JACKSONVILLE – Lead singer of the alt-rock band Up Above declined to tell the audience he couldn’t hear them as they legitimately did a very good job of screaming the first time they were prompted to do so, sources report.
“I pride myself on being an honest person,” said lead singer Kevin Barret. “Which is why when I heard the crowd scream their cacophonous asses off when I asked them ‘are you ready to rock,’ I knew I couldn’t follow up with the stereotypical ‘I can’t hear you.’ I could hear them—very clearly, in fact. They were legitimately loud as hell, it startled me. It would have felt like cruel gaslighting to try and tell them that I couldn’t and I don’t want them to question their sanity. If I had lied to them then I’d be no better than Dave Grohl lying to his wife.”
Excited concertgoers were legitimately proud of what they had achieved that night.
“I have been to dozens of their shows, and the lead singer will always say they can’t hear us,” said longtime fan Erika Strauss. “But it happened. We finally screamed loud enough for them to not tell us to scream again. Every frontman will patronize the crowd by telling them they’re the best damn crowd in the world, except this time, I think we really were. All my hard work finally paid off. I’ve been screaming in my office bathroom for weeks on my lunchbreak to prepare for this. All the meetings with HR telling me to stop because I’m scaring people were worth it.”
The sound operator for the show said that they are pumped to have gotten a recording, because they don’t think they’ll ever get a better crowd noise sample.
“Everyone knows the Wilhelm scream as a famous audio clip that gets used in many movies and TV shows,” said sound operator David Chan. “Well, I can’t wait until I upload this crowd noise online because it will become the standard. This will be the sample played during epic battles in films. This will be the clip that football teams pipe into their stadiums when the Patriots try to cheat. This noise will be the noise cops use to scare away homeless people from their encampments. That’s how ear-splittingly loud this crowd was.”
At press time, it was confirmed that Barret was no longer able to hear the crowd as they had ruptured his now profusely bleeding eardrums.