In Which I Sing For My Cake
Posted on 1st September 2014
The jet lag was starting to wear off. Finally. However waking up early was useful as I had need to be at J. M. Huntsman Hall at 9AM. We were to be performing at a welcome gig for freshman students at the Wharton School. After a little rehearsal and some hanging around, the students filed in and we begun to sing. This was quite possibly the worst gig I have ever been a part of. The students were loud and raucous and paid us little to no attention. I don’t begrudge them in the least, but it wasn’t the best of choices to have us perform in that venue. I could hardly hear any of us singing, except a booming in my left ear from the bass, Matt Howard.
My uniform was a little outdated by this point and needed some revisions, thus my next stop was to Macy’s in ‘Center City’ (the central business district of Philadelphia). The actual shopping part took relatively little time, and I found suitable ‘chocolate brown’ shoes without too much fuss. However, when I attempted to pay for my items, the cashier was put through on the phone to card security and I had to go through a relatively arduous process to verify my identity. Despite my best efforts the payment didn’t go through in the end, so after fifteen-minutes of verifying, I ended up just putting the amount on a different card.
With a significant delay from Macy’s, I raced back to Penn for continued rehearsals. The afternoon was dance numbers with the band and I struggled through them, not having the experience of the other members.
That evening was one of our bigger regularly scheduled gigs: convocation, the formal opening of the academic year by the university dignitaries. After the opening of ceremonies we performed ‘Go The Distance’ as a musical interlude and then to close the ceremony was ‘The Red and the Blue’, the official school song. However the best element of singing for convocation was our early access to the dessert reception immediately following. After consuming a good deal of cake and cookies, Sam Soik (a fellow Baritone) and I sought after the mythical President Amy Guttman for a photo opportunity. After some searching we had our pictures taken and were then both satisfied enough to grab some final food before returning to our dorms for the night.