Our band could be your life
Two days later, Bow High School’s Battle Of The Bands is completely sold out, with the 600 seats auditorium filled. There’s a sign on the entryway saying “by entering the premises, you are legally agreeing to let MTV show your face on TV.” Parents and teenagers are loudly and self-consciously running around, while Josh and his camera are following around Alexa’s bad-ass cheering section: her gymnastics coach and a gaggle of Harley Davidson workers in leather.
At the center of this storm, Alexa is nervously singing in the hallway while Jordan strums a guitar. Tonight, Fair Fight is battling four bands: Sanus, Take A Gan (her guitarist Joey’s other band, a Led Zep tribute), Regret Me Not (MTV-ready screamo) and last year’s champions, What Tomorrow Held. The equipment for the show is coming from a Boston Guitar Center. It is being brought by Fair Fight’s roadies, who on this night are the guys from Waltham. The battle of the bands can’t start without them. Thanks to traffic, Waltham is two hours late.
When the show finally starts, the crowd is wild, rushing the stage, aware that they’re on TV. Regret Me Not, who are playing before Fair Fight, get a healthy amount of kids standing in the front row slam-dancing.
When Fair Fight take the stage, the teenage girls rush down to the front, screeching and holding up their homemade signs: “I Love Alexa”! “We Love Alexa”! “Fair Fight Rocks”!
Backstage, Josh notes that this is the last Made episode in production this season, “and all of MTV is pulling for Fair Fight. I have ten people I have to call after this ends.”
Bassist Jordan counts out “One, Two, Three!” and their first song, “I Hate You” begins. The chorus has Alexa belting “I! Hate! You!” with the sax echoing each word, and Jordan screaming in a backup voice, “I HATE YOU!” They finish and the crowd explodes, so it’s hard to hear Alexa yell out “Thank you Bow High!”
After that first song, Alexa takes a moment to banter: “I’d like to introduce ourselves as Fair Fight,” she says, singling out the band members and their respective instruments. Becca is the “best damn drummer in New Hampshire. Do you guys believe that? If you don’t believe that, I want you to hear a drum solo.” Becca pounds out a beat and Alexa introduces the next song, titled “Skamo.” This time she showcases her pretty alto voice in the introduction: “Sorry I’m not a girl like that.” The song then speeds up into something like ’90s ska band Save Ferris, with her “sorry” becoming the rushed-out chorus, dissing the boy she likes and the “girls like that.”
Alexa Fay is becoming a rock star. She’s having her moment, making eyes at the camera and the crowd, jumping up and down when the song speeds up with saxophone. She ends the song by pointing at “you, you, and you,” going into an unaccompanied riff, “Like I give a damn anyways! I’ll take normal over easy any day!” Becca gives the drums a soft hit and the song ends.
