Noob guide to prepare guitar for a gig

  • Thread starter Thread starter kcearl
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I"m a big one on having back ups and have a complete set of everything I may need in the car when I gig.. and I have the little pick holder and the spare set of strings in the guitar case etc. etc. etc.

I can't remember the last time I broke a string or dropped a pick though.

Touch wood... playing tonight. I'll get back to you...:laughings:
 
My contribution.

Be about 60% better than you need to be to play the songs. In my experience when you first step on stage you lose anywhere between 60 and 100 percent of your talent.

Don't play covers. "A good way to get started" only applies in the practise room, if you're going to play covers you need to be really really fucking good at it.

Don't fanny about playing random stuff at sound check and certainly not at the actual gig in between songs. It makes you look like a ****.

However good you are, get a lot better. There are too many shit bands out there, don't be one of them.

Don't listen to Greg.
 
Greg_L said:
Yeah because I've played about 10,000 more gigs than chamelious. :laughings:
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Assuming you have been gigging for 40 years, that would be 250 gigs per year, for every year- or two gigs every three days FOR THE LAST 40 YEARS. And that does not include the number of gigs both you and chamelious both played. Prolific though you may be, I doubt you have maintained that level of dedication...:rolleyes:
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
No. I don't know what you're using for glass cleaner, but I certainly wouldn't want anything ammonia-based soaking into an unfinished fretboard...
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I knew that would come up. Generally I'd agree, but I recently restored an old Kay-brand SG-type bass- the crud on the fret board was so thick, you could scrape it off with a fingernail. Several cleanings with ammonia-based window cleaner revealed a shade lighter wood, which got a proper oiling (but NOT with "finger oil.")

DrewPeterson7 said:
I'd usually have a towel in my car, just in case. It's much easier to pick up groupies after a show if you're not all gross, sweaty, smelly, and generally disgusting. :D
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Man, everybody knows:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy StevieB? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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stevieb said:
Assuming you have been gigging for 40 years, that would be 250 gigs per year, for every year- or two gigs every three days FOR THE LAST 40 YEARS. And that does not include the number of gigs both you and chamelious both played. Prolific though you may be, I doubt you have maintained that level of dedication...:rolleyes:
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And then we have this idiot taking things a little too seriously. :laughings:
 
Greg_L said:
Says the guy that travels 3 hours to play in front of 7 people - who are the other bands.
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Most of them were band WAG's actually, the local band weren't kind enough to watch us :D oh except one of them, and all he said to say was

"Thats a keyboard"
"uhh, yeah, a synth"
"all the sounds in it sounds like the killers"
"ok....do you like the killers"
"no"
"great, thanks man!"
 
chamelious said:
Most of them were band WAG's actually, the local band weren't kind enough to watch us :D oh except one of them, and all he said to say was

"Thats a keyboard"
"uhh, yeah, a synth"
"all the sounds in it sounds like the killers"
"ok....do you like the killers"
"no"
"great, thanks man!"
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:laughings: :laughings:

That's pretty common. I never watch the bands we play with either.
 
Greg_L said:
:laughings: :laughings:

That's pretty common. I never watch the bands we play with either.
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Hmm I don't think that's a good way to be, but I don't imagine you care. Don't get me wrong I won't stand and watch awful music, but I think its common courtesy to give the other bands a chance at least.

Having said that I will sometimes pay for a ticket to see a band, then miss the support act/s.

My favourite gig was a local one where we were supporting a reasonably big band, there were girls crammed along the front, blatantly saving their spot for the other band. But while we were playing, I pretended they were there for me, my penis felt a good half an inch longer.
 
chamelious said:
Hmm I don't think that's a good way to be, but I don't imagine you care. Don't get me wrong I won't stand and watch awful music, but I think its common courtesy to give the other bands a chance at least.
.
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That's cuz you're an idealist, and that's cool if you're happy that way. I don't subscribe to the happy music scene community idea of bands supporting other bands. Fuck that. It doesn't work that way. Every band thinks they're the best shit in the world and they never, ever come even close in reality. I'm not a fake. I'm not gonna pretend to like or be interested in something that I don't.

Here's my typical routine:
Show up on time for soundcheck.
Backline or move my gear to the side.
Leave the venue until it's time to play.
Show back up when it's time to play
Play the show
Try to pack up and leave before any other bands start playing.

I know, I'm a rockstar. But this method ensures that I have minimal contact with other people or bad music.
 
what are all these shows ya'll do with lots of other bands?

I have to guess those are gigs where you get like, $20 apiece?

I'm never that interested in listening to other bands ............. they just want me to sit in and then I'm stuck there.
The other night I actually was at a gig where there was a band immediately following us ....... I went up to play a couple of songs and then there was no polite way to leave so I was there 'till they finished at 2:30am. :eek:
 
Bands supporting other bands works for us. A lot of our "fans" are people from bands who we've played with, these are the people spreading the word for us just via word of mouth, much more effective than online promotion.

Our best gigs so far have come from people in bands we've played with (who've often become friends) getting us them directly or putting in a good word. In this way we played our first festival on stage 3 times bigger than any other we've played in front of hundreds of people, a venue 300 miles away held in high regard in the industry community (Camden Barfly), and various other shows where the atmospheres just been great.

If you guys are at the stage where you can just turn up and have people in front of you who are into your music then that's great, but we most certainly are not. We have to work our asses off and network for every person through the door.

Greg i'm sure it's just because "you're better" but even you must have had to start somewhere. People don't just randomly show up to shows to see bands they've never heard of.
 
Greg_L said:
Lol. It's standard club gigs dude. We don't play the Red Lobster on a tuesday afternoon like you do. :D
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I play standard clubs and always have and I've NEVER seen clubs using multiple bands except for places using original music bands where they'll have 8 bands playing short sets and not getting paid shit.
On occassion I'll see two bands but that's about it.
I mean, at clubs that draw a good crowd and pay good money.
I do see flyers for some clubs that'll have a bunch of bands but they don't get paid much.

During bike week here there'll be clubs that have bands all day long and during Mardi Gras in N.O. there'll be band after band. But in clubs that pay say, 500 and up for bands I don't see that except during those big events.

Got a gig coming up at the House of Blues with Floyd Miles and there's only one band ........ us.
 
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chamelious said:
Greg i'm sure it's just because "you're better" but even you must have had to start somewhere. People don't just randomly show up to shows to see bands they've never heard of.
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We don't cultivate fans by hanging out with other bands. Bands are snobs. All of them. They're the competition. Bands don't support other bands down here. That's just dumb. We get fans by playing good and using a simple tried-and-true mailing list. Play places with a built-in crowd. Have someone pass around a notebook and get emails and phone numbers. We don't always play in front of thousands of people, but we draw crowds of people we don't even know. Dumb music loving people like getting what they think is a personal email inviting them out. It's not just friends and wives coming out. Hell my wife never comes out. I don't know why or how it works because I personally put zero effort into it and I'm pretty anti-social 99% of the time, but it works. I just play the drums. I leave all the sickening schmoozing and mingling for the other guys. This weekend we're playing this massively lame white-trash bike rally in Galveston. There will be literally a hundred thousand people there. It's gonna be mental. I plan to just show up, play, and leave ASAP.
 
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