Describe your first gig

[ghodaddyyo]

My very first was at my High School opening up for an already established band for a talent night. Up to that point noone really even knew I played guitar, because I was just a bedroom player who never really hobnobbed with the "Dude, I'm in a band!" crowd. I just simply played with a few other likeminded musicians. The gig had the usual mess-ups like when I tried to use my whammy bar in a solo, I pulled way to far only to see my singer cringing! We all laughed about it when we saw the video tape later. Coming off of the stage was the most exhilarating moment ever, because we were rushed by people who didn't even have an idea we could play. Even the "Dude, I'm in a band!" crowd came to praise us. It seems those guys only talked about playing but never did! Everyone wanted to join our band after this, and we soon had football jocks forming rock bands! Too funny!

Tell me about your experience!

[StoneDragon]

I've probably talked about my "first" gig way too many times already. The most memorable thing about it was when some member of the "audience" called me over in the middle of a "tune" and suggested rather strongly that we should probably just stop playing hahahahahahaha

So.... how about the first "real" gig?

I was a senior in highschool. Up to this point, my "band" consisted of me and a drummer. We could never find anybody to play bass or sing, although we tried several different people in that capacity.

Anyway... one of my "other" friends also happened to be a drummer, so we got a wild hair and decided to have "my" drummer play bass and help me out on vocal duties. We then combined the two drummer's sets to make one monster drum kit and had drummer #2 play the drums.

My mom was out of town for a couple of weeks so we set up in my living room and practiced every night. The most spine-tingling event of that two weeks was when the "bass" player and I got together a couple of hours early and learned the tune Black Tiger by Y&T. (Does anybody remember Y&T? I think they almost had a "hit" record.)

Anyway.... when the "drummer" shows up, we don't say anything to him about learning this new tune.... I just start into the opening riff. Luckily, the drummer has heard the song enough that he just lays into the drum part without even blinking. So we bast this tune out! It sounded so cool that when we were done, we just looked at eachother amazed. finally somebody says, "WOW!"

We rehearsed for a couple more weeks, putting together as many tunes as we could, as the drummer had gone out and gotten us a "gig" playing at the high school for a dance that was being put on by some sort of PEP association or something.

I remember the sponsors coming over to check us out and see if they would actually pay "money" to have us play for this function. We didn't have a PA, but the "bass" player managed to "aquire" the loudspeaker setup that was used by the public swimming pool for making anouncements during swim meets.... very low-fi. They had reservations about hiring us due to this lack of PA, so we had to convince them that we were going to "go out" and rent something for the night. We didn't have any real clue as to where we were going to come up with something, but a former "bass" player of ours was currently attending college in another town and was in the habit of "aquiring" their PA system on occasion.

The PEP people decided to go ahead and hire us. They even arranged a photo shoot and put together some cool flyers to advertise the dance. (wish I still had one of those flyers. I do have the logo that somebody drew up for us, though.)

Well... we learned on the day of the gig that the college found out about this "aquaintance" of ours using their system, because he had it in the back of one of their vehicles (also "aquired") and managed to get the vehicle stuck somewhere and just abandoned the vehicle and PA system for the police to find the next day.

So we end up desperately scouring the town for a PA to use that night. We finally end up at this barely passable excuse of a guitar shop, and the proprietor knows some guy who will on occasion rent his PA out. We have to go find something to do for a couple of hours while he tries to hunt this guy down though. Needless to say, we were starting to sweat!

The gods must have smiled.... or at least had a good chuckle... because, as luck would have it, the guy was willing to rent out the PA for something like $50. Well... the PA turned out to be this little 4-channel Randall thing. You know the ones... with the two columns of ten-inch speakers and a little square power head. There was nothing else we could do at that point, so we said "thanks" and paid the money.

Somehow, the "other" bass player managed to convince the college to rent us just the speakers from their PA (at least I have always assumed that he asked for permission this time) for another $50 so we (me) plunked down the cash and headed home.

We got back to town with just enough time to grab the rest of our equipment and head to the highschool.

The dance was being help in the "auditorium/cafeteria" which had a stage that opened to the cafeteria on one side and the gym on the back side. Well.... there was a basketball game in progress, so we were not allowed to plug anything in while the game was on. The dance was being held immediately after the game, so we were sitting there not knowing if this "equipment" was even going to work.

I had come up with the "bright" idea to use my home stereo to drive the column speakers for monitors and use the Randall to drive the cabinets from the college. It looked good on paper, but I had no idea if it would actually work.

We asked for a little time to run a sound test after the game, but the guy at the door thought he had better things to do than stand there keeping a bunch of teenagers out of the cafeteria, and just said, "I'm letting them in."

We crossed our fingers, flipped the power switches and played our hearts out.

The bummer of the whole thing was that I never did get any feedback on how we sounded. One guy that I asked said, "loud." Another guy made a comment a couple of days later.... something to the effect of, "hey... you're not a bad player.... sing pretty good too."

So much for my teenage fantasies of playing my guitar onstage and having all the girls instantly fall in love with me http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/smokin.gif

[StoneDragon]

BTW... Roumor has it that Sixtring is actually in possession of recorded evidence from a gig that he and I did together at the end of that school year. Maybe he can be coaxed into give up the details leading up to that event.

[This message has been edited by StoneDragon (edited January 19, 2001).]

[Sixstring]

So you want me to wax nostalgic, huh… Sit back, this could take a while.

I met Stone in Jr. High. We met through a mutual friend who turned out to be the drummer, and still to this day, one of the coolest individuals I’ve ever known! He was a drummer, so was I, he was a huge KISS fan, so was I, he had a huge mop of wigged out blonde hair, I didn’t. Anyway, he introduced me to the young Mr. Dragon long before he was known as such. We also had some other friends who played other stuff so we’d get together on occasion and pretend to be rock stars. We had a few incarnations and I tried out my hand at songwriting in one of them, but it was never real serious. I even got called in to audition with Stone for one of his early experiments. I still remember they screwed up during one song and I stopped and mentioned it, to which Stone said, “Oh no, the singer was right!” You could see the horror in his eyes. But unfortunately the timing was bad for me so I had to reluctantly decline.

Finally, in '84, we decided we should do it for real and the 5 of us got this hair-brained idea that we actually could! We decided to set regular rehearsals and put together a 4 hour set of cover tunes. It seemed like a daunting task, but we didn’t know any better.

One of the guys had connections with the rich guy in town who owned everything and he sweet-talked him into letting us use one of his empty buildings at the end of town. Now… about this building… sort of a fixer-upper, between rentals, but it seemed like a palace. And having a key to it made it seem like our own little world where we could just leave our stuff set up and show up, turn on, and jam! Stone and I used to ride our motorbikes and then once in a while cruise around town to unwind during a break. We were pretty studly… http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/wink.gif

Oh, did I mention this place was right next to a cowboy bar? And I don’t mean the buildings were close, I mean they were the same building! Just a wall between us and the cowboys. And these weren’t your urban cowboys, either. These were the old hands. The type that had been fattened up nicely from 30 years of grain-feeding. Very good chance our heads would be mounted to the front of their pickups and driven slowly through town, right behind the one with the cord of wood in the back, during the next parade. So we decide to be responsible and go next door and explain what we’re doing in their neck of the woods. We tell them we’ll try to keep it down and try not to be a bother. (HAHAHAHA!!!! That still gets me!)

So we round up all the gear we had, parted together a drum set, borrowed some other stuff and began making arrangements for a gig. We set our sights on the local VFW. We had some older friends/relations that were in a country band and they agreed to loan us a sound system for the gig. I had a friend who was a cop so I asked him to oversee security. With all our ducks in a row, we went to the VFW and made our case, carefully explaining why they would be fools to pass up the opportunity to host what could launch our huge career. We scrapped up the dough to rent the place, so when they mentioned money we didn’t even flinch. True pros. They agreed and we were on our way. Now all we have to do is learn about 50 songs!

Rehearsal were wide open. A big plate glass window with no curtains, right on the end of the main drag. A few moments to remember… The night it was so incredibly loud I had a splitting headache within a half-hour and by the end of the night I didn’t think my ears would ever recover. Another time when a complete stranger came barreling up to the door, demanding to be let in, nearly kicking in the door. We let him in because we figured if he trashed the door we’d be evicted so we took our chances and figured that as wasted as he was we could clobber him with guitars and send him home with a brand new Gibson tattoo. Turned out he just wanted to know what was going on. He explained very calmly that he thought he was missing a party. We played him some stuff and he left without incident. Then there was the time the drunk lady came over from the bar and for some reason offered us a gig! Wow, can we call this a tour now? We wrote up a contract to play the night after our VFW show for $500. Unfortunately she lost her shirt on the deal due to poor advertising and a thin showing to our gig in the middle of nowhere.

We decide to call ourselves “Hurricane”, BEFORE the other Hurricane came out, thank you! I had a friend who was a good artist and he drew us a logo and we had T-shirts made up for the band. He also served as manager at our other show and took extreme pleasure in demanding our money from the poor lady that hired us. I’m sure he feels bad about it now…

Off the top of the head, here’s some that made the set…
5 (I think) Motley Crue tunes, Love Gun, Some Heads Are Gonna Roll, Monkey Bars, Sharp Dressed Man (featuring a friend we conned into coming on stage with a trench coat during the echo “white tie” and flashing them in nothing more than shorts and a white tie…) Jump, Balls to the Wall, Detroit Rock City (where Stone used to always forget the line “12:00, I gotta rock.”) and one of my favorite moments, Veteran of the Psychic Wars. When we did “Veteran” in sound check the sound team asked if we were really going to play that! We did. After the show they said they thought that would be a disaster, but they said it went great. We did metal, rock, punk, anything we wanted. I mostly sang, Stone and another guy played guitar and bass, and our drummer, well, he played drums now didn’t he? On some tunes we would go for a duel-guitar attack and I would play bass too. Stone sang on a few tunes too.

There was one jam where we would take turns. We all played every instrument so while one guy would solo, the rest of us would switch instruments, and so on until we had all taken a turn on everything and had all done a solo on something. It was a blast.

The next day we hustled up to the next gig and set up for the show… well all of us except Stone. He spent the day laying around in the sun, showing up about an hour before the show, explaining later that he wanted to just show up and play, like a real rock star. Prima dona… http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/wink.gif
(Nah… I figured, fair enough, we were doing this to live the dream, so it was cool.)

There was also the uncomfortable moment when a guy came up to the stage right before Love Gun and gave me a plastic rose! Uuummm…. thanks, I guess.

There are many more details I will spare you. This is becoming a book and some day I may want to sell the rights to my story. It wasn’t my first public performance, but I’ve always considered it my first real concert with my first real band. It was waaaayyyyy cooool! Definitely one of those times I always look back on fondly. What's even funnier, the manager moved back there after many years and ran into one of the young girls who asked for an autograph and she remembered him from the show and went on and on about how great we were!

As for the rumor. Unfortunately, no, I don’t have an audio recording. I think there was one, but I don’t know where it ever ended up. But about a month ago I was going through some old keepsakes and found some pictures from the VFW show. I’ve got some great pics of Stone and will one day scan them and hold them ransom. Of course I will cut myself out of them because we looked downright silly. http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/smile.gif

Hey Stone- I'll bet I could score us the local Grange if you wanna do it again! Cool memories, man. Here's to the good old days.

Sixstring

[StoneDragon]

Ha ha... a few details there I had selectively forgotten about.

Didn't we "attempt" a Night Ranger song or two? Journey?

I do remember that my dad, sis and bro showed up at that second gig... they must have been the one's who TPed my car. I remember coming outside afterwards and my 'stang was covered!

I also remember a couple of "gracious" ladies who were kind enough to allow us to drape their "unmentionables" all over our equipment for the VFW gig.

What a hoot!

[Sixstring]

Ha! I forgot about the ladies garments. I'll have to go back and check the pics again and look for evidence.

Yeah, we tried Rock in America, can't remember if we did another or not. I know for a fact that we DIDN't do Sister Christian! Seems like we did some Journey, but I can't recall which one(s).

Let's see... Metal Health, Cum on Feel the Noise, Flying High Again, Crazy Train, You've Got Another Thing Comin', One Way To Rock, Schools Out, something by The ***** (I think I played drums on the punk stuff)... I can't imagine we would have gotten out without playing some Cheap Trick... maybe California Man? I know we used to fool around with Auf Weidersein- used drums sticks on the bass strings to get the roll. Oh yeah, I think we did a handfull of Rail tunes too! It's slowly coming back to me.

I was thinking about this today and also remembered during Balls to the Wall on the 2nd night, my contact lense popped out right at the beginning of the song! Fortunately it landed right by my feet so I sang up to the solo with it in my hand and went sidestage during the solo to put it back so I could see straight!

Man I wish I had that tape!

[Kristoffer]

LOL!!!

Flashbacks...

Rail...1 2..??? 3 4...??

Something Something..gotta Rock..that's all I remember. I saw them live..I think I was 15.

[Bardsley]

Hmmm the first time I played in public that wasn't a school gig and we got payed was right after my final exams at high school. We had this guitar quartet going, though in each piece one of us would take turns at bass, and the djembe and atmborine we had, while the other two would play guitars. We played stuff that ranged from Jazz to what we thoguh was fairly soaft rock, with some Dylan covers, howlin wolf, Beatles, various Jazz songs, and some rock stuff we had written. We got hired for this local artists thing near my place, it was a sort of festival only it was a small town kind of festival. I had doubts because I had a feeling most of the people were a bit old, and we knew more blues and rock than jazz stuff. I think I realised how bad it could be when we realised a string quartet were going to be on after us, as I looked back at our three amps, including my 80 watt Marshall....
The next thing that happened was that we ended up in a room with acoustics that were just too good for what we werre playing, it echoed like anything. We set up, and started playing some jazz, to the few people walking around the building admiring the artworks. We quickly ran out of jazz, and decided that "Killing Floor" was the next thing to do. We played, and as I looked around I could tell people were finding it too loud,it was pretty embarrasing. At the end of the song, one of the organizers approached us, and told us that perhaps we would be better suited to playing uotside, where nobody was walking around. It was a snub alright, we ended up outside playing to two girls who we were aobut to go to the beach with, before we reealised it wasn't going to matter if we left, nobody would notice anyway. We left after a couple of tunes, feeling pretty lousy about the whole thing. WHat was amazing was that we all got money sent to us in the mail.
From then on, I have made the decision to always find out whether we will be suitable before agreeing to play, I don't think the organizrers knew whast they were getting into when they hired us.

[StoneDragon]

Pictures of Spinal Tap playing Working On a Sex farm at the Airforce officer's club dance spring to mind here.

[CB]

Holy Diver, String/Dragon! (or, was it Rainbow in the Dark). Who played keys on that ? http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/devil.gif

I was pointed in this direction by Mr. Dragon, but I can fully validate the stories told in the testimonials herein... I was there! Damn, who has that garage - looks like were 3/4s of the way to a Hurricane (aka. HeadOn) reunion.

Cannot believe nobody mentioned that some of us actually got to put a sharpee to some skin! Isn't that what makes a Rock Star? http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/cool.gif

How about the Journey tune... had to let them dance to something... as well as give the walls a break. Something about the verbage to one of the tunes that SixString just couldn't get right... which was always followed by a live, and audible correction from Stone. The result was usually a loud "F*%k You" from SixString.... For some reason, the crowd would lose the "luvin, touchin', squeezin'" mood for a bit.

Great to hook up w/ you guys again.

Take Care!
CB

[This message has been edited by CB (edited March 06, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by CB (edited March 06, 2001).]

[CB]

P.S.

.. I've got the evidence! Name your media!

[StoneDragon]

OH MY GAWWWD!!!! http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/eek2.gif

How much do you want to keep quiet and disappear? <trembling in my BVDs>

[CB]

Ya think that I locked up, then buried this stuff for over a decade for notoriety? Believe me, I just kept it to myself so I wouldn't be black-mailed one day..... http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/biggrin.gif

BTW, Six looks mighty fine in those tight blue stretchpants.http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/facelick.gifhttp://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/lol.gif (Where the hell is the puking 'smilie'?)

Later.

[Sixstring]

Hey CB! So is this the part where I'm supposed to welcome you aboard in spite of your cheap shots? We may need to reach an understanding first! http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/wink.gif

Those were first class rock rags, thank you very much. http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/smile.gif

So all we're missing is James and we can get the band back together. Ha! I wonder if he still has the hodge-podge drum kit we threw together?

Good to see you and welcome aboard... well, sorta... http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/smile.gif

[J.R. Kannan]

I am a mostly country picker, with a few adventures into southern rock. I got to play a bar called the Dew Drop Inn as the special guest of a group caled Lakota that played there every week. Lakota was a vocal group with an Acoustic guitar and two singers, Micky and Paula. They had awesome harmonies. I was told that I could play a song or two and I ended up doing 2 whole song sets. I was playing covers from everyone from Merle Haggard to Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was the coolest thing I ever did in my life, and I will never forget the guy in the front who screamed PLAY SWEET HOME ALABAMA. That was the best review I could hope for.

[StoneDragon]

Good thing the guy wasn't screaming, "PLAY SOME METALLICA!!!!"

I was in a blues band at one time, and we were hired to play this happening club during their Mardi Gras weekend. We went over so well that people were screaming, "Play some white music!!!"

[viking]

Kind of like Stu Hamm's song "Country Music(A night in hell)".

http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/eek3.gif

[StoneDragon]

Pretty much.... 'cept we didn't know any "white" music.

[skubasteve120]

eh.... i havent played in any gigs yet so far...

[Guildman]

My first gig was about a year ago! It was in a diner called Zip's Restaurant, I was solo! My friends tell me I've got lots of b?lls to try out my first gigs alone!! I don't know if they ment that as a compliment or an insult!? But I went and did my first gig on some Sunday afternoon (after asking the owner when was his LEAST busy time). So a few weeks before this gig, I put a few posters in the diner, in real hopes of having a "little" turn out. Well the day came and the place was PACKED!! Holly Sh?t "what do I do know" I asked myself(making sure the mike was off), well I just played the stuff I've been doing for the past few months, and it REALLY turned out well!! Fooled them all ta h?ll! Played two sets (45 min. each) and come out of it somewhat unscratch!

That it!
Guildman

[zbalz]

How long have all of you been playing (for those who didnt answer in their post) before your first gig?

-zbalz

[StoneDragon]

Couple of months.

[Guildman]

I suppose,...a year or so before my first gig. But I guess I started playing in front of some sympathetic souls, the first month or so,...the poor sons-of-ditches! http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/wink.gif

Guildman.

[viking]

Guildman,

What did you play at Zip's?

v

[zbalz]

But how do you guys just play songs that people call out? You would have to know a pretty good library of songs to do that..along with playing well with the band you are with. Do you carry like a music book of songs you know or something?

[Guildman]

This is the second time I'm posting this response,...the first one I got a "There's no Guildman listed here so try the back button" which of course, wipes out all the stuff I just wrote! http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/mad.gif So this is a test to see if it will go up then I'll respond to your question viking!

[StoneDragon]

zbalz,

I wouldn't worry too much about being able to cover any tune that somebody might call out. In most playing situations, you might get one or two people who pull you aside and ask if you know such-and-such-a-tune. In those cases, you simply tell them that you don't know that tune, or if you do, you play it and mention that the person requested it. That's a great way to earn fans.

I've seen people with enough tunes down that they could field requests from the audience and cover 90% of the requests that were "shouted out", but these people were "human jukeboxes".

I don't think having a music book onstage in a case like that is going to do much good.

If you want to get out and play, just concentrate on getting enough tunes down to fill up the time slot. It's actually better to have more than enough material, just in case you get people wanting "one more tune" or the tunes you have don't last as long as you thought they would.

But I've played gigs where we didn't have enough tunes to last the night. In that case, we just repeated some of our best/favorite songs.

On my first gig, we didn't even have one song down all the way through!!! We just got up there and faked our way through it until people realized that we sucked and told us to quit.

[Guildman]

This one's for viking;

At Zip's I played mostly soft stuff like Eagles, Bob Seger, 50's 60's and 70's classics. Anything I could make sound right solo! It's hard to do some hard rock ALL by yourself man! After all I was playing in a diner on a Sunday afternoon! But it was fun and it gave me a feel for an audience. I started playing public after a year or so after starting up. I assembled a 50+ songs playlist so off I went! Yeah, you need enough to cover the time you set out to do. One time, I was playing an open mike in an out-of-town setup. I ran out of rock and had to resort to some ballads! :embarressed: You NEVER finish off soft in a bar! It went well until THAT point, I couldn't get out of there fast enough! But I've there since, and I'm a little better prepared now! http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/wink.gif

[Intruder]

Well, it was just a couple of months ago, and we changed singers now, but it was my first show. Anyway it was kind of an open mic type thing put on by a local music store to play in their basement. It was kind of small and there were about 30 people in the audienc and one other band besides us. Most of us were nervous, our drummer and bassist were 1/2 in the bag, trying to calm their nerves. We played ok, not bad at all for the first gig. I was surprised to get alot of compliments on my guitar work from the other band, and many audience members. I always considered myself to be good enough to be in a crappy band but that's about it. WE played about 8 or 10 songs, and had our minor screw ups. I was most worried about covering "Lenny" by SRV, and wouldn't you know it, the lights went out shortly after we started it. I could barely see my guitar, but played it rather good literaly flying blind. I remember the feeling after we finished, it was so cool, we all wanted to keep playing, but ran out of material. That whole night on the ride home and laying in bed, I couldn't sleep, it was one of the most fun times I'd ever had. It's kind of like all of those other things we do that the first time is so cool and we do it over and over again trying to capture the first time again.

[AtomicCyclone]

Yeh I performed At my junior high in front of 200 unappriciative 8th graders.It sucked we did good and we still had bonners in the crowd booing.LOL

Brian

[Issaqua]

well I haven't gigged yet but I played in front of my friends in school last friday http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/biggrin.gif

The last they'd all heard me play guitar was simple chords etc, from before the summer holidays, but I took my hefty Marshall and my electric, set it up at breaktime in their form room and played a couple of things to warm up, then (as a request from a m8 of mine), played all the way through The Trooperm including the best I've ever done the solo http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/biggrin.gif

I looked up afterwards and most of em were just staring at me, with a sort of '****!' look on their faces http://www.zentao.com/ubb/smilies/biggrin.gif