First Gig (Edinburgh)

thomasross20

Saturday 20th Dec, 9-12pm at night... we're one of three bands and will be playing for about an hour. 

Radical Road pub in Edinburgh, on Willowbrae Road. If you think you'll make it, give me a shout! 

horse

Good luck - enjoy it :-)

thomasross20

Thanks!

jd0272

Make sure to get some pics/vids, don't let some pissed fckr do 'em neither.

And post them on here.

thomasross20

Good idea... will try and get some clips for sure!

jd0272

thomasross20 said:

Good idea... will try and get some clips for sure!

Good man!

(Stop saying 'for sure', you are not an Amurican).

STOP IT.

thomasross20

That's me told lol!  

One final practice this Wednesday... looking forward to it. Will probably SH!T myself on the night...

ElectroDan

No need to shit yourself. Just enjoy it, and laugh off the mistakes. Good luck mate.

Cabicular

Just be confident

Know what you are doing and do it proudly

Nothing worse than watching a band who appear embarrassed of what they are playing

Even if you  (or someone else screws up) don't show it. Just keep going confidently. Chances are half the punters won't notice and everyone else will forget about it in a couple of bars time

Good luck

vasselmeyer

Don't shit yourself, it's unhygenic and everyone will remember your first gig for all the wrong reasons.

thomasross20

Lol...

Thanks, all! Less than a week to go and final rehearsal tomorrow. 

I hope we get some good videos...

jd0272

You'll be absolutely fine. You're not doing cause you don't enjoy it after all!

Jalapeno

Slay them !!!!!!!

thomasross20

So.........!!!!

There were FOUR bands wanting to play - this meant we cut a few songs out. The worst part of that was that there was SO much gear flying around - not much space and worried about my equipment. When it came time for us to play, I got no sound out of the amp! Crapped myself - turns out one connection on the pedal board either wasn't in or was dodgy -  must check it. I brought spare guitar leads but not patch cables, so that's on the list. Also on the list is a 4-way adapter which somebody thankfully brought....!! I think I *will* carry a spare guitar to gigs because if mine crapped out/broke a string it would have been embarrassing. 

I had the blackstar footswitch and my pedal board out. To be honest, too many pedals for me. Despite dialling in great Blackstar patches, I defaulted to clean and used all my pedals instead - this is what I do during practice and I didn't want to mess with a winning formula for the first gig. I guess if there's ever a problem with the pedal board I could just use the Blackstar footswitch so it's a good backup, as such. It was very simple just using my pedals.... 

Many thanks to ICBM who popped by for the first set! Very good of him and a pleasure to meet him - sorry we never chatted more!!

First set was the "light" set - I hit some bum notes but nobody really noticed - lots of people stood up to watch us and sing along which was awesome! The bass was a little low so the bassist will bring his own amp in future. Stupidly I only realised into the 4th song that I had the wah on - I thought it sounded funny for a little bit! I wore my Slash hate, wig, glasses and fake cig and people loved that - really tried to put on a little bit of a show

We finished up the night and whilst I was rally nervous during the first set, I let rip during the second set (and did lots of guitar poses) as nerves had calmed down a little. If the first set was 6/10 or whatever, the second set was 600/10 lol. Somebody came on-stage to try and light my fake cigarette! I think it's fair to say everybody loved it - I got several calls for "Slash ... play some Guns N Roses" lol.... Everybody was singing to Livin' on a Prayer and somebody roared "YES" when I did the solo lol. Journey, G N R, Survivor... they all went down well. People loved Sweet Child O' Mine. Next year I'm trying to slot in "Beat It" and "White Wedding" or "Rebel Yell". The singers belted it out and sounded awesome, the drums were solid, bass was great but a bit low and rhythm guitar spot-on. 

The Blackstar sounded massive - and I got a hand carrying it in and out which was great. Quite a few people commented on how good it sounded (hopefully you thought it was ok, ICBM!) but it was also largely due to my PRS, I'm sure...The sound guy said I was too loud at the start but as soon as we started playing I was way too low in volume, so I turned it back up and nobody said a thing. I wore my ASC Pro 17s and I'm very glad I did, I have to say....

I was out until 1:30am helping the drummer get his kit out to the car etc. We got paid, enough to buy a couple DVDs, and we are getting our own gig off the back of this one in Feb/March! 

What a buzz!

gusman2x

Excellent man, well done. 2015 should be looking good then

thomasross20

Hope so! Going to try and get up to 40ish songs that we can choose at random. 

The best I played was when I wasn't thinking about it, as I thought lol...

I think we'll learn the songs up until March, play that other gig and then start looking at other venues (not that there are many).

Was so good, though - after 15 years of playing I've finally done it, woohoo!

horse

Nice one - definitely need to share some video by the sound of your outfit!

jd0272

Good man!!! You've now crossed the threshold. Welcome.

thomasross20

Lol... Unfortunately I don't think anybody got any videos, but hopefully we got lots of pics. Here was me the day before the gig: 

I can see how easy it is to get battlescars on guitars... I never got any BUT some guy ran into my guitar top with a music stand (!!!! argh !!!) - guy didn't seem to care - and it's easy not to look where your guitar head etc are when you're bust setting up... easy to smack it off something.

Thanks, jd!! I hope to keep my own practice going in my spare time but will focus on song-learning for the band now. Great to finally be gigging - that's what it's all about!

ICBM

It was good . Shame I couldn't stay for the second set but I was on my way from one thing to another, just good timing that I managed to be there for the first set!

Too loud? No, if anything you were slightly too quiet even after you turned up . As was the bass. Drums and vocals were fine. You may do better to get the amp up off the floor, so it will project better - I know not that easy with all that stuff kicking around on "stage" (AKA corner of the pub, as normal) - easier if you swap to a smaller amp probably. I liked the sound, although not really my thing personally - very tight and midrangy, which worked well for what you were doing. I thought you had left the wah on on purpose!

You nailed the solo in When Tomorrow Comes too, which I was very impressed by .

Best of all, I ran into an old friend who I haven't seen for years who was there to watch one of your backing singers! (Sharon?) Small world...

thomasross20

Here is a link to us playing Papa Don't Preach (you can hear I never turned off my wah, d'oh)!

Thanks, ICBM! LIstening back the Riot sounds ok but I'll try and stick with the Blackstar distortion next time for comparison as I think it's beefier. Yeah, I also thought the bass was too low. Unfortunately he used the house amp and when turned up started to make funny noises - lesson learned for future - use your own gear! 

Agree about putting the amp up higher - was a nightmare with 4 bands playing that night! Luckily we secured our own gig there in March  

Haha, thanks! Love that song! Yeah, Sharon is one of our singers - pop along next time for the full set lol!