In the year 1971, astronomy student and aspiring guitarist Brian May's ill-fated camping trip may have more consequences than he first realized. Small but unexplainable things start to happen to him after he is bit by a dog in Humpy Bong Forest. His...
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Roger knew that he should have expected the students at Vardean to be completely oblivious about how to set up equipment for a rock n' roll show. They had studied for their exams all week, and, if Brian was correct, they should have taken all of the tests the day before and therefore be open to see the show.
Roger twiddled with a drumstick in his hand as he sat behind his drum kit. Their stage was a wooden platform rented to them from Varndean's Shakespeare club and their venue was the largest lecture hall in Brighton. His eyes glazed over the rows of seats and estimated that the room could fit around 120 audience members at full capacity.
In front of him John assisted two other student volunteers around his age in setting up the amps. Brian was in the back of the hall pointing at various things to an athletic looking blond bloke on a sound board that John had only painstakingly installed a half hour before. Freddie frantically ran around the room adjusting every little thing to his liking like a mother-in-law at a wedding.
"How's it going up there?" Roger called up to Brian and the soundboard crew.
"Everything is up and running," Brian called back, "Ben here is a quick learner!"
"Give it a go, Rog!" John encouraged as he plugged in his homemade amp into the back wall.
Roger hammered out a small section of Keep Yourself Alive and looked around for approval.
The soundboard bloke and Brian gave him a thumbs up. Roger grinned.
Freddie stomped onto stage and put his hands on his hips. "Can we really not do anything about the acoustics in here?" he complained.
"Not unless you want to tear down the walls and rebuild," soundboard Ben answered.
John walked across the stage to Freddie as he dusted off his hands.
"Let's go ahead and do a mic check," he said.
Freddie clapped his hands together and said, "Oh yes! Mic checks! Let's get that over with and settled."
Roger rolled his eyes as Brian and Ben tried to figure out the controls on the soundboard to adjust the microphone. Freddie at first opted to count up from one, but soon became bored and started to talk about his day. His voice filled the room first like a soft butterfly in the spring time, but this quickly devolved into a heavily distorted ogre grumble that crackled against Roger's snare drum making it rattle.
"Sound like they need an engineer up there, Deaky," Roger shouted over Freddie's loud gibbering.
"I'm on it," John replied. He took off up the stairs to the back of the lecture hall like a wolf on a hunt.
Roger listened as the sound slowly crystalized into crisp clarity.
