July 4 is my debut

[in_the_basement]

Tuesday is the big day for me. It will be my first time playing in front of a crowd. We are playing a backyard BBQ and it looks like there will be about 60 or so people there. Our band has been practicing for about a year for this and if all goes well we have a steady line of other backyard jobs lined up. Oh, did I happen to mention we are not getting paid for this . It's at our lead guitarists house so this ones free. At what point should we start asking for some cash for our services? It's easy when it's for free. If we suck we can say "whaddaya want for nuthin. A rubber biscuit?"

So what was your first public appearance as a band like? We have done a few practices where we had a few people watching. Todays was the toughest. They were people I did not know but one was a 17 year old hottie girl. So there were only 5 people watching us but that one hottie girl was intimidating.

God, I hope we don't bomb.

[mk-ultra]

whats the setlist gona be like? most covers and orginals or what?


Just remember to have fun, and if you mess up, so what just laugh it off and keep playing

Pass a basket for money around after your done.

[PlayerOfGuitar]

yes, pass a basket or even a hat

at my last show we got paid for, some lady came up and asked us to pass around a hat for tips, it was awesome. you should deffinetly do it.

have fun and good luck.

[Shibby]

i don't suggest doing the hat thing..not at a house party and not 4th of july--it just might thing a little pretencious. yes, musicians have to be assertive to get paid but since you agreed to do the gig for free, it might seem a little rude to do that...especially because its your own guitarists house lol.


its actually easier to play in front of a larger crowd than it is a small one...and especially since it sounds like everyone's gonna just be milling around and not directly concentrating on you. that hot 17year old will probably be so busy trying to score a beer that she won't notice if you guys make a mistake..and if she does and says soemthing..give her a beer.

I pretty much tanked on my first gig. Our band had not been practicing for that long and we were all pretty new musicians as well. if you've guys been practicing for a year your probablyl really confortable with your setlist and playing with eachother. Even if you do tank..don't give up! i was sooo nervous before my first show but now i'm really confortable with playing in front of people and i usually just forget they're there (no not because i'm on a trip). so you'll get less nervous with time...

good luck...

[in_the_basement]

whats the setlist gona be like? most covers and orginals or what?


Just remember to have fun, and if you mess up, so what just laugh it off and keep playing

Pass a basket for money around after your done.


All covers (except one rewrite). Heres the set lists, and keep in mind we are all kind of old so the songs are mostly not current. At 38 I am the youngest in the band.

Set one:

Sunshine Of YOur Love (Cream)
Wild Thing
When I Come Around (Green Day of course
Cocaine (This is our rewrite. I rewrote the lyrics for the family "Propane")
Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
Sedated (Ramones)
Hey Joe (Hendrix)
Smoke On THe Water
Takin Care Of Business
I Love Rock And Roll (Joan Jett)
Tush (ZZ)
Johnny B. Goode

Set Two:

Brown Sugar (Stomes)
Honky Tonk Woman
Jailhouse Rock
Fire (Hendrix)
Livin After Midnight (Judas Priest)
Born To Be Wild
Sweet Jane (Lou Reed)
Red House (Hendrix)
Satisfaction (Stomes)
Custard Pie (Zepplin)
Roadhouse Blues (Doors)
Iron Man

The hat idea sounds good for future reference.

[mk-ultra]

I know this is gona be a dumb comment, but why not play Rock and Roll (VU) right after sweet jane? cause whenever i hear bands play sweet Jane, RnR usaily follows it

but besides that, it looks like a really really cool setlist. post pics, even better try to record it if you can.

[in_the_basement]

I know this is gona be a dumb comment, but why not play Rock and Roll (VU) right after sweet jane? cause whenever i hear bands play sweet Jane, RnR usaily follows it

but besides that, it looks like a really really cool setlist. post pics, even better try to record it if you can.

Rock And Roll (VU)? What's (VU)?

[mk-ultra]

welvet underground

[in_the_basement]

welvet underground

Oh, Duh!! Well that makes the answer to the question real easy. We have not learned that song yet.

[stratman50th]

Great on the gig! Can't wait to hear how it turns out.
I'm going to move this over to Tales from the Road.

[shredding]

Good luck, boy! My hands never listen to me in front of the girls i like. i'll try 10 times harder to make them not shaking. but just keep in mind that they will not know even you mess up. their eyes will be on you and as long as you act cool, they won't even pay attention to what you are playing.

My last show was around new year's eve in front of some teenagers.

[ViOLATiON]

SHOWTIME! :p

Good luck tonight!

[mk-ultra]

yep , remember have fun, and take alot of pics

[in_the_basement]

yep , remember have fun, and take alot of pics

Wow!! That was awesome. So we made it through our first public appearance and all worked out well. Our first set was by far the best. We were pretty solid for it and we were pretty well together. We definitely need to work on our sound mix because sometimes our lead guitarist was loud and I was too low. We will work that in the future.

The nerves stayed at bay. It was really a lot easier than I had expected. Once I got up there and started playing I got so into the playing that I had no chance to really be nervous. The practice took over and I just played. THe one thing that impressed me was our ability to play through the mistakes. In practices we have a tendancy to get lost and then just stop when someone makes a big mistake. Yesterday we had a couple of screw ups that would have stopped us in a practice but we just chugged on through and we all came together again. The funny thig is that while talking to some of the people in the audience afterward, they said that they never caught our mistakes. Our bass player said that his daughters band teacher had always said that most people don't know music and that when you make a mistake they are not aware and oyu can just play on. The only time people know you have made a mistake is when you drawattention to it.

I have a bunch of pics on the digital camera and some video. We also recorded a good portion (if not all; have not listened to the results yet) of the first set. I have never posted pictures to this forum so please give me instructions as to how I do that and I will post some as soon as we suck them off the memory card. I don't know if it's possible to post video to this forum. If it is let me know and I will do that too. Finally, I have the recording. Not sure how I would go about putting this anywhere that it could be downloaded. I need help from you veterans to guide me through the process of getting this stuff on the board. Let me know.

So I now definitely have the confidence to do this again. I am inspired to work harder and learn more so we can get out and do more BBQ's and maybe some bars.

[mk-ultra]

thats awsome. how many people were in the crowd again? so is your band gona now start to find gigs alot more?

btw sorry i have no idea how to post photos or anything, maybe you can PM a mod or something...

[Freebird]

Great news! :)

To post a photo you'll need to upload it to the Internet. (You can use Image Shack (http://imageshack.us/) , for example) Then all you've got to do is write URL of the photo.

[stratman50th]

Glad you had a good time and things went well!
Read Keith's tutorial on how to post photos. It should help:
http://guitar.zentao.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12808
I use photobucket, but there are a lot out there. I'm not sure how image shack works, but photobucket has the IMG link right there. All I do is copy the link right into my posts and it comes up fine.

[Tingly]

Congratulations, in_the_basement! You are TOTALLY the man! (I know: it was almost the most fun you can have, legally, with ya clothes on! That's why the pay often sucks.)

Anyway, welcome to the select few in the world, who have been fortunate enough to play in a rock band, at a gig, in front of people! Not to be mean, but you will find that there are many who "talk" about it, but not that many who have actually DONE it.

You will find that the confidence the performance gives you results in steadier hands, less shyness about playing in front of others, and renewed determination to get even better.

'Best of luck in the future and I hope you successfully continue in your musical efforts.

[in_the_basement]

OK, here it goes. My wife only took 3 photos of the band, the rest are of our children (who really loved seeing daddy play in the band and wanted to hear the CD on the way home. We had to break the news that there is no CD yet). So here are the photos.

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/6773/july406fivebeerband33jy.jpg

This first one is me.

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/9126/july406fivebeerband21kw.jpg

This is the one of our band that also shows our female vocalist, but not the lead guitarist.

http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/4953/july406fivebeerband0nu.jpg

And then this one shows the band without the female vocalist but shows the lead guitarist.

Unfortunately our drummer is hidden from view for the pictures. We have a bunch of video and will turn some of the video into pictures so I can post them later.

[Tingly]

Fantastic!

Wild shirt, too. 'Very appropriate all around "look" for a 38 year old rocker!!!

[in_the_basement]

Congratulations, in_the_basement! You are TOTALLY the man! (I know: it was almost the most fun you can have, legally, with ya clothes on! That's why the pay often sucks.)

Anyway, welcome to the select few in the world, who have been fortunate enough to play in a rock band, at a gig, in front of people! Not to be mean, but you will find that there are many who "talk" about it, but not that many who have actually DONE it.

You will find that the confidence the performance gives you results in steadier hands, less shyness about playing in front of others, and renewed determination to get even better.

'Best of luck in the future and I hope you successfully continue in your musical efforts.

Thanks. I know what you mean. I speak to a lot of people who play but so few of them have gotten up in front of the crowd. Many won't even play in front of their own families. I was in a panic yesterday morning because it was looking like rain and knew that it would have been a total letdown if we had been rained out. I didn't care if we set up and only played 5 songs, I had to get out there and play in front of people.

Yes, I agree, it's a load of fun especially when you look out at the crowd and see them bopin with the music. We even had a few all out dancing. You know you are doing well when you look out and see the people actually foucused on the band and not just going about their business. Many of the people were captivated by the performance. That was cool. A lot of them were even the younger teenage kids.

It's always hard to judge how you did from the comments because there are very few people who would go to a BBQ where a band member owns the house, and tell the band that they sucked, even if they did.I think you will always get the positive comment. But when you read the body language and see everyone getting into it, that's a good feeling.

[mk-ultra]

how many people where there?

[Lazy Bee]

Congrats!! The set lists look great for parties.


My first gig? A barn party!! :D

[lyleman]

Wow - you're so relaxed looking people probably thought you had been playing out for years! Nice job, thanks for the pics.

[in_the_basement]

There were asbout 60 people at the party. It was a wide age range from 4 to 70 years old and we had em all boppin to the beat. I do look relaxed don't I? Well I have to say that once I began playing I was relaxed. It was the 12 hours leading up to it that I was pacing the floor and dealing with the butterflies in the stomach. By the way, we managed to come up with a few of those pop up canopy tents to cover the setup. It was threatening to rain throughout the day.

Unfortunately the recording did not come out. We don't know why. We must have not hooked something up properly because we thought we ha it then when we tried to play back, there was nothing. I do have some video that I have not looked at yet, but if any is good, I will try to post it to youtube.

[Livetorock]

Congrats!! The set lists look great for parties.


My first gig? A barn party!! :D

My first gig was at a school carnival...totally sucked until the little hottie I was obsessed with started dancing :rolleye:

BTW Congrats on the first gig success