I was nervous about headlining, because at local shows, kids get bored with the openers and leave. But most people stayed, and by the time our set was about to start, all of the kids gathered around the stage, and pushed up to the very front.
And I was onstage, and I was up so high, and all these kids screamed every single word. They started dancing, and the overprotective adult-supervisors had to step in to stop kids from shoving.
During one song, I called up the kids up front to come up on stage and sing, and it was the best, because they said it made their night afterwards.
And during another song, during a build-up, right before a "mad sick breakdown, yo" the crowd got down on the ground and got ready to jump up at the crescendo, but we did a fake-out and didn't do the crescendo, and the whole crowd jumped up in the air at once, and then realized that there was nothing to rock out to, because we had just gone into the build-up again.
And we closed the set with a song we've never played before. People said it was good. They didn't see it coming.
Jeff came up to me afterwards and said, "Where did that come from?" Because he'd seen us a few months before, and we didn't put on half as good a show. Conn says he got chills.
Kids just came up to us afterwards and said the show was amazing. Jerry, from another band, took me aside and said that I had nothing to worry about, the band's lineup was just fine the way it was, and that was how it should be.
I still got the same feeling I did after every show, the one where I feel like I'm acting liking a jerk (and maybe I am).
A few hours later, we were checking our myspace, and a kid that had come onstage to sing sent us a message, and he said that it was the greatest show he's ever seen, and that the show gave him a feeling, and that we were the best band he's ever seen.
The climax of my life?