Organ Extravaganza

Okay, with the risk of sounding so cool that you'll melt at the keyboard, I decided tonite to write something of my artistic side. Everyone knows that girls want to date band members...you know, drumbers, lead guitarist, base players, mandalin players, and oh yeah, the lead vocalist. But, a little known fact is that there's one instrument that outdoes them all, yes, and that is the organ! All the girls want to date the organ player and you know it....actually i just made that up. No girl in their right mind would want to date an organ player, believe me, I am an organ player. You're lookin at the 35th ward organist baby! I've got so many dates I don't know what to do with myself...NOT! Now that we're all agreed on that point, we can move on. I play in sacrament 2 to 3 times a month and it never fails that I screw up at some point in the program. I dont' know what it is, I just can never have a perfect meeting on the organ. For instance, my freshman year at college. My first sunday at the organ I was super tired (probably because I thought it a good idea to stay out til about 2:30 in the morning the night before 9:00 church...bad combo). So there I was at the keyboard for 9:00 sacrament. I played a little prelude, aka the sacrament hymns cause I forgot to practice them, and was ending the song to let the bishop start the meeting. So on ending the song I stretched my foot out and pushed down what I thought was the volume pedal all the way down. Now you have to understand that there's a certain pedal that turns down the volume and then there's a pedal that if pushed in the exact same direction makes the feet pedals on the organ turn on....this is a distinction that I had not made yet. So I'm not gonna lie, bishop was a little/really boring with the announcemnts that sunday and I fell asleep at the organ, embarrasing I know, but it doesnt' end there. My feet were perched nice and firm on the foot rests on the organ bench, but as I fell asleep, my feet slipped off the rests and, you guessed it, came crashing down onto the foot pedals causing a horrific sound to emmenate from the pipes. So being asleep as I was it took my brain at least a good 2 to 3 seconds to realize what was going on, and by that point the bishop was already making his way over to me to rip up my temple recommend and banish me to outer darkness. Needless to say I turned redder than Rudolph's nose in about a half second and kinda just gave a shy little grin to the congregation...and the rest of the meeting followed suit with hymns sounding like funeral processions instead of praises of glory...not a good day. Then there was last month at the beloved instrument. I played "I Stand All Amazed" for the sacrament hymn, a personal favorite. All was going well by the last verse, I hadn't screwed up yet and the spirit was settling in for the passing of the sacrament, I go in for the final chord and....BAAAH, a wrechedly flat sound billowed from the pipes. I check the notes on the page, check my hand, double check the notes and still couldn't find the problem so I just lifted off the keyboard a half beat early leaving everyone holding a very confused and akward note by themselves for a good 2 seconds....akward. Luckily it was just before the passing of the sacrament so I just closed my eyes and pretended I was invisible. After the meeting the bishop came over and commented, "Gee Coby, you sure do know how to chase away the spirit, don't ya?" Yeah, laugh it up people, laugh long and hard cause deep inside, under my forced smile and weak attempt at a laugh....I was laughing histarically in my mind!! Laughing so hard my brain had a side ache. See, unlike some really stoic and seroius organ players, I love to laugh at my screwups, I figure it's my contribution to the aura of the meeting...right? The way I see it, the spirit didn't really leave, per say, he was just on the ground rolling with laughter. He just had to recover a bit and get back into character. It happens to the best of us.

The Organ Bandit rides again!!!