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GMC Forum _ CHILL OUT _ Your First Gig!
Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Feb 29 2012, 04:10 PM
Hey guys! I just found an old VHS that has my first show playing at the school.... I just digitalized it so I will upload it soon. I was 13 years old and formed a band with my best friends. I remember that the problem in those days was finding a singer so we used to put the less shy guy there... 
When was your first gig? How old were you? How was it?
Posted by: coffeeman Feb 29 2012, 05:44 PM
My first gig was when I was 16 years old at school, so it was 20 years ago, that's right! I remember we played a couple of songs of The Doors, a couple from The Cure and two originals. When we finished the public(my friends and my mom) start shouting for an encore, but our singer didn't know the lyrics and didn't want to sing any more, so I steped up and decided to sing the next one. It was "Smells like teen spirit" I've had practice that song for a year I knew the lirycs and all the guitars perfectly, so it wouldn't be any problem. I started with the main riff and the drummer didn't enter correctly in the song, nothing to worry about, but when I got to the first chorus I forgot the lirycs and the only thing I was singing was " a mosquiiiito , a mosquiiiiiito , an albino, a mosquiiiiiito , an albino, a mosquiiiiiito" so I forgot all the rest of the lyrics. We finished the song and got drunk, so everything went awesome.
Posted by: SirJamsalot Feb 29 2012, 06:26 PM
My first gig was last year in the fall (Sept?) ~ I played at a local festival with a group of people I started practicing cover songs with. We managed to get on a really large stage with a great sound technician ~ everything went really well with the exception of my voice bombing out after the second song. I learned a very valuable lesson that day about having a sweet drink on hand for the vocal chords to keep everything smooth. Water DOES NOT cut it! haha. Anyways, it was an awesome experience. I've had 3 live shows since then, and in between shows I've been playing every tuesday night at an open mic which is the hi-lite of every week.
Chris!
Pure awesomeness! Knowing the lyrics to a song is completely different than singing the lyrics to a song on stage! I can relate! Nothing a few beers can't cure 
Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Feb 29 2012, 06:36 PM
man! this is awesome!!! In that first gig that I'm talking about we also played Smells like teen spirits when the people shouted for "any more song"
Chris!
yeah, I saw that video! So, you drink something like coke during the shows?
Posted by: SirJamsalot Feb 29 2012, 06:40 PM
yeah, I saw that video! So, you drink something like coke during the shows?
Actually, at the open mic, I'll have a beer next to me on the speaker cab - it works amazingly well. But when I don't have a beer handy, I'll chew gum! I've learned to keep it tucked away when singing
But snapple, tea, etc works well. It's just that water does nothing to get the glands that lubricate the mouth/throat working - it just washes it away and when you're nervous, that's a bad thing (as I found out!) lol. That first show as soon as I took a swallow of water, my mouth was dryer than before I took the swallow! It was wierd and frustrating. I've found that chewing gum is amazingly effective though.chris
Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Feb 29 2012, 08:24 PM
First gig in 2006, something like that. I was 23 at a time, it was 300KM from our hometown, and it was in some poor club, where we played RHCP songs. It would be great to have video from that gig, since I jumped around.
Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Feb 29 2012, 09:28 PM
But snapple, tea, etc works well. It's just that water does nothing to get the glands that lubricate the mouth/throat working - it just washes it away and when you're nervous, that's a bad thing (as I found out!) lol. That first show as soon as I took a swallow of water, my mouth was dryer than before I took the swallow! It was wierd and frustrating. I've found that chewing gum is amazingly effective though.chris
I also find chewing gum good for live shows, thanks to it I don't have to drink water too often during the show.
That sounds amazing! I would also like to see a video of that show...
Posted by: Ben Higgins Mar 1 2012, 03:13 PM
I was either 15 or 16 yrs old and it was with my second band called K.I.A (Killed in Action). It was kind of a Nu Metal thing which I was constantly trying to pull in a classic metal direction !
We hired a local village hall and invited hundreds of kids from school. We got quite a lot of people there and it was fun but by no means a classic gig ! 
Posted by: Sensible Jones Mar 1 2012, 05:15 PM
My first gig? 1982, we had a band at school and I played Bass. We only ever played one show at school, we played Black Sabbath and other 70's metal songs but 2 x faster!! We also used to play some Sex Pistols, Sham 69, Buzzcocks, Ramones stuff as well as some of our own. Everything was played as fast as possible!!
Sound was terrible and the Teachers hated us! We got lots of support from our fellow students but we played one particular song and the Teachers cut the power to our equipment!!
It was a Sex Pistols song, can you guess which one??
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