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// Chapter 16: Music Festival (Part 4) 
// Story: The Second Life of Moztrot 
// by CrackedInkWell 
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It took about an hour or so before DJ PON3 took a moment to rest, and once the underground party of dreams showed their appreciation of the music, I took it as a sign to step in and meet the mare. Since nothing was playing, it was bearable for my sensitive ears to walk right in and go across the massive hall to the other side. Wilfred went ahead of me, showing me the way to where exactly the soloist had gone, which was behind a curtain guarded by a large, bald pony in the same attire that my butler was wearing.

This guard held a hoof out to stop us. “VIP’s or invited guests only,” he said to us.

“Wait; let me get this out…” Wilfred lit up his horn to pull out some badges with the letters “V. I. P.” written on them. This lets us through the curtain. There we found the mare in normal light; she had the characteristics of Shining Armor, from white coat to the same shading of mane color. Of course, the main differences between him and this sweaty mare were the dark spectacles over her eyes and the cutie mark – hers were eighth notes. By the time we walked in, she was lying back on a couch, gulping down something from a bottle.

“DJ PON3 I presume?” I inquired, getting her attention. “Was that you performing out there?”

She smirked and nodded.

“Wolfgang Moztrot, Madame,” I held out a hoof. “So is DJ PON3 your real name or is it a stage name?”
She held up a hoof, signaling me to wait a moment. Her horn glowed briefly; from out of some saddlebags, she pulled out a notebook and a pencil, with which she began jotting something down. I looked over to my butler confused for a moment before she shoved the book to my face.



Hey dude, in case you’re wondering, I’m mute so I can only write this out to ya. And in case you’re wondering, the answer is no, I’m not deaf, it’s just that I can’t talk.



I blinked, “You’re mute?”

She nodded.



Yep, and to answer your question, DJ PON3 is a stage name. Call me Vinyl. You ran into my roommate not too long ago as I recall. Octavia Melody. She’s the gal you mortified at that snobby party in which you nearly had them sing something about licking butts.



“Wait a minute,” I thought back to a couple of weeks ago. “Is she a gray mare, with black hair and has a friend that is a pianist?”



That’s the one! Man, I wish I could have been there to see the looks on their faces when you got kicked out. I thought you would be one of those boring old composers but was I proven wrong when Octie told me about you!



“That’s only because nopony there had a sense of humor. Still, I’m impressed at how you could move that crowd out there. Literally.”

She waved a hoof and scribbled more in her book.



To me it’s a Tuesday. It’s nothing really.



“While you’re here, I was wondering if you could try to help me understand something. Your arrangements on Buch in particular –  maybe it’s because I’ve been dead for two centuries and I’m now the old turd, but could you try to explain to me the method behind what I just heard?”

Ms. Vinyl stared at me for a good solid minute. The unicorn scratched the back of her head with the pencil, trying to think up a reply. Finally, she jotted down her thoughts for several minutes before sharing:



Look, dude, I don’t know if I can sum up what I do here. I mean, it’s not just that my style must sound wicked crazy to you given when you’re from, but how everything changed after Beethoven. But to oversimplify, I’d have to say that I’ve adopted a new way to entertain the crowd in which I take something old and make it come back to life again. Giving it a fresh coat of paint as it were. You could blame Octavia and Beethoven for that, for leading me to revive classical music in a contemporary style. But I do it with a passion to make the crowd move. Do you get what I’m saying?



Even with this modern music, it became clear now what exactly this Beethoven had done to this world: he gave it passion.

I told her that I indeed understood. After thanking her for the explanation, Wilfred and I rounded up the cook and the maid and then continued on the final stage of our quest.

By this time, the sun was making its way westward, so we had only a limited amount of time to search for this rock music. At the time, I thought it was going to feature an orchestra playing on instruments completely made out of stone. I had no idea what such heavy things would sound like. But like we did before, we asked around and we were pointed this way and that to where a rock concert was being performed.





After a quick dinner of street food, we were pointed towards the enormous outdoor theater, which they called a stadium. The same place that Princess Twilight had told me had held the Equestrian Games. By the time we approached it, the sun was setting on the horizon and there was a monstrous sound coming from inside. This wasn’t like Ms. Vinyl’s, which sounded so chaotic to the ear. If anything, the closer we got to the pulsing theater, the more structured the music became even as the sounds of hysterical screams were heard.

There were banners around the round structure, four giant images of faces of ponies with very big manes, each holding up some form of a guitar or percussion in which they call themselves, “Why in the name of Celestia’s golden crap is this called ‘Queen’ when there’s not a mare among them?”

Much to my (and the other servants as well as they were) surprise, Wilfred had for a moment burst out laughing. It was a shock as this was the first time that any of us had seen him evince a sense of humor. But just as quickly as that outburst came, he cleared his throat and regained his composure. “Apologies. But to answer your question, Wolfgang, Queen is only a name to catch somepony’s attention and help them stand out among several other bands. This one, to my knowledge, is relatively new; still, they’ve been around for a few years now and are picking up in popularity. But like many rock bands, they use guitar instruments that are amplified or tuned by electricity.”

For a moment, I cocked a head over towards the enormous theater. “Well I suppose that makes some sense, but how come what I’m hearing is different than Ms. Vinyl’s if it’s run on electricity?”

“Ah,” my butler nodded, “Well, this style is a little older than electronic dance music by a few decades. Unlike what you heard, which is done by one machine, this genre of music uses different instruments to create its own distinctive sound.”

I supposed such an explanation was reasonable. “So is there anything else I need to know before we head in there?”

“There is,” Wilfred reached into his pocket to pull out a hoofful of purple tablets. “Squish these up and put them into your ears. I should have given these to you beforehoof, however, I didn’t realize how loud DJ PON3’s music would be. At a concert like this, however, I have a feeling that we all are going to need these.”

After following the instruction and letting the tablets swell up in my ears, all sound was reduced to a muffle. “What are these?” I asked as I instantly took one out. “I could hardly hear with these.”

“That is rather the point,” my butler replied as he put some of them in his ears. “They plug up your ears so they won’t become damaged. You will thank me once we get in there.”

So after putting them back in, we followed behind him into the stadium. And as we got closer to the center, the purpose of the tablets became clear as the muffled sound got louder. When we got to the heart of the theater, the shouts and excited cheers were near deafening. There in the very center was a group of only four stallions on stage – one at the percussion, two with flat guitars and another at one of those electronic keyboards.

“Thank you for coming out to see us Crystal Empire!” one of them gave a great shout in which the audience roared. “How about an old favorite before we go? So let’s end this concert with the very song that had put us on the map. Let’s give you, our Rhapsody.”

Before the music could even start, I was intrigued by the mania of this particular audience. Compared to the morning concert, in which the crowd had stayed silent from beginning to the end of each movement, this one was uncontrolled. They screamed and whooped, held up signs and cried out their love for the group. It gave me a moment of pause; why was this audience acting so differently than the one I performed for?

However, before I could ponder over this, a quartet of voices began asking:“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”For a moment I was taken aback as it started as an acapella. The harmony at first was uneven, almost harsh through these swollen tablets in my ears. That was until a piano came into play, giving the surreal opening momentum, even if it still had some rather cryptic lyrics.

The quartet paused as the piano rang out nostalgic notes before a solo voice sang out to his mother a terrible confession that he’d killed somepony. I was able to identify that the one singing was wearing white and stringing a nervous harmony on the keys. Looking back, I was impressed at this soloist as he, like the opera singers from where I came from, was able to convey through words and the tone of his voice multiple emotions at once. I heard fright, regret, even a feeling of stoicism. From the others in the band, I heard the plucking of very low bass strings and the momentum of the percussion that highlighted the singer.

Then the soloist, contented with his fate and that justice was catching up to him, wished everyone he’d known farewell. Then to his mother, saying that “I don’t wanna die, I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all!” What followed immediately after was a sound that I had never heard before – one that was a complete contradiction to any guitar that I’ve ever heard. It was as if it was out of tune while still playing the right notes in the surprise caprice. As if it were a controlled scream and yet, it wasn’t frightening to the ear.

Just as this caprice came, it suddenly held its breath at the steady tempo of a piano. A new voice spoke up, one that I couldn’t immediately tell who it was. Then the other three replied in a cryptic, Istallion accent before a sudden thunder of notes. From these three, they started a conversation with the first singer that I think decided to act as both prosecutors and defendants at the same time, even within the same bar! It was as if they were suddenly taking the audience to the middle of a mad trial for the soloist’s soul.

To add to this bizarre scene, an explosion of sound, light, and fireworks erupted over our heads. Tartarus-fire of chords and demonic instruments screamed over the eruption of the audience as the singer, in a defiant voice, yelled at the nonsense and betrayal of fate. But in this hurricane, that specter of passion still loomed- no! Possessed the singer! Not even the divas of my time could unleash anything like that. It was terrifying and exciting to not just listen to but to watch as well.

But just as it was going at full force, it gradually slowed itself down so we were able to catch our breath. From there, the tempo eased, and the main singer chanted the contemptuous phrase: “Nothing really matters.” And thus, the piece ended with an airy conclusion about the wind. Thus erupting in applause from all around, “Thank you Crystal Empire, good night!”