Olim

May 15th

The Spontaneous Metalhead Bus Choir of ‘07

↓

Hey! Welcome to the 44th instalment of the Olim Love Letters - a weekly newsletter written by me, Eloise. Here, we talk about connection, copy, Really Weird Childhood Stories™, and the odd linguistic snippet thrown in for good measure.

In 2007, I went to my first ever gig: Dream Theatre*. Yup, that's right: prog rock.

(*breathe in the scent of nerdery, Reader, for it was strong at this time.)

It was late summer, and I had been given special permission by my parents to go to Glasgow. I was to be chaperoned by my chum Tom, who’d just passed his driving test and was therefore our wheelman to and from the city.

Only the fact that Tom regularly wore a penguin t-shirt, didn’t drink, and was 100% completely non-threatening (also, it was Peebles and my dad Knew Where He Lived) reassured my mum enough to let me go to the wilds of Glasgow at the tender age of 16. That, and lots of wheedling on my part.

I was terrified of the big city, but I’d listened to my burned copies of Images and Words and Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence so often that I knew the lyrics by heart. Phobia of the metropolis be damned - I had to be at that gig.

With Symphony X as their warm-up act, (no really, have you figured out yet just how much of a nerd I was in my teens?) I headbanged so hard that I woke up the next day in our friend’s student flat, crumpled up in an office chair like a dead spider, convinced I’d contracted meningitis.

At the O2 Academy we leapt about with all the suavity of a gaggle of meerkats, fizzy on coke and Pizza Hut crusts. It was, I remember thinking during one of John Petrucci’s face-melting solos, one of the best nights I’d ever had. What could possibly top this?

Well, Reader, the answer arrived sooner than anticipated, and of all things, it was the bus ride back after the gig.

I was improbably fresh-faced and freckled, wearing a 12-sizes too large black leather jacket copped out of the dressing-up box. As the least suspecting metalhead there, and despite my post-gig exhilaration, I still felt awkward in the way only a teenager can - a misfit, an interloper.

But then, utterly without warning, just behind the four of us (shoehorned into seats for two on the packed bus), a Visigoth with a viking beard and the shoulders of a grizzly opened his mouth, and began to sing.

“Is this the real life?”

A pause. A short silence.

“Is this just fantasy?”

Whispers broke out as more voices joined him.

“Caught in a landsliiiiiiide…”

It started to catch on.

“No escape from reality!”

I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a single decker bus playing sardines with 70 post-concert, sweaty metal heads belting out an acapella version of Bohemian Rhapsody, but it was one for the books, Reader.

Joining the Spontaneous Metalhead Bus Choir of ‘07, I screeched “Galileo! GALILEYOOOOOO” at the top of my lungs, giant grin stretching from ear to ear: elated at what was happening around me.

Regardless of their vocal ability, not one single person refused to join in. Even the bus driver sang.

No one sat there with an iPhone recording it. No one defaulted to “spectator through a screen”. We were all there - a bunch of mostly-antisocial weirdos united by our love of music - and everyone was welcome just for who they were.

The togetherness was palpable. When we all extricated ourselves from the bus, the driver fist-bumped every single person as we got off. Turned out Glasgow wasn’t super scary after all.

I learned two vital lessons that evening:

1. Find what you love and spend time around people who love it too, as daunting and nerve-wracking as that might be. Chances are they’re friends-in-waiting.
2. When the mood strikes, sing Bohemian Rhapsody. Preferably on public transport. 10 points if you can get strangers to join in.

Til next time.

Big love,

Eloise x