By the day of the performance we were all feeling rather unconfident, a feeling which was increased further when we began watching the other bands perform. Almost every single other band were (I felt) as a much higher standard then us, and all had a standard rock set up.

By the time it was our turn to go up I was freaking out. About 5 or 6 bands had been on before us, and we were the last act before the intermission. We eventually stepped out onto stage, Joel having no foldback (and thus not able to hear himself) and me at a keyboard they had raised in the back corner of the stage.

After Bec introduced us I started playing on the unfamiliar keyboard, and was so nervous that I completely lost my sense of timing. Your Sky had a few screw-ups, but by the time we moved onto Bec’s song I at least wasn’t about to play somewhat decently. When we finished our originals the crowd cheered rather louder than I’d expected, and we moved onto the third song. By now I was so relieved that there’d been no major screw ups I almost forgot we were still playing!

Afterwards we were congratulated by our teacher, me and Joel’s old music teacher, and backstage crew, one of which was heavily stoned (and smelt of it) and insisted that he really “felt” the songs we played.

As the night went on the room became hotter and hotter, and at 9:30 the winners were eventually announced. We knew we wouldn’t win, because it seemed at that point that they were looking for a rock set up, not a little emotional ‘slit-wrist’ trio, and indeed we didn’t. The band from Melrose won (apparently only by a point or two from another band). However, they then announced that there was a clear winner for Best Performer, which was awarded to Bec! Once again (first time being limelight) our singer was picked out from the band

Yesterday I got a message on MSN from Bec saying that her Dad ran into one of the judges, and apparently the band that was only a point or two off winning was us! So that was fully ganksta

My sister filmed our performance on my phone, which I’ll be uploading to Youtube fairly soon (despite the fact that she had her finger over the microphone for quite a lot of it). There’s also photos up if you’d like to have a look.

Anyway, thanx for reading my ‘little’ recount of the School Stars competition. Leave a comment if u like

Reminding you that second comes right after first,
Alex

http://smudgefish.twenty121.com

Tags: CIT School Stars blog smudgefish