Your first gig - tell us!

[corbind]

That's good you got out there and played. I never would have taken the stage. Heck, I had apprehension just playing with others in a house. The first time I went to David's I would not play. Everyone else was so good and I had only played 8 months or so. I think it's great anyone gets on stage. It takes confidence (and at times, prodding from sr. players).

[ibnzmusician]

My first "gig" was just last Tuesday. I played in my Jr. High team talent show with my friend on viola. It was awesome

[corbind]

Was it a class of like 30 or did you have to play in your gym/auditorium? Did you post elsewhere details of the gig? If not, why not put 'em here?

[ibnzmusician]

No, I didn't post 'em anywhere yet...

It was for my team of 60 people, but my friend (the violist) and I are going to try out for the all-school talent show (which is really by grades, but we can perform multiple times). She's been playing (my friend) for about four years now and I've been playing about six months. Our song was Fantasia On An Original Theme, but she played her viola part (which she got from Orchestra) and I made up my own part, except for plugging in the intro to Fade to Black as my "solo" and a couple modifications on my friend's part to make it all fit together. We made up a little thing with motions too to make it more interesting, the basic idea was...

1. I'm asleep and she's just hanging out.
2. She kicks me. I'm awake now!
3. We're just talking together and being happy.
4. We start having a heated discussion and start lecturing each other.
5. We start yelling at each other.
6. We tell the audience how much we hate each other.
7. We have a "reflection" and think "Maybe she's not so bad..."
8. We change our minds and start yelling at each other again. "Yeah, I really do hate her."
9. We ignore each other.
10. I apologize, and she "says" okay.

It was very interesting - we got a lot of laughs. It was a lot of fun too.

[Death_To_Theory]

my first gig was at a battle of the bands that my highschool was holding it was so shibbyit gave such rush from bein up on the stage seeing all the ppl cheerin us on


Joe

[corbind]

Joe, could you elaborte on that? It's always good to hear about first gigs!

[Death_To_Theory]

ay!!! i could lol but i dont know what to elaborate on i mean thats really it lol ...we got 2ndd in the battle of the bands if thats wat u wanted to know.. srry bout this mate i just dont know what else there is to say except it was great

[ibnzmusician]

What'd you guys play?

[Death_To_Theory]

a song by anti-flag:the machine kills facists

[Crazy Dave Miller]

First gig--indeed
my band, for which I play guitar and a little bit of percussion and do all the singing, opened up for two other, much better established local bands in their warehouse/practice space. We'd gotten together less than a month before. The other three guys in my band were lead guitar, bass, and drums (not too original, but it does the job.)
We did the usual soundcheck stuff, and about 35 people showed up, which was more than we could have asked for. We opened up with a song that the other guitarist wrote most of the music to, and I had written the lyrics, then played 7 more songs--half covers, half original. At the end of one original song, I kept on playing a bit after I was supposed to because I could not hear Joe, the other guitar, who was too low in the moniter. I looked up at Joe, who had the "Oh, crap, we messed up" look on his face (which I probably had too) when all of a sudden, he started playing again and we just jammed. After the show, we found out that no one knew that wasn't supposed to happen. We closed with LA Woman, which definately rocked the house.
We decided to scrap two songs from our catalog after the show. The first was an original that just didn't work--it had started with a great chord progression for the chorus but had just gone bad as we tried to take it in too many different directions (and I had never been happy with the lyrics I wrote). The second was that song "Are You Gonna Be my Girl" by Jet, because we had all gotten so sick of it that no one in the band can listen to it anymore. We got to play two more shows before the end of the college semester, and saw how much we'd improved each time. Our drummer just graduated and moved back to New York, so we plan on picking up a new one and keeping the music alive in September.
PS--all you lead singers--don't scream your voice out in the middle of a show. Our third show we did LA Woman in the middle, and I screamed a bit too much from "Mr. Mojo Risin'" until the end, and could barely sing for the rest of the set. Luckily almost no one was there.

[Crazy Dave Miller]

Hell, come to think of it, my first gig was a few months before that when the bassist and guitarist and I (playing bongos) did 3 songs at an open mic night. We covered All Blues and Freddie Freeloader (Miles Davis) and then did our version of Janis Joplin's Mercedes Benz, which we wrote music to. I'm glad to have emerged from drummer to Frontman/Guitar, especially because I suck at drums.

[corbind]

Hey Dave, you made my day! I love this post. I can relate to keeping on playing when the other guys stop. It's happened to me many time at practice with our other guitarist. He sings too, and if I don't listen to the words, I continue playing during what's supposed to be a 3-second rest. I end up looking up "oh no" then slam my right hand across the string to kill 'em. That's so cool the audience didn't notice. Keep us posted on more playing out stories.

[bleaseyhighflyer]

My first "big" gig was about two months ago in . It wasnt quite how i expected. Im actually the drummer in this band ( i am in a few bands currently) but i noticed our guitarist was having a few problems with feedback. He later told me that he had his distortion level on too high on his effects pedal, or so he says.

We played infront of about 150 people, in this rock club, and it was quite an experience, we seemed to get pretty good reception from the crowd, and all went smoothly apart from the feedback problems.

I was sickenly nervous beforehand, but after about a minute of play when i could see that the crowd was not booing us of i was really enjoying myself, cant wait to do it again, which will be soon.

P.S. we played a short set just half an hour, two original songs two covers.

[hueseph]

I was thirteen and me and a few kids from school were at a legion. We played Beatles tunes, Roy Orbison and some Cars and even some Eurythmics. It was cool. People were dancing and having a good time even tho we didn't sound that great. It was just me singing, a guitarist and a drummer. Cool memories.

[corbind]

Well, here's my first gig:

http://www.guitarnoise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9244

Page down until you see a really long post and that's the meat of it.

Tomorrow night I'm playing my first paid gig so I'll tell y'all about that when I'm rested.