First gig ever stories

[Scafeets]

I was 13. A HS senior girl named Gloria (everyone called her "George") asked me to join her band. The band members were older (mostly out of school) and the lead singer was a girl named "Pat". The first gig was a very dark bar where most everyone was female and they did a lot of slow dancing.

The next day, I was telling my parents anout the gig. My mom had to explain to me what was going on......

Great experience, though. I learned a lot from George about how to be a musician.

[Matter-Eater Lad]

1981, I was 17, fall of the school year, and it was a house party. We played everything from Judas Priest, Def Leppard, Kiss, VH, UFO, Ted Nugent, April Wine, Journey, Rush. We had a small under-powered PA that we only used for vocals. We had a homemade light show and our "roadie" band-buddy. We set up in the afternoon and left. Our roadie stayed to watch the stuff and was to call us at my parents house when it was time. So we get the call in the evening & head on over. The place is PACKED. This is a small house too. (We had cleared out the living room, that's where we set-up) I just remember once we were all in the band area, getting our instruments ready the whole room was filled, comletely filled with people, all facing us. I was damn nervous. So the lights go out, I hear the 4 clicks from our drummer and we bust into Foghats "Fool For The City". They loved us but for a small town, beggars couldn't be choosers. We had a list of about 35-40 songs. We ran through them all.

 

I'll never forget that moment though, when the lights went out before that first song. "Would we suck? DO we suck? Will they hate us?"

[JBJ]

1st gig we were 13 had been playing a couple of months and got asked to do a school christmas fete thing.

 

the day before the gig our singer decides he'd rather play his football match instead of doing the gig so i have to sing.

 

we honesty musta done about 2-3 hours worth of stuff which is pretty impressive when i look back at it.

 

a bit more about the gig:

 

we had 3 guitars (pur bassist hadnt bought a bass yet, tiny tiny amps, the vocals were coming out of an amp, it was in a gym hall with massive ceilings and thus lots of lovely lovely lovely reverb.

 

but we still loved it and the 3 guitar players are still here and i'm back singing (though we do now actually have a bass now) and we're loving it even more.

 

 

 

our 1st proper gig was at a club in town. we didnt need to send in a demo because some guys we're mates with who were in a band doin pretty well for themselves gave us a reference. anyways long story short we're all 15, think this is incredibly rock n roll that we're playing in a big club with lots of people and get a free slab of beer for our trouble.

 

we actually played really well from what i remember even at that age i'd wrote a handful of great tunes and still play most of them to this day. one drummer who was about 30 and auditioned for us years ago said he didn't want the gig cos he felt too out of place but he said if i was writing songs like that when i was 16-17 then he can't imagine what i'll be capable of when im 25 which was pretty nice. so everyone in the crowd pretty much loved out stuff and the old rockers in full leather gear, massive pedal boards and 2 marshall half stacks were pretty disgruntled that no one dug them near as much.

 

anyways the coolest part of this 1st gig was my sister brought a handful of her friends and one of them decided to chance it, put on a london accent and told the bar staff he was from sony and watching our band so he wanted a tab for him, the band and our friends that the label would pick up.

 

the tools actually believed it and we drank free all night. the dude left a phone number for some sex line at the end of the night and said this is my assistants number phone her on monday morning and sort out the bar tab :-)

[TheAtomicJeff]

I attended a day camp all summer long when I was about 14 years old. Once I put a little band together, I persuaded the owner to allow the entire camp of kids (parents and all) to stay over past closing time so that we could perform a concert out in the front lawn of the camp. We had a large trailer that we used for a stage, complete with floodlights and everything. We belted out mediocre versions of Heartbreaker, Whole Lotta Love, Rock and Roll, Dream On, Moby Dick, Calling Dr. Love, and a few others. Looking back, no we weren't that great but that night was a big deal to us. We probably had over 150 people watching. Someone passed around a hat during the show and we collected about $50. Afterwards, the kids (most who were my age) asked us for autographs. For a bunch of 14 year olds, we were on cloud nine. Now at the age of 42, I'd give anything to have caught it on video.

[babyfrank]

Ah, memories - it was 1984; I was 16 and 2 weeks into playing in my first band, "Lycanthrope" - can you tell we were metal? ;-)

 

Myself and a couple of other guys had been performing in the school musical, and managed to persuade the drama teacher to let us play at the after-show party on the final night.

 

Come the night of the show we were all pretty hyper, but for the life of me I can't even remember if we'd agreed a proper setlist or not. Anyway, we only had one original song, so padded that out with a couple of 12-bar jams, and impromptu covers of both "New Year's Day" by U2 and "Silver Machine" by Hawkwind.

 

The crowd (all giddy 14-16 y/o's) went crazy, despite later evidence of a tape of the performance which revealed us to be out of time and out of tune for most of the set. I was playing the school's Hondo Les Paul copy, which I swear had gauge .007 strings on it - you only had to look at it and it went out of tune.

 

To cap it off, my ex-girlfriend who'd dumped me a year previously was very demonstrative in her appreciation of my performance, and I spent most of the rest of the evening slow dancing with her.

 

Finally during the last song of the evening, she whispered softly in my ear; "I've got something to tell you".

 

I listened expectantly, waiting for her to profess that dumping me had been a mistake, and that we should get back together again. "I'm going out with Richard", (my best mate) she continued.

 

Talk about building you up and knocking you down! Anyhow, it didn't take the shine off the first gig too much, and I still get a rush thinking about that night.

 

BF

[cauberallies]

Jr. High talent show. Last day of school. 9th grade. NOT a good idea for the administrators, which ill explain.

 

Myself, and two other kids that I jammed with occasionally decided to do the talent show. we were the only band playing, so we were set to go on last, infront of 1500 rowdy teenagers, 1/3 of them on their last day at that school. This was to be done in the school's MASSIVE auditorium with a 3000 person capacity, multi-thousand watt in house PA, and a couple hundred foot wide stage. Yeah...this place is massive.

 

We were all backstage doing some last minute preparations on practice amps in a nearby classroom, when I,(playing bass at the time) decided that i wanted a moment in the spotlight, so I told the other guitarist that when the curtain rose, I would be with the guitar...completely unrehearsed, and improvised. I was only playing bass because we couldnt find another bassist.

 

So, the curtain rose, and I'm sitting on a piano bench, long ass hair, bandana, and a lollypop in my mouth, mimicking EVH's cigarette. I have a beat to hell LTD KH-202, plugged through the guitarist's JCM 800/ampeg v4 4x12 half stack, and the crowd absolutely goes wild!! I have not even touched a string yet, so i knew this would be good. I started playing some metallica and van halen stuff, and everyone was getting into it, but my rendition of eruption(at age 14) recieved a standing ovation.

 

I gave the guitar to my guitarist, who popped out from behind the amp, i go pick up my squier jazz bass, that i have running through an ampeg portabass 250, with avatar 4x10 cab. The drummer starts making noise on his dads something-teen piece Sonor drumset with 20 or so cymbals(one of the nicest sets ive seen in a while)

 

Kenny, the guitarist, decides that since he is moving, and it was the last day of school, that he would raise as much hell as he possibly could. We start playing our intro type thing, and he starts telling everyone to get out of their seats and come up on stage. Everyone listened to him. We had no less than 300 kids on stage, with about 500 more getting really rowdy on the floor below.

 

Kenny decides to stage dive at the last second, so he throws my guitar across the stage, jumps OVER the crowd on the floor waiting to catch him, and into the seats, where he landed on a few pissed off parents, and kids.

 

We were placed first, but disqualified due to nearly inciting a riot. It took at least 15 minutes to get the place calmed down, and even begin getting kids back in their seats.

 

 

Yeah...It ruled;)

[SteelyD2]

During my final year of High School I was faced with making the dreaded career decision. My HS band teacher was sincerely encouraging me to further my studies in music and I was so flattered that I had to seriously consider it. After much consternation I came to the realization that a career in music comes to one of two ends: you either spend your life performing and/or recording, or if that doesn't work out, you teach. The thought of teaching HS band somewhere was so revolting I decided that music would have to remain my hobby.

 

I had done lots of band, ensemble and solo-type stuff mostly related to church, school, some weddings, etc., but my first real R&R gig came when I was 21 or 22, I can't remember for sure (hey, it was the '70s). Four of us, who gathered occasionally to play for fun, were asked to play for a Christmas party hosted by a local construction company that happened to employ about half of my circle of friends. We practiced a few times and managed to work up the requisite three 45-minute sets and were prepared to have a good time, not set the world on fire.

 

The expected 50-60 people showed up and during the first set I suddenly noticed Ellen, an old girlfriend dancing right in front of me. We had known each other for a long time (actually were in HS band together) and dated a few times, but had never advanced to the second level, mostly, I thought, due to circumstances and bad timing. It had bummed me out when I learned a couple of months earlier that she was engaged to a guy I considered a schmuck. Anyway, this girl was probably the prettiest girl I ever dated and she looked especially gorgeous that night. At the end of the set she came up to me with a great big smile to talk and I asked her where her fiance was. It wasn't the first thing I asked her. OK, it was the second thing. She said he was "sitting out in the car, pissed off and wouldn't come in because he didn't really know anyone. F**k him." OK.

 

As the evening progressed Ellen made me the center of her attention, bringing me drinks, dancing for me, flirting with me at break and generally making me feel like a star. "So this is what it's like", I thought. The band made it through the night with no trainwrecks, got lots of drunken compliments and had a great time. Well, what goes up comes down. I ended the night alone, she married the schmuck and I lived happily ever after playing music as a hobby.

 

The End

 

D

[fuzzball]

My first performance was fun and a real learning experience. I was in the 6th grade and we had a talent show (should have been a no-talent show). We were not very good to begin with, and we thought the louder we were the better. With that in mind, in order to be cool we performed a original song loaded with profanity (remember I was in the 6th grade). The song was BFA which stood for big fu&^(*%g amp. We were loud and rude. The school pronciple closed the curten on us after about 30 seconds (since I probibly used 25 profane words withing that time). My parents were not to proud and I spent a long time in detention for it. Boy was it fun .

[Edward]

Hoooookay....

 

Well, as primarily a bedroom player for years, I've got to own up and admit that 99% of my bands never made it past the first rehearsal. Particularly sad at Uni... the guy who was supposed to be on bass wanted to play all originals cause he was basically too lazy to learn covers - including the four not bassline to Creep. Seriously. Oh well. We did manage one sort of gig, though, me him - and a couple of girls on tambourine. See, he and I wrote a lot of drama skits together, did a lot of stuff with the Chritian Union that way, taking our comedy influences - a lot of Python, Father Ted, anything surreal and anarchic, mixing it up with our own take on things, and out came this bizarre stuff.... the Bearded Players. One show we did, which involved a whole 60 minute, two-act show comprising many parodies of TV shows, with different aspect of the Church considered / parodied included a parody of a Chriatian Rock band.... I wish i could remember what we were called..... the song was "God's not Dead, He's Really GRoovy, Yeah". I remember the audience thought it was hysterical. (It was intended to be!)

 

Stretching the notion of "gig" a bit far, i basically learned to play guitar with the other instrumentalists at worship in a church youth group. This would have been from January 1992, when i was 17... I'd been playing for all of about ten days, and knew maybe every third chord - or in some songs, every other one. I learned by playing the chords i knew, and leaving the rest to the two other guitar players (we also had piano and - on occasion - bass). I always had a reasonably good sense of rhythm (though I'm hopeless with drums!), so it worked out okay.... over the coming months, the gaps between chords got less.... I learned fast by doing that every week. I'm stil a fair tight rhythm player as a result - can't play leads for {censored}, hey, but....

 

I also remember December 1993, aged 18, playing guitar - only guitar player, very nervewracking - noone else i could shoot a filthy look at and make like a bum note was their fault, - a whole bunch of us from school carol singing in a mall to raise money for Romania.

 

I don't know if being a sound man counts, but at Uni, I ran sound for the worship band in our CU for three years... I don't think it was the first, but one of the early gigs, our crappy old PA cut out when the leader was talking between songs (great band - we had loads of talented guys, and every week there'd be at least two guitars, bass, drum, keys and vox - sometimes sax, and once even a string quartet as well)... *everyone* in that hall looked round at me sitting with the PA head at the back - at which point i theatrically slapped the end of it, all kicked back into life and was fine. For just one tiny moment, I felt just like the Fonz.....

 

My first *real* gig is yet to come..... I've given up on being a rockstar - damn, I'm 31 last week, I'm too old to make it in the music business now! - but I'm working on getting a band together properly - or I'll die trying!

[AK_Damned]

In 1983 after dropping out of college a couple of friends and I decided one night to start a band. I got a guitar my friend Eric got a bass and we were on our way. With a guy named John we whipped out some awful songs, and even got our first gig still sans drummer. We were the second band up at a local punk show and had borrowed a drummer from another band. Everything was set up on stage, and I was checking the tuning of my guitar, but couldn't hear {censored} from the amp, so I cranked it up. Hit a chord and right then the sound man turns everything on. E blasts out of the pa. I'm not sure who jumped higher, me or him. That lil'faux pas out ofthe way, we charged through our set, I'm not sure we ever finished a song together. John forgot the words to every song he wrote and just started screaming. When it was done and people were cheering, I knew I wanted to do that again.

 

We dropped John, found our own drummer, went through a couple of singers and had a blast for a year.

[MrKnobs]

I could tell this long, but I'll give you a break and tell it short.

 

I was 16 years old, had taken up playing bass about six months previous and was playing in a really crappy high school band. We needed a guitarist, so we stupidly put an ad in the local music paper.

 

Of course a bunch of guys called and most were a lot better than we were. One dude in particular, probably about 30 years old showed up and ripped on guitar through a Marshall rig. It was fun to play with him, and we shot the {censored} afterwards with him, but of course he declined to play with us.

 

Maybe it was just because he was stoned, but he suggested I come with him to his next audition since they needed a bassist too. Long story short, we jammed with them and they passed on him and hired me.

 

Turned out to be a strip club house band, and the band guys thought it would be a hoot to have a 16 yo bass player. Not to sell myself short, I was amazingly good on bass for a kid, but these guys were pros. Nine piece band, horns, keys, etc.

 

Suddenly I was making a couple hundred for playing five nights a week (huge money to a kid in high school in 1969), I smoked my first joint, got paid for playing for the first time, got drunk for the first time, saw my first naked women, and got arrested for the first time - all in the same week.

 

I knew right then and there this was the life for me.

 

Terry D.

[iop]

In 7th grade I got a couple a friends together and started rehearsals in the basement. We tried to emulate the Beatles. Since they were popular everyone wanted to sing there songs at the 7th grade talent show.

 

The school music teacher ask my little band if we would want to back up the singers at the talent show. Since almost everyone was singing Beatles tune we learned we thought HEY this is GREAT!!No stress all fun!!! Those were the days.

 

We actually got paid which was totally unexpected.

Not to mention the girl attention was uplifting, especially at that age. Awkward time for guys.

[Metal|Boy]

We played at local firefighters festivity for their 80th anniversary. Cause most of my band (including me) are youth firefighters they allowed us to play.

 

Oddly I had no stage fright. I drank two beers like 2 hours before the show.

Gig started at about 21.00. There was atleast 50 heads in the crowd, most of them were our friends and they called their friends and so on ... so that we got as many people as possible. We had about 30 min of setlist. Setlist was: For whom the bell tolls, puritania (dimmu borgir cover), to live is to die jam (just like on disc 2 on metallica live {censored} dvd), enter sandman, the unforgiven, smells like teen spirit. We came to the end and than came the unexpected. They wanted more! We played again for whom the bell tolls (crowd, again, wanted more at this point), enter sandman (crowd, again, wanted more at this point) and unforgiven. lol they still wanted more but the drummer was too tired so we stopped.

 

I played half of the solo on enter sandman wrong on first time, and made some minor rhythm mistakes here and there, drummer lost a drumstick in the middle of second unforgiven but he found himself quickly back in,... nothing really bad happened. Other than that everything went well. No broken strings, no unplugged cables during the song, no tripping over cables,...

 

We are very happy about our gig and we didn't expect that much of good feedback, atleast not at very first gig and from the crowd that more than 50% doesn't listen to metal. Everybody congratulated us for the good gig and time they had.

Our parents recorded whole gig so we can watch us on dvd .

 

Oh, and I must say that on the other end of the festivity area there was a band playing some popular party songs and they were told to lend us all the equipment for micing us and stuff, but at the end they didn't want to lend us anything unless we move to their stage.

We didnt want that so we had to play unmiced on 30W amps, we had trouble hearing each other, but we made it .