It was a chilly morning in August. I slept through my alarm, set to 3:30am. A friend's call half an hour later woke me out of my nervous sleep. I rushed over to the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena for the Los Angeles area audition.

Bleary-eyed and shivering in the pre-dawn darkness, I took a place in line along with 10,000 other aspiring contestants -- from teenagers to those like me in their late 20s.

People brought their mothers, fathers, best friends and aunts. Some piled on makeup. Others rehearsed their songs-- loudly or whispering. I came alone and murmured lyrics under my breath. Friends called to keep me company. My feet started to hurt.

I'm a blues-singing garage rocker at heart, not someone prone to trying out for a commercial endeavor such as Idol. Yet prodding from friends and family prompted me to give it a chance. Even my bandmates said, "Hey, why not? Go for it."

The song I chose to audition, Rock Steady by Aretha Franklin, was a favorite -- soulful, sassy. Not as ubiquitous as Respect, but still bold. I felt committed.

Once inside the stadium, after hours of waiting for the gates to open and then that mad dash inside, I found my seat, surrounded by a mix of saucy trash-talkers and shy couples. Mostly, the tension was palpable--somewhere between wide-eyed hope and crushing anonymity. But there was also something else in the air: a joyful love of music.

Questions looped through the crowd. "Are Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul here?" "No they're not." "I heard they are!" It turns out they weren't -- by a long shot.

Once we settled in, a jubilant emcee roared us to our feet to sing the LA audition's retro theme song-- Daydream Believer by the Monkees. Well, the chorus of it, at least, over and over. We waved to the swooping camera, we yelled "I'm the next 'American Idol'!" and we waited.

Row by row, we lined up to audition in front of 12 booths, four participants to a booth. Sure enough -- no Simon, no Randy, no Paula.

By the time I got to that line, I was jittery yet pumped, repeating the feisty intro to Rock Steady: "Rock steady baby! That's what I feel now. Let's call this song exactly what it is."

At the judging table in front of us sat two 20-something producers. One was a young woman with sunglasses so large, she could have been napping behind them. The other was a young man with his head propped up in his hands. He said nothing and looked bored.Suddenly Simon seemed not so rude after all.

Each of us would be given roughly 15 seconds of our chosen song to perform. No questions, no names. Two of the singers next to me were great, even passionate. Another one, not so much.

Then I stepped forward and sang, belting out the tune with all I had. It's Aretha, after all.

I was louder than the rest, working my vibrato, stretching my arms out. The bored guy perked up a little, but still said nothing. This was the moment I had waited six hours for.

After less than 20 seconds, it was over.

Afterward, the young woman with the sunglasses turned to all of us, thanked us for auditioning, and said we would not be needed for the show. There was no banter between judges. No comments to us about our performances -- snarky or otherwise. Not even a little canned applause.

Instead, we were instructed to go, our wristbands were cut, and we walked out of the stadium.

Days later, my band Naughty Bird performed at a local club and I felt a deep sense of relief --to sing our own songs in that cramped, dark place, on our own terms, to loud applause.

The author writes for Associated Press