chickenfire315

my first gig was sort of a battle of the bands at a show choir competition. we practiced for an hour the night before and our band name was "shoes on the wall." we played boulevard of broken dreams, i dont know why i agreed to play that song, but...

Must I say more?

mojo-pin

Well the first "proper" gig my band had (outside of school Variety Nights) was at a rented Snooker Hall supporting a band we're friends of. So we're confident, we've got a good set list worked out and we're tight as a band.

However things start going wrong even before we started the gig. The day before the gig our singer gets really ill and does cannot play with us, so it's left with me to do singing. I also have to improvise all the lyrics while playing lead guitar as our singer hadn't got round to doing the lyrics yet.

Anyway with all this we go on. The set-up and sound check went really well, the sound levels are sweet and we warmed up with a great cover of "The Boys Are Back In Town". We start the set with a big driving rock song. I do a big jump at the beginning, land perfectly it's all good, the crowd are really into it. However I realise half way through the song my guitar has stopped making any sound. I write it off as a dodgy patch lead which is connected to my ProCo Rat and just plug straight into my multi-fx. We finish playing that song. The guitar is still making no sound at all. I look down at my guitar when I realise that the jack socket has been ripped straight out of the guitar with the jack lead still attached to it. So I spent the next 5 minutes speaking over the mic going "Does anyone have a guitar? Can I borrow someone's guitar please?"

Thankfully get to borrow a guitar and finish off the set with no other flaws. A bit pissed off with the fact I ****ed up my jack socket but hey it's easily fixed. Continue to watch the other bands and then at the end when helping pack up I realise someone's stolen my ProCo Rat...

All in all a very eventful first gig experience. But still good nonetheless.

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JadeFalcon5

lmao you can stop there

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ar73m

I was lucky enough to start playing with people who already had gig experience from before, and who were pretty damn good at playing; I was doing rhythm, nothing too complicated either. Now that I look back at it, I realize the first few gigs I've done my parts were purposefully made VERY easy, I guess just so I could 'get into' it without worrying too much about playing something difficult and f'ing it up, or something. It worked out pretty well, I must say.

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ParadoxVocal

I've had a different experience of Battle of the Bands...

They're a great way to make you nad your band think... ohh ****... we need to practice more... or to realise how much better you are then others

I'm an experienced Musician... I've been playing Clarinet for about 7 years now, Guitar for 11 years, Singing for 12 years, reading music for 13 (i'm only 16) and saxaphone for a little while... plus a bit of Piano and Bass.

So when I joined a band with a Jazz Drummer, a Prodigy guitarist (who happens to be my brother - like 18 months playing makes all other guitarist and instrumentalists look like ******s... including knowledge... this is Metal and Jazz and Classical... not Rock really).
An Isane bassist and a guitar player who started out on Classical piano - therefore knowledge of music... I was in for it Good.

We write what i would call semi-prog Metal with some freakin weird influences. But Yea.
We've only played 3 live shows... most of our time has been spent studying our music and perfecting our songwriting skills. (By the way, check us out at www.myspace.com/paradoxaust ) So when we played our battle of the bands it was very interesting.

Our Heavy Metal Band, beat 2 Rock bands at a school Battle of the Bands comp... like this is a serious competition... no money, but our school is very highly musically driven and there is competition for who gets to use the Music Room at Lunch.. we are smart enough to own our own gear... anyways... That went really well...

What I will say... is make sure Gigs are not piled up... like i did.
Last Term (about 9 weeks ago)... we had a fundraising concert to raise funds for our Concert Bands Tour to the Northern Territory. It was two bands... a punk/Emo/Hardcore band and us... the Rock band who was supposed to be playing pulled out.

Let's just say... things went pretty well... i managed to get 450 kids moshing on our school Gyms floor. It probably helped that we had lights and over 2000 Watts of Pounding P.A.

However, the next day... well... i had to sing the College Hymn and lead the singing of a few other things as well... ohh goodness... after a 30 minute set of Pure Energy... don't try it... let alone an hour or more.

My voice cracked and squeaked the whole time...

But it was worth it... so so so worth it

taxman27

My first real gig was a couple of weeks ago. It was on a Thursday, which was was unusual for the place we were playing in. This sucked for me, because I still had two finals to study for while the others got out that day (we go to different school) and because of this, my mom and dad made me study like hell and they threatened numerous times to cancel the gig. The day of the show we ran through our set 2 or 3 times and we were very confident on every song except our version of "Dani California", but we'd do it anyway.
We opened with a cover of "Rock and Roll", which our guitarist pretty much made us do. We did alright with it, but I thought we could've done a little better, especially on the vocal department. Next we did "Dani California". I was nervous as hell because 1) The other guitarist sang "Rock and Roll" and it was first time singing all night. 2) I felt that I hadn't done as well on that song as I felt I could of. 3) I wasn't playing guitar at all except a rhythm part for the solo, and the guitar is kind of a comfort zone for me. But I felt that I sang it good and it was the best we ever played that song. After that, we did and original which was called "Uno Dos Tres Four". We wrote the song the 2nd time we ever practiced so we had it ingrained in our heads and we did good. Next was "Comfortably Numb". It was in my opinion the best song we played and I pretty much nailed the solo at the end. After that was another original called S.O.A. I was a little nervous with that one because I was a little sketchy on some some of the lyrics, but I pulled through and we did alright. Last we did "Another Brick Pt. 2". Me and the other guitarist did a cool harmony vocal where he sang it normal and I sang it a couple of octaves higher and we did awesome. And to add to all that, I did awesome on my finals the next day, which made a lot cooler.

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BeatleLover1029

Well, I think I've kinda had two first gigs, and i think the first gig we get payed is the actual first gig, so thats three.

ANYWAY, HERES HOW IT GOES

First Gig 1: My band played a battle of the bands in march, we lost by more than 20 votes, because boy crazy and dropout year were in the battle, and all of us, cept the lead guitarist are 13, and hes 15 at most, so we were like 5 yrs younger than them. It was good stage practice though, cause we only really ever played infront of like our moms, and thats it, so good experience.

First Gig 2: A 3 hour set of all covers on a sunny saturday afternoon. we invited about 20 kids from our school and charged 3+ dollars ona ticket, and donated it all to the chesapeak bay foundation. so this was not the best performance of our songs, but i thought my vocals were good sound and intonation, but i screwed up a bunch of entries in seek and destroy. Overall, good experience as well, helped us tighten up to live performances.

And then once we play a gig where we get paid, and we do at least one original, will be our true first gig, and last first gig as well. so yea theres my stories so far

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joshsirjoshules

Whenever that happens I usually try to say something witty along the lines of, "Isn't it past your bedtime?" or "Thanks, I love you too. Now be quiet."

TrigFunction

June 3rd, 2006 went pretty bad... basically we were playing a cover of glycerine by bush to give our drummer a rest and i forgot to tune my guitar up so it just made the worst sound when i hit the chord ( and i was only musical instrument going) second time that chord around i fixed it but it through off my singer so we were completely out of time and he didnt seem to keen on figuring out that he was singing at the wrong time so i just altered it... it sounded like crap for a while but it wasnt as bad as i thought. After that i just wasnt in to it cause i just thought we were doing horrible so it was rather boring. but meh, apparently it was barely noticable

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Dan Steinman

high school jazz band--amp died mid-solo, came back to life after the song... probably a loose cord. also played the verse chords instead of the bridge during the bass solo. oooops. they were almost the same, i don't know if he noticed... i feel like an ass cuz all i thought about was my solo (which was brilliant by the way )

high school singing competition (as accompanist)--i found out after the show that my guitar was barely heard through the PA, even though we had a professional sound crew. screw-ups.

open mic nite--went flawlessly, but i was like the last guy so almost nobody was still there.

rhcp_kickass

my first gig where people werent all chavy and sittin around lookin at us like ' what the f==k are you doing was at my school's battle of the bands.

the first band were friends of ours and really rocked. they should have won but they didnt. ile explain a little later.

anyway we were second. we opened with teenage kicks which went really well then we started going into a song of our own and our drummers kick pedal breaks. so weve got a guy kneeling by the drums holding it in place for the rest of the song but we still were going ok. to finish we did johnny b goode. purely because its a great crowd pleaser. but this is where things went bad. me and the other guitarist and the drummer were playin fine and everything was in time but our singer kept forgetin the words to the verse which sucked. he then decided to play harmonica over the solo and he wasnt even following the chords or anything. finally at the end we decided to hold on the chords to do a lil sing a long on the chorus. i didnt have to play in this bit so i decided ide stage dive. basically the chavs had joined in the people jumpin around, saw a guy flying towards them, and moved. the floor really hurt.

o yeh, the crappy pop-punk band who judged it decided not to tell us that they didnt want us doing covers till after we'd all played. life sucks

Sir Edwin CBE

We had rehearsals on the Wednesday before the gig ( Saturday ), my plan was to have set-up a band and play some original songs - problem is it turned out to be me on my own. I had written two songs and had decided to play them on an acoustic. It got to the time that I was to play at the rehearsal and my hands were shaking in a room with barely ten people! They were all my age and none of them would've made fun of me - I had their support. Just a pity I still kept making mistakes even with a pinky anchored to the guitar.....

So the rehearsal had went OK and I had almost learnt the lyrics by heart and the big day came around. This time there wouldn't be any toilets to nervously walk off to and give myself a look in the mirror and say " you stupid (unt ". I had arranged to go on after a friend ( legend ) and because I don't have my own acoustic he said he'd let me borrow his.

So I'm sitting there watching the gig, he gets up, plays three songs- it's all good. He then goes to play Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez and starts tuning his guitar to something really strange. I shat myself - I can do relative tuning but don't know when the low E is right ( or at least I don't have the confidence to try ).

So the song ends and I go and get the guitar and thank fu(k - there's a tuner. Two minutes pising about with a tuner ( broken, switched off, whatever ) and I finally get the chance to play. I'm in a big tent and there had to be at least 40 people or so with about 15 lying about outside and I was playing someone else's guitar, not quite tuned right and hoping I'd remember the lyrics.

Apart from having to repeat one line later in a song the set went fine. ( Line was meant to be - You've fallen from, the same heaven, but it's just a guise ). No nerves, no shaking hands.

MORAL : Learn your stuff and be prepared godammit.

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tamargoguitar

it sucked so bad....we played at a party, we were playing funeral of hearts... our drummer didnt show up, so ya ok we played with no drums, in the middle of the song people from the party start calling our cellphones(they were in our pockets) and suddenly our bass player just leaves(bathroom) then the vocalist leaves the stage to answer the phone, and there i am all alone playing the verse....sucked like hell

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Mr.Rodgers

Well... it was kinda.. strange in a way.

We were playing for a party at a local nightclub, but we were on at 1 am. A gig's a gig so we did it. Firstly, there was no crowd (well there was kind of). Not that I didn't mind, just would've liked to have a better crowd.

Then my solo channel sucked arse so badly, but people said I was amazing so whatever.

THEN the guy that's running it says we have to stop playing.. HALF WAY THROUGH THE FUCKING SET!

Performance-wise we were very good. Oh well, we'll just do more

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Martyr's Prayer

Can't really think of one show I've done that's worth telling as a story. It's more of a collection of different off the wall things that seem to happen every show. Last night I played with a Ninja Turtles halloween mask on because we played at a masquerade party, along with shorts that barely covered all of my boxers. Last week we played a show on a stage with like no head room, and our guitarist smashed a black light with his guitar, and glass went everywhere, and we kept playing. And during another show we had awhile back our rythm guitarist, who just spazzes out on stage, fell back onto my drumset and knocked over like two cymbal stands lol.

That reminds me of all the gear malfunctions I've dealt with. Like one show where I used someone else's drumset (always an adventure), and his throne would NOT stay at the right height, so I just played the show with it at about the height of a kiddy seat, which was funny and sucked at the same time. And ofcourse there's always the cymbal stand that loses grip and the cymbal falls over but you can't adjust it because you're playing.

I went on a 9 day tour with my friend's band Providence, because he was sick, and I filled in for them, and 5 hours away from home I realized that I had forgotten my double bass pedal. So the whole time I used this 1960's era Ludwig Speedking, and I've got to say, that little pedal kicked butt lol. And it was literally from the 60's, for real. It was fun to joke about though. At the end of one of the shows we played, the audience would NOT stop screaming. We were at pretty much the same level as them, so just try to imagine a solid wall of people screaming so loud it's distorting your hearing. It went on for like 5 mintues, literally.

That same tour I played a show with them infront of about 1000 people, on a BIG outdoor stage on a football field with a huge sound system. That was definately a show I'll remember. I'm sure there's alot of things I'm forgetting to mention that are really cool, so maybe I'll post again. If you read all of this you must be pretty board, cause this post kinda sucked lol.

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My first gig went pretty good
there was about 8 bands playing that night
and we were the opening band
we played 3 songs
Love Gun by Kiss
Aint Talkin Bout Love by Van Halen
and Wasted by Def Leppard

Our First song went awesome, other than the lead guitarists volume was a bit too low
Second song went pretty bad though, because the guy that was supposed to tune everyones guitar backstage, messed up my guitars B string and it was out of tune (He even apologized when we came backstage) and I messed up the beginning because I was nervous as hell.
Then the third song went awesome, it was an easy song, but fun as hell to play as a band and people that didnt know the song, loved it.

But after we got off stage, the next band came up and lots of people in other bands said we did really good for an opening band. Apperently we were one of the best opening bands in years, and next year I'm playing again, in a different band though.

JackFlash19

Well I guess I'll go. My first every performace on stage my buddy calls me and says (that day) do you want to play guitar tonight? I go sure, where at? He says the band is playing an acoustic show at a bar. I had never practiced with them, so I was incredibly excited and nervous. The whole day at work I was going through the songs in my head trying to figure out the chords and notes lol. I ran through one song prior and just had to come in by watching my lead guitarist play the 1st verse. I think I did pretty well and picked it up pretty quickly. Then my singer straight up goes "travis is gonna play for you guys for a while while we go get something to drink, enjoy!" ....thought to myself......Ohh Sh!t... I can't believe he just did that lol. I was totally unprepared but I started off with my version of a few covers then went into my own stuff. I couldn't sing so it was purely instrumental, I didn't do too bad. After one of my originals I got a pretty big applause. (I had only been playing a year and a half at the time). From the second I heard my 1st note ring through the amps I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Play on stage, either with a band or I was going to learn to sing. I dug in that summer and practiced on a daily basis for 8-10 hours a day and I ended up playing in my buddies band 6 months later.

First actual gig went something along the same. You wanna play rhythm for us? Except this time I had a couple weeks to learn and practice the songs. It was AMAZING. With the singer, drummer, lights, crowd (much bigger than the 1st), I almost sh!t my pants I was so stoked. I've been playing non-stop ever since and it won't slow down any time soon.

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vandal_12

My first gig was last night at this curling/ hockey rink which another local band rented out. I was a little nervous but some rum and vodka fixed that easily. Our other guitar player was out of town so we got this other dude to fill in for him, and since he's about 10x better than me we decided to let him solo. We're just a cover band that play's just for the hell of it, and about a minute after the intro of Master of Puppet's, the power went out, so i drank some more booze. Then after we fixed the problem we started over again and the the fuse blew again at about the same time as the last, so i drank more booze. After i got all liqoured up and ready to play, they got some extension cord's and ran it from somewhere else (wasn't paying much attention, too drunk.) Well we finally made it through the first song and it went pretty good. So we played two more song's and every one else in the band, except me and the drummer, took off. So we got some replacement's and played astro zombie's by the misfit's just so we would have a little longer of a set. In the end it went not bad for the first show.

Scratch & Dent

my first gig was at a school talent show. It went really well considering the kids i was playing with were 16 and 17 year olds and i was 13 and had been playing since i was 7.
I was the lead and they were all talented the best musician was our drummer.

Anyways our list was 3 songs, T.N.T, Welcome to the Jungle, and Smells like teen spirit.
We figured Play what people reconize. Turned out good. Course we praticed for 6 or 7 hours a day 4 days a week 2 months prior.

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