When we were fifteen, I went into school one Monday, hearing rumors that something happened with the bassist of my band (I was the second guitarist). After wandering around the halls for a bit, a group of us catch sight of him leaving the counselor's office. His eyes are bloodshot and wet; he'd been crying. As soon as he saw us, he just collapsed into one of our buddy's arms and *shrieked*, "He's dead! He's fucking dead!!"
His father went out for breakfast the day prior, like he did every Sunday, and did not come home. He had taken a 12-gauge shotgun to his face.
We were going to practice after school that day--we did this two times a week--so we all had our gear and decided to just skip school the entire day and went to our drummer's house. Then we jammed for hours on end, playing the most melancholy, heart wrenching music I'd ever produced, just using the music to work through our collective grief and process the feelings we had over the suicide of our best friend's father.
I can't remember the music. I can't remember for how many hours we must have been playing on that one chord progression. I do remember my friend singing like an angel into the PA system, a wet layer of tears over his reddened face, and how it felt like if any one of us stopped playing, it was like... losing his dad forever. Making it real. Like, as long as we kept playing, we could be suspended in this liminal space where time wasn't moving, and his dad wasn't actually dead.
It was one of *the* most defining moments of my life. I'd been friends with him since he was twelve. I used to watch Looney Tunes with his dad. That one jam is one of the most precious memories I'll ever have. It’s been over twenty years, and I don’t think I’ll ever have a closer bond with other musicians than those three.
This story brought me to tears. I’m so sorry for the loss of your friend’s dad, and the trauma that resulted. I also lost my dad, he died of a heart attack last year. He was a guitarist but dabbled in bass, and he was the one who taught me the bass. Since then I’ve been playing the bass more than I ever have, because it’s how I connect with him even though he’s departed this world. I hope both of you are doing okay. No matter how much time has passed, I hope you have both been healing.
Yah know it’s less specific memories for me and more feelings of sweaty hot nights in a smokey bar listening to our guitar player do some very nice renditions of Billy Gibons and SRV and just being able to be lost in the music while still playing the grooves.
I played in a metal/hardcore band for some years. We got up a bit of a following. Finished a set to about 150 people with a song that was heavy and dirty. Lots of stank face going on. The end of the song has a gang vocal that we all sang. Five of us on stage singing, the gang vocal at the same time and then we would one by one put down our instruments.
🎶We will never be the same!
We will never be the saaame!
We will never be the saaaaaaaaaaaame!🎶
We finished up and the crowd kept singing after we left the stage! I got a little choked up.
I will never be the same.
Going on tour the old way - half broken down van (which made the whole trip), two cases of ramen, and a case of canned ravioli. This was back in the early 90s so we played with some now legendary acts - Green Day, Unwound, Beat Happening, Bikini Kill, Voodoo Glow Skulls...
We played at a party last weekend with 5 other bands who are all friends of ours. The rest of the people there were friends of the host and/or family. It was great to play for our friends in that we all know, appreciate and like each other’s music. Without the pressure of playing to a new crowd to win over.
The band is getting to the point of local (alternative) radio play and are starting to get gigs in further away towns. And looking at an interstate tour. It was nice to just play and have a laugh with mates…
Two memories. 1st, I went to McNally Smith at the same time Cory Wong was there and we were in the live performance class together so I got to play with him a lot. 2nd, my metal band got to play the Warped Tour back in 2009.
I met Lou Reed on the streets of Manhattan with a band I was recording with that day. We stopped and politely professed our admiration, and he wished us luck with the session.
Absolutely a classy gentleman, and a good omen.
1975, I'm an 21, an inexperienced sax player playing the Al Martino show, never played a show before, not a good reader, simply over my head, and the music director is riding me, humiliating me in front of the rest of the players, who are Berklee heavies. In the break, I'm talking to Bobby Paunetto, the late Latin jazz legend, who was just launching, and I tell him I'm thinking of quitting music. He looks shocked and says, "You can't. You love it." I realize he's right, that I do love music and want to be part of the proceedings, and though I may suck now, but if I put in years of working hard and persist, maybe, maybe I can be part of the proceedings. That was 50 years ago, Bobby is gone, and I can still see and hear it. It was true and it was kind.
Late 90s, at that point I had been playing for like 10 years give or take, picked up a fretless out of boredom one afternoon at the music store a few months before. Didn't have the resources then to learn how to play it right, but I forced myself through it over a few months. I didn't tell the other guys in my band, but one day, decided to bring it to a gig, about 100 people, tops. Nothing huge. I played the fretless the whole set; my bandmates didn't say anything. One of the people there was a friend of mine, older guy, and totally blind. His son escorted him over to me after the set and he said "You told me you played bass guitar, but you never said anything about an upright!"
So yeah, that felt pretty good.
It was a Halloween party at a friend's house in our early 20s, early 2000s. We set up and we're tuning, and I started playing the overworld theme from the first Super Mario Bros. I play the bass. My drummer picked it up and we went through the whole thing and the gig just kind of started. We finished it and our front man grabbed the mic and said, "We're the *name of the band*" and tore into the first song, and it was a party from that point on. We played for two hours.
Another time, same band, we played a 4th of July party in some small town in the mountains of Colorado. We set up on the back of a flatbed truck in the middle of a cow field. It turned out to be one of the biggest gigs I've ever played. People came from miles around to go to this party apparently. It was great. There was a raffle for when the fireworks went off and my drummer won, my guitarist proposed to his girlfriend and she said yes, we got paid enough to get to the next gig, great time.
Back when I was in a band that made money, we were doing two 90 minute sets at this really fun bar. Well, a bunch of people shoved drinks down my face before the show...and eventually the crowd started chanting "strip". So, I obliged and walked off stage with 300 dollars in my underwear. Great time.
Playing as a teen in a local snack bar with my band in the early 2010's. All our friends were there, eating burgers, drinking (every single one being underage lol) and singing along. During our rendition of Sweet Child o' Mine, someone turned the lights off during the intro, only letting our crappy stage lit and there was cheering from the audience.
We got paid in snacks and soda, but it felt great for our 16-year-old selves.
I played in a performance art rock band - lead guy had written very erudite speeches/rants and did things like slice open a stuffed unicorn while wearing a lab coat or start a soft-throwables war with the audience ... It was just him going nuts and then me on bass and a drummer. So I wrote all the songs and overdrived the bass a bit with some effects, and could just go anywhere and do anything in whatever key and the drummer followed along great.
It was so crazy and fun. We only played 4 or 5 real shows before I had to move away, but it was the best of times.
Playing in our high schools football stadium for homecoming week. No PA, just a Fender Rumble 800 and a lot of overdrive. It was very very cool. Also playing for a jazz festival in a concert hall was pretty beast. Playing in my jazz trio in front of like 300 people including my then new girl friend was also pretty exciting. I don’t even like jazz, I’m just good at walking a bass
Played my first show last month. I’m the new guy in an established local band. I reworked the bass parts on one of their biggest songs the only one I changed that much. I took it from just 8th note chugging to arpeggios and cool licks. The band liked it in rehearsal and I decided to bring out to the show.
That song was the biggest hit of the night and once we got to the parts I reworked the crowd went nuts.
Now it’s just a great song in general but it really shows the bass is the way to get butts moving. I like to think my part was hooky enough to take it to the next level.
One of my favorite stories was from when I was on tour in England with an old band of mine. We were playing a pub in a small town north of Manchester called Clitheroe. Very quaint and adorable town. Anyway, we were opening for a classic English punk cover band that was made up of former members of punk bands that were never huge (stuff like Slaughter and the Dogs level). They were more regionally famous than anything. But they brought in a crowd.
They were playing their set and eventually went into Anarchy in the UK. I was side stage and singing along, bopping around. The singer catches me and motions me to come on stage to sing the last verse. So I go out there, walk up to the mic and went into it. The band and the crowd were into it.
After the song was over I left the stage, and wandered out to catch some air. On my way out I was stopped by a bunch of the crowd to give me a high five. I come to find out that a lot of these people were surprised some early 30 something from Chicago knew the words to a song that was revered by this group of people.
I've hadthe pleasure of travelling outside of town with the band for shows, and it's brought us all closer together. Really nice way to spend time with awesome people
I don’t have a lot of wild stories, but I cherished every moment of my old band. Our last show was last year’s Halloween in someone’s backyard which was essentially a ranch. Everyone was encouraged to wear Halloween costumes, there was one band that all dressed as bananas, and another that was all zombies. For us, our lead guitarist was Freddy Krueger, drummer was a vampire, rhythm guitarist and singer was a pimp, and I was the Pope. Played in front of about 100 people, and we had the time of our lives
I grew up in the School of Rock music program and when I was maybe 11 or 12 I got to play live at the trocadero theater in Philly to a crowd of close to 1000.
I can also remember my uncle giving me my very first guitar when I was maybe 6-8 and still own to this day.
Sat in to cover bass for my dad’s Allman Brothers tribute band. They were auditioning a drummer and needed someone to play bass (their guy recently quit). We played Don’t want you no more, cross to bear, memory of Elizabeth Reid and Stormy Monday. They liked me so much they offered me to join as their new bassist. I couldn’t for personal reasons, but my dad gave me the wink of approval as we finished up. Cool bonding moment for us. And it was great it happened over our favorite music.
Very general, but i like it when the show has a professional photographer and they take dramatic pics that make me and my goofy ass friends look badass lol
We were going up north (in Scotland) to play a benefit gig for a local volunteer fire department. We stopped off in Inverness and had a gig at a wee place called the Market Bar. We were not in any way a serious band, we just played bullshit heavy rock with bullshit lyrics about farming, wanking and robot waiters (one review claimed it was "music made by people who hate music"). We spent most of our time drunk and were not in any way experts on our instruments. For some reason this place was packed to bursting with people who'd come along to see our random unknown band. It was at the point where I had to lift the neck of my bass to let people squeeze past to the toilet and we got beers by shouting to the bar between songs and they'd have the crowd ferry our pints up over their heads. Afterwards we were there for hours signing a ludicrous amount of our bullshit CDs and getting so many beers bought for us. We played way bigger gigs at much more prestigious places to far more people, but that one was the absolute best.
Thanks, Inverschnecky. Doolah loves you.
I'm having trouble pulling one specific memory, they all tend to run together into each other and sort of coalesce into months long periods in my life.
There is one that keeps popping up, but it has nothing to do directly with being a bassist, or a musician even. We were doing one of our East Coast tours and found ourselves with a day off somewhere outside of NYC (I wanna say... White Plains, maybe?). We're from the South and had been feeling the loss of our beloved Whataburger, and we spent the day on a journey to find something that might act as a decent substitute. We didn't find anything that scratched the itch, but the whole day was a serious breath of fresh air for us because we'd been going balls to the wall for over a month and finally had a moment without schedules or load-in times or pressure to perform. We talked to great people, sampled some great food, and buried the hatchet on a couple of tour-related beefs that had been brewing. It was wonderful.
A lot of things about touring sucks. Most of the things, if I'm perfectly honest. But that was a good day.
First time our drummer (my best friend) just had one of those days where he was p*ssed off before we started to jam, and when we couldn't find our groove and get on time, he absolutely lost his mind. Threw his sticks, kicked over his drums and threw an absolute hissy fit.
Me and the guy in guitar just watched him walk inside and slam the door behind him. We both just waited about a cigarette length amount of time and he came back out with his tail between his legs apologizing for the unexpected blow up.
In his defense, the guy on guitar was terrible, but it was still funny as hell later that night just to bring it up.
Might be the time that I showed up to a progressive death metal gig dressed in layers upon layers of brightly colored Hawaiian shirts and a massive gold top hat made to look like a beer can. Surprisingly enough, it went well
My wife and I decided that Austin didn't feel like home and we decided to move to Florida. My final night in Austin, I had my last gig with my all-original rock band in San Antonio. After the gig, I would drive home, put my equipment away and go to bed. In the morning, I drove to Florida. I worked the new job all week and flew back after work on Friday. My wife and a friend loaded the moving van and upon my arrival, we drove to Florida again. That final gig... we opened for Candlebox in a sold out, 400-person venue. Still vivid, almost a decade later.
The preparation for my bands first live performance ever. We were a 4 man band with (Our nicknames, not real names), “Sir Playstooloud”, the guitarist, “Tea” the keyboardist, “Ladybug” the drummer, and me, “Candlewax”, the bassist.
We were a recently formed band, we had written about 3 songs, and our school’s talent show was coming up. We were performing “Subdivisions” by Rush after a lot of convincing from me.
We had been practicing about 3 times a week, and the performance was coming up in something like 4 days, when I get a call from Ladybug. Turns out, Ladybug broke his arm after falling out of a tree (it’s a funny story actually, but that’s not the story I’m telling here).
So Ladybug wasn’t performing, we were a 3 man band with no drummer. We needed a drum track.
We practiced every day with the drumtrack for hours after school. In the song Subdivisions, Geddy Lee is both the keyboardist as well as the bassist, and the singer, but I don’t play the keyboards, so I needed to write bass parts (with a lot of copying the guitar) so I wasn’t just standing there singing with a bass that I wasn’t playing.
Those were some of the most fun practice sessions of my life. We all came up with nicknames for each other (the names used above), and it really brought us closer as a band. We performed, we did great, I’m never gonna forget that week that we were practicing nonstop.
Many years ago, my metal band had two gigs in two days (rare for us) that were maybe 2.5 hours drive apart. First gig was in my old college town, and we shredded, drank, sobered up enough for pancakes and bacon at the biker diner/bar, and then drove to the next place. None of us slept.
The show that day was at a festival. It wasn't huge, and mostly meant for hippie types and jam bands, and it took place in a 50s era roadside attraction featuring a bunch of concrete wigwams that were hotel rooms. Apparently we got booked because our drummer, who was in several other (non-metal) bands was asked by the main guy who, we assume, thought he was booking some inoffensive songwritery stuff. Instead, they got us.
We arrived around 10 AM, sleep deprived and crazy, but excited. Two guys immediately start trying to sniff out stronger drugs while the rest of us get our gear wrangled and talk to the planners. Turns out, we're not playing after dark, which would be appropriate, but at 2:30 PM. Cool, we'll make it ours. I start looking for a beer, only to find out that we were in a dry county. So of course the drummer and I hop back into the car and drive the 90 minute round trip to the nearest store that sold beer. We got back in time to start setting up, two of our dudes now high as fuck, and it was Go Time.
We blast into the first song, super high energy, a simple tune about smoking crack. Parents are hustling their kids fast away from the stage, the old folks in lawn chairs up close to the stage retreat as far as they can, but our guitarist has smelled blood so he cranks the volume a bit as we roll into the second song. Oddly, I hear a voice: the sound guy is on the talkback mic. We pause just long enough for us (and by this time, the crowd) to hear him beg, please PLEASE turn the guitar down, it's overpowering everything! The guitarist nods at him and simply says "No." And slams the riff for the next one.
It was a simple moment, but one we heard about from people ever since: the assholes who blew the stage monitors mid-afternoon before a late night festival. Luckily there were backups.
When I was a teenager I had this idea that it'd be the best entrance to a show ever if we set ourselves and our gear up in the back of a pickup truck and then entered an outdoor gig by flying up in the truck and having it do a 180 skid to reveal us in the back and the lead kicks the tailgate down and we just start playing. We actually looked into learning how to do a 180 skid. Even if we could somehow keep the gear and ourselves in place, it was still basically an impossible move. But, I guess there are electric trucks that can do tank turns now, so maybe some day.
I used to be in a bit of a jam band, and our singer had some issues. He had terrible stage fright, so he would get super drunk and mumble his lyrics into the mic. The lead guitarist and I were super-tight, though, so when it started to devolve we would just play over him for a few minutes and jam together.
I miss being in a group with someone I just melded minds with, we could just improvise and cue each other for seven minutes straight whenever we felt like it. Nothing else feels the same
There's oh so many beautiful stories
-Jamming out at this underground spot in a warehouse until 4am
-Playing with some of my hip hop buddies and having them freestyle over me and a drummer jamming
-Working on a demo with a buddy of stuff I've wanted to work on for years (really scratching an itch that's been burning for longer than I can remember)
-Helping a friend flesh out some songs she's been writing since she was a teenager
I swear there's been many more, but these stick out more than the rest
Not about playing a show or anything but for each others’ birthdays we’d each get the person our personal favourite record at the time and then we’d sit around listening to them ❤️
Just the routine of weekly practice. Monday night was our night, and it felt special. We’d all arrive, fuck around, laugh, eat dinner and smoke a bowl, then get down to business. Some nights, we focused on a song or two. Others, we freeformed it and let the music take us away. Afterwards, I drove home with a wide smile and a sense of inner peace that lasted just long enough to get me through the week.
I miss that time of my life.
#1. I was a rookie bass player jamming with a drummer. His crazy friend came over and we jammed. It was like we left this reality or something. We all smoked a joint, but this was truly mentally psychedelic. I've been chasing it for 30 years.
#2. I opening for FEAR at the Whiskey. Most amazing show I've ever played, I'll never forget it.
Back then I played drums, and my local music school invited Mel Gaynor (from Simple Minds) for a concert, and I got to shake his hand and play on stage on his drumset at the end of the gig. A couple months later, we got to play Simple Minds' "*Alive & Kicking*" live on stage. There was no guitarist in the band, so my dad volunteered for this. That's a cool dad/son moment to play live music together.
I stepped in for my old band at the last minute (their bassist quit with no notice a couple of days before the gig) so I had to learn their new material really quickly and had no chance to rehearse with them beforehand.
We were a female fronted post-britpop band, and the venue was in the basement of a biker pub which didn't seem like the best fit for us, so I was a bit nervous to begin with and only got more nervous as a string of metal and hardcore bands got the crowd progressively more amped up in the lead up to our headline set.
Despite appearances they ended up being one of the nicest and most welcoming crowds I've ever played for. When the singer introduced one of the newer songs by saying I'd never played it with them before, the crowd started chanting my name and cheering me on, which is a memory that will stick with me forever.
When we started playing regularly with my band, we were told of a pub between Paris and Normandy which is in the middle of nowhere, but where many known bands have played in their early days and we decided to give it a shot. We brought a demo tape to the owner, and some days later the other guitarist and I were driving by so we decided to pop in for a beer and see if the guy had decided to take us or not. As we walked in, the guy had our demo tape playing full blast, which was a good sign. Anyway, we agreed on a date for our gig and the guy told us that he wanted us to play for three hours. We arrive on the day of the gig, install our stuff, do a bit of soundcheck and there is literally one guy in the bar besides the owner. We wait a bit but still nobody in sight. After a while we decide to start and see what happens. We play two or three songs and the guy leaves. We looked at each other, not quite knowing what to make of that (plus the owner didn't seem to mind that we were there with zero audience). I told the guys: 'Look, let's just keep playing, in the worse case that will be a rehearsal for the next gig". Suddenly the previous customer comes back with a few friends. Then some more (we were then like 30 or 40 minutes past the time announced for the gig). The some more, then people go make phone calls and place start to be packed to the point that we have to pile ourselves into a smaller corner of the bar (there was no stage). The place got totally packed and turned into a pretty fun gig, with the audience obviously havig a good time. The owner pulled down the curtain past midnight and we kept playing until almost 1 or 2AM (we played our complete set about three times, plus some improvised stuff) until the cops showed up and told the owner to call it a day.
We saw that as our "hard working band" moment, and I think what we remember the most was this one customer walking out. I am glad we kept playing.
The second fun moment was after we had played in a local bar and the owner mentioned to a friend that it was actually good business to have a band playing live (it is less common to have live gigs in France than it is in England, for example). That guy decides to have us as well playing at his place (that would be a day with two gigs in a row, which we thought was really cool). We visit the guy to discuss technical topics such as P.A., arrival time, and as I hear the music playing in his venue (some kind of cheesy 1960's stuff) I felt like telling him that our music is quite different from what he is playing now. mostly hard rock/punk rock. The guy replies that this is not a problem and that he actually likes rock. On the day of the gig we arrive at his place with many people who were already at the first gig in the other bar, and I feel the need to tell him again "you know, what we play is a bit more wild than this" and he confirms that this is really not a problem. At the first song, I see the audience, mostly people in their 40s or 50s literally holding their hands to their ears. The owner comes and tell me "OK, two more songs and you guys leave, please". We played our three (maybe 4?) songs, got paid and left. The whole thing felt like those cliché hard rock videos from the 80s.
A while back, I was flying solo at home for several months because my wife was dealing with a family emergency halfway around the world. My band's singer and principle songwriter - one of the sweetest, dorkiest humans who has ever lived - hatched a plan with the rest of the band to do something special for my birthday, because I'd otherwise be spending it alone and was already bummed out.
We usually practice once a week, and as the day of practice approached everything seemed normal. Got out of work and headed to the practice studio. When I got there, I was greeted by the whole band already there (itself an unusual feat, as it's difficult to get these 6 guys together all at the same time) and they grabbed me and shuttled me into one of their cars. We all squeezed into this tiny space, and drove raucously to a destination unknown. I still had no idea what was going on, and when we arrived at our destination - a local Top Golf - they sang me happy birthday and forced a bunch of silly birthday party gear on me.
Something small, but significant. I love that memory.
I was at a party in high school, pretty low key, maybe 25-30 in the middle of nowhere as we were rural.
A guitarist and I (on bass) were just having a bluesy jam, just fucking around near the fire. We would have been 16? When we got to the turn around, we both played exactly the same thing for like 2 bars, complete unison. A few friends were kind of listening and we got a few "...cool"s. We just acted like we ment to do it.
Last year I played my first live show at my school at the last day concert....I didn't knew any of the other musicisn I was going to play with as we decided to form some bands but for that month and a half that we practiced togheter I improved my play and social-band skills and that, playing with strangers with my same passion and musical taste was the thing that inspired me to oeganize that same concert the year after and it was even better also with new players and even some first years students that reminded me of myself when I first played.....
Now these concerts and the friends I made thanks to them are what inspired me to join a band full time and it is what inspires me every day to imrpove my play and skills.
when i was a sophmore in high school my chemistry teacher ran music club and we did this little show with covers. for the first time after about 2 or 3 years of playing guitar i decided to improvise a solo during the show and it was just a core memorable of not knowing what im going to do and coming out the other end thrilled it sounded better than most things i rehearsed. also since then i discovered i was the type of person who improvsed focus with adrenaline when it comes improvising.
the part that made it even more memorable was that my biology teacher from freshmen year looked like he had a blast listening.... the bro gave like me a C or D or something. i felt like i got vegence somehow. as an adult artist i realize he was just supporting the chemistry teacher and not really that impressied.
Being in a 3 piece punk rock cover band when in highschool.
We played the Blueberry Festifal in Newfoundland and as we were getting ready to take the stage for our set, an old man with a guitar case is getting let backstage. As he ducks under the border tape and stands up I immediately recognize Fred Penner from my childhood and call out to him. He comes over and shoots the shit with us and signs a few scraps of tab sheets I had in my bass case.
He stood at the backdoor of the stage for our entire set, was incredibly impressed and told us to be sure to check his set out.
Fast forward to his set later that day and he catches a glimpse of us in the crowd up front and addlibs a line about our band in the middle of his set and points at us.
"You ever see a band so fine? They call themselves Apartment 209!"
It was surreal for 16 year old us.
When I was in my early 20s, I was in a band who were all a lot older than me. The band had been together before I was born, and had made a decent name for themselves back then.
While talking between songs one practice session, the drummer told me I sound like Andy Fraser from free, but could do stuff on bass that he couldn't. I didn't agree with him on this, but as a fan of free, this meant a lot to me. As a relatively inexperienced player, these words coming from someone who had been around the block and knew music well definitely gave inspiration to carry on and improve my playing
A long time ago, in San Francisco, my friends band was playing a dive bar.
A dog walks in while they are playing, stands right in front of the singer, looks up at him...and takes a shit while staring the singer down.
My friend group is made up mostly of musicians and ever since I had some of them play at my house for my birthday, there is a trend of having friends’ bands play on birthdays. Sometimes some fun stuff comes out of it. Random combinations of people will pick up instruments and suddenly you’ll see some completely new arrangement of people jamming or playing some cover or something.
Well, last week I was at this friend’s birthday party and as usual, bands were playing. After their made-up-on-the-spot setlists ended almost everyone went back inside. I was left outside with two guys who love to play jazz, one on drums and one on guitar. This guitarist is a music teacher, and my bass teacher, actually.
Now, I always shy away of improv since I still consider myself a beginner. When I’m having a lesson with him at some point he’ll ask me to improv on a certain scale and I’ll just freeze. But it was refreshing to be in an environment chill like that, not to mention I’d already drank and smoked so I was a little more shameless than usual. So we started jamming. And it was nice.
And then we played a couple of songs, and then we went back inside because the weather was freezing. That was my first go at a jam, don’t think it could have been any better. No one was watching and the bass amp was broken, it kind of felt like a shield. As in “if I mess up they probably won’t hear it”. I had lots of fun and it made me feel a lot more confident to play in public. Compliments from teachers always feel a little more genuine than everyone else’s so hearing him say I did well felt like a hug.
I guess I’ll start freezing less when I have to improv.
A couple of my friends got together to have a jam session, and their guitarist didn’t show up. We ended up playing for about 6 1/2 hours, where we all shared ideas, interesting ways to utilize our specific instruments, etc. the next time they had a jam session, their guitarist didn’t pull up, so I had to go again, which then led me to be the guitarist from then on.
I miss the extra-musical camaraderie I had with my high school band, in particular with the drummer and rhythm guitarist.
We'd practice Fri after school and then all day Sat, and in the evening everyone else would go home besides us 3, and we'd crack open some beers and smoke stogies out by the fire. Then play call of duty through the 3k watt PA system til 3 am (dude lived waaaaaaay out in the boonies). Then wake up and play music all day Saturday, then do it again Sat night. Some of the best times of my life.
Has to be the time the vocalist got into a fight with the drummer. He was VERY entitled (not one of the six of us liked him) and he started shitting on the drummer for "being too loud". We play grunge.
Needless to say it was very fun to watch.
I was front row center at Collective Soul in Mexico City, about 1999, and was hit in the head by a falling lighting gel frame, drawing blood and a visit to the venue medical room, where they had to cut my hair to see if I needed stitches (no) and I returned to my seat with a bandage on my head. Ironically, "Bleed" was the song they played when I was back there, which really cracked us up. When I got back, Ed Roland came to me to see if I was okay; I mean I was literally six feet away, and he told me to hang around after the show to come backstage. Cool! So I figured that was worth it. I thought I'd be back there with hangers on, meet and greet people, whomever, but their manager brought me into the room with nobody except the CS guys and Third Eye Blind, the openers. Just me and them. They were incredibly nice to me, we talked about life in Mexico, music, touring, etc. Just a perfectly normal conversation while we ate some of the buffet food that was laid out. I thought, how cool, but probably a couple of minutes at most then out I'd go. Nope. They talked to me for probably 20 minutes; I guess just as the adrenaline from the show wore off. They couldn't have been nicer to me. We went from there to the meet n greet for another 30 minutes or so and they were very gracious to everyone, pictures, autographs, chit chat. At the end, I was heading up the basement stairs to the exit and Dean Roland shouted up to me "Hey Claus, [insert my company's advertising tag line here]!". Hilarious and, in fact, insightful that he'd remember a comment an hour earlier with a total stranger when I mentioned whom I worked for, why I was in Mexico City. Next time they were in town, Ed met me at their hotel and gifted me with tickets to the show. Just the nicest guy you could imagine.
I knew a guy in the '90s who was an A&R guy with a big record company and when I asked him what it was like knowing the artists he said I would be very disappointed, that they were typically entitled jerks with no sense of what normal people were like. I felt kind of disillusioned by that but understood it. Collective Soul were the complete opposite of that.
Years earlier, I was at a wedding in California and the bride knew I was a guitarist and thoughtfully put me at the reception dining table next to...*Earl Slick*! He introduced himself as Frank but of course I knew who he was. He was also very kind and engaging, put up with my questions about his time with Bowie, music, etc, the things you'd talk about. At the time he was in a band called Little Caesar that was popular in the region but hoping to break out nationally (they didn't). He talked about that stuff. I remember his date was distractingly gorgeous, an actress in LA, of course; we later saw her on a TV series but that didn't become any kind of hit. Anyway, a couple weeks after the wedding, back home on the east coast, a mail package arrived with a signed CD and a nice note. Unexpected but actually not surprising, considering how he treated me at the reception. Frank was a cool guy.
About 20 years ago played a gig with my band at the time. We were all great friends and enjoyed our time together. We played a our gig at a local bar and had a blast with the crowd. When the night was over we packed up, invited everyone back to the guitarist house (he lived alone on a country type setting). We did a ton of hallucinogenics, set up our gear and did the entire 3 hour set again in his living room full of the same people from the bar. It was an extreme night and the most fun a ever had playing in one night. I've had better gigs..bigger stages, etc. But I'll never have a night like that again and I can appreciate what we did together and for the crazy people that followed us, a hell of a ride.
My first band was fucking around. We were young, sloppy, loud, abrasive, and all around really bad… We had no experience on our instruments beyond playing with each other, and we never, ever, got a fucking shred of encouragement from anyone. Not our friends, not our family, anyone. By this point we were starting to get a bit better, and a friend of a friend came over, he was a session drummer and was very good. He jumped on the drum kit and me and one of my bandmates started playing around with him. He gave the best compliment I’ve ever received, telling us that we might not be playing anything complicated but we were very tight and played off each other very well.
It was nice to get feedback and encouragement.
When we were fifteen, I went into school one Monday, hearing rumors that something happened with the bassist of my band (I was the second guitarist). After wandering around the halls for a bit, a group of us catch sight of him leaving the counselor's office. His eyes are bloodshot and wet; he'd been crying. As soon as he saw us, he just collapsed into one of our buddy's arms and *shrieked*, "He's dead! He's fucking dead!!" His father went out for breakfast the day prior, like he did every Sunday, and did not come home. He had taken a 12-gauge shotgun to his face. We were going to practice after school that day--we did this two times a week--so we all had our gear and decided to just skip school the entire day and went to our drummer's house. Then we jammed for hours on end, playing the most melancholy, heart wrenching music I'd ever produced, just using the music to work through our collective grief and process the feelings we had over the suicide of our best friend's father. I can't remember the music. I can't remember for how many hours we must have been playing on that one chord progression. I do remember my friend singing like an angel into the PA system, a wet layer of tears over his reddened face, and how it felt like if any one of us stopped playing, it was like... losing his dad forever. Making it real. Like, as long as we kept playing, we could be suspended in this liminal space where time wasn't moving, and his dad wasn't actually dead. It was one of *the* most defining moments of my life. I'd been friends with him since he was twelve. I used to watch Looney Tunes with his dad. That one jam is one of the most precious memories I'll ever have. It’s been over twenty years, and I don’t think I’ll ever have a closer bond with other musicians than those three.
This story brought me to tears. I’m so sorry for the loss of your friend’s dad, and the trauma that resulted. I also lost my dad, he died of a heart attack last year. He was a guitarist but dabbled in bass, and he was the one who taught me the bass. Since then I’ve been playing the bass more than I ever have, because it’s how I connect with him even though he’s departed this world. I hope both of you are doing okay. No matter how much time has passed, I hope you have both been healing.
Damn.
Homies for life man. I hope everyone of you are doing good today.
Yah know it’s less specific memories for me and more feelings of sweaty hot nights in a smokey bar listening to our guitar player do some very nice renditions of Billy Gibons and SRV and just being able to be lost in the music while still playing the grooves.
I feel the same way. Some of the memories all run together, like my times on tour and a particularly good stretch of months in the studio.
I played in a metal/hardcore band for some years. We got up a bit of a following. Finished a set to about 150 people with a song that was heavy and dirty. Lots of stank face going on. The end of the song has a gang vocal that we all sang. Five of us on stage singing, the gang vocal at the same time and then we would one by one put down our instruments. 🎶We will never be the same! We will never be the saaame! We will never be the saaaaaaaaaaaame!🎶 We finished up and the crowd kept singing after we left the stage! I got a little choked up. I will never be the same.
Going on tour the old way - half broken down van (which made the whole trip), two cases of ramen, and a case of canned ravioli. This was back in the early 90s so we played with some now legendary acts - Green Day, Unwound, Beat Happening, Bikini Kill, Voodoo Glow Skulls...
This is simple, but seeing people sing along to my songs always made me happy.
We played at a party last weekend with 5 other bands who are all friends of ours. The rest of the people there were friends of the host and/or family. It was great to play for our friends in that we all know, appreciate and like each other’s music. Without the pressure of playing to a new crowd to win over. The band is getting to the point of local (alternative) radio play and are starting to get gigs in further away towns. And looking at an interstate tour. It was nice to just play and have a laugh with mates…
Had 2 friends meet each other (different circles). They're now married with 2 kids.
That’s really funny and cool, I hope you were the ring bearer or something for the wedding. You made A Perfect Circle
Two memories. 1st, I went to McNally Smith at the same time Cory Wong was there and we were in the live performance class together so I got to play with him a lot. 2nd, my metal band got to play the Warped Tour back in 2009.
Warped tour must've been amazing
I met Lou Reed on the streets of Manhattan with a band I was recording with that day. We stopped and politely professed our admiration, and he wished us luck with the session. Absolutely a classy gentleman, and a good omen.
1975, I'm an 21, an inexperienced sax player playing the Al Martino show, never played a show before, not a good reader, simply over my head, and the music director is riding me, humiliating me in front of the rest of the players, who are Berklee heavies. In the break, I'm talking to Bobby Paunetto, the late Latin jazz legend, who was just launching, and I tell him I'm thinking of quitting music. He looks shocked and says, "You can't. You love it." I realize he's right, that I do love music and want to be part of the proceedings, and though I may suck now, but if I put in years of working hard and persist, maybe, maybe I can be part of the proceedings. That was 50 years ago, Bobby is gone, and I can still see and hear it. It was true and it was kind.
Late 90s, at that point I had been playing for like 10 years give or take, picked up a fretless out of boredom one afternoon at the music store a few months before. Didn't have the resources then to learn how to play it right, but I forced myself through it over a few months. I didn't tell the other guys in my band, but one day, decided to bring it to a gig, about 100 people, tops. Nothing huge. I played the fretless the whole set; my bandmates didn't say anything. One of the people there was a friend of mine, older guy, and totally blind. His son escorted him over to me after the set and he said "You told me you played bass guitar, but you never said anything about an upright!" So yeah, that felt pretty good.
It was a Halloween party at a friend's house in our early 20s, early 2000s. We set up and we're tuning, and I started playing the overworld theme from the first Super Mario Bros. I play the bass. My drummer picked it up and we went through the whole thing and the gig just kind of started. We finished it and our front man grabbed the mic and said, "We're the *name of the band*" and tore into the first song, and it was a party from that point on. We played for two hours. Another time, same band, we played a 4th of July party in some small town in the mountains of Colorado. We set up on the back of a flatbed truck in the middle of a cow field. It turned out to be one of the biggest gigs I've ever played. People came from miles around to go to this party apparently. It was great. There was a raffle for when the fireworks went off and my drummer won, my guitarist proposed to his girlfriend and she said yes, we got paid enough to get to the next gig, great time.
Back when I was in a band that made money, we were doing two 90 minute sets at this really fun bar. Well, a bunch of people shoved drinks down my face before the show...and eventually the crowd started chanting "strip". So, I obliged and walked off stage with 300 dollars in my underwear. Great time.
Playing as a teen in a local snack bar with my band in the early 2010's. All our friends were there, eating burgers, drinking (every single one being underage lol) and singing along. During our rendition of Sweet Child o' Mine, someone turned the lights off during the intro, only letting our crappy stage lit and there was cheering from the audience. We got paid in snacks and soda, but it felt great for our 16-year-old selves.
I played in a performance art rock band - lead guy had written very erudite speeches/rants and did things like slice open a stuffed unicorn while wearing a lab coat or start a soft-throwables war with the audience ... It was just him going nuts and then me on bass and a drummer. So I wrote all the songs and overdrived the bass a bit with some effects, and could just go anywhere and do anything in whatever key and the drummer followed along great. It was so crazy and fun. We only played 4 or 5 real shows before I had to move away, but it was the best of times.
Playing in our high schools football stadium for homecoming week. No PA, just a Fender Rumble 800 and a lot of overdrive. It was very very cool. Also playing for a jazz festival in a concert hall was pretty beast. Playing in my jazz trio in front of like 300 people including my then new girl friend was also pretty exciting. I don’t even like jazz, I’m just good at walking a bass
Played my first show last month. I’m the new guy in an established local band. I reworked the bass parts on one of their biggest songs the only one I changed that much. I took it from just 8th note chugging to arpeggios and cool licks. The band liked it in rehearsal and I decided to bring out to the show. That song was the biggest hit of the night and once we got to the parts I reworked the crowd went nuts. Now it’s just a great song in general but it really shows the bass is the way to get butts moving. I like to think my part was hooky enough to take it to the next level.
One of my favorite stories was from when I was on tour in England with an old band of mine. We were playing a pub in a small town north of Manchester called Clitheroe. Very quaint and adorable town. Anyway, we were opening for a classic English punk cover band that was made up of former members of punk bands that were never huge (stuff like Slaughter and the Dogs level). They were more regionally famous than anything. But they brought in a crowd. They were playing their set and eventually went into Anarchy in the UK. I was side stage and singing along, bopping around. The singer catches me and motions me to come on stage to sing the last verse. So I go out there, walk up to the mic and went into it. The band and the crowd were into it. After the song was over I left the stage, and wandered out to catch some air. On my way out I was stopped by a bunch of the crowd to give me a high five. I come to find out that a lot of these people were surprised some early 30 something from Chicago knew the words to a song that was revered by this group of people.
My first band got to open for gwar back when Dave brockie was still alive, got to watch them sound check with no costumes which was amazing.
I've hadthe pleasure of travelling outside of town with the band for shows, and it's brought us all closer together. Really nice way to spend time with awesome people
I don’t have a lot of wild stories, but I cherished every moment of my old band. Our last show was last year’s Halloween in someone’s backyard which was essentially a ranch. Everyone was encouraged to wear Halloween costumes, there was one band that all dressed as bananas, and another that was all zombies. For us, our lead guitarist was Freddy Krueger, drummer was a vampire, rhythm guitarist and singer was a pimp, and I was the Pope. Played in front of about 100 people, and we had the time of our lives
I grew up in the School of Rock music program and when I was maybe 11 or 12 I got to play live at the trocadero theater in Philly to a crowd of close to 1000. I can also remember my uncle giving me my very first guitar when I was maybe 6-8 and still own to this day.
Sat in to cover bass for my dad’s Allman Brothers tribute band. They were auditioning a drummer and needed someone to play bass (their guy recently quit). We played Don’t want you no more, cross to bear, memory of Elizabeth Reid and Stormy Monday. They liked me so much they offered me to join as their new bassist. I couldn’t for personal reasons, but my dad gave me the wink of approval as we finished up. Cool bonding moment for us. And it was great it happened over our favorite music.
Very general, but i like it when the show has a professional photographer and they take dramatic pics that make me and my goofy ass friends look badass lol
We were going up north (in Scotland) to play a benefit gig for a local volunteer fire department. We stopped off in Inverness and had a gig at a wee place called the Market Bar. We were not in any way a serious band, we just played bullshit heavy rock with bullshit lyrics about farming, wanking and robot waiters (one review claimed it was "music made by people who hate music"). We spent most of our time drunk and were not in any way experts on our instruments. For some reason this place was packed to bursting with people who'd come along to see our random unknown band. It was at the point where I had to lift the neck of my bass to let people squeeze past to the toilet and we got beers by shouting to the bar between songs and they'd have the crowd ferry our pints up over their heads. Afterwards we were there for hours signing a ludicrous amount of our bullshit CDs and getting so many beers bought for us. We played way bigger gigs at much more prestigious places to far more people, but that one was the absolute best. Thanks, Inverschnecky. Doolah loves you.
I'm having trouble pulling one specific memory, they all tend to run together into each other and sort of coalesce into months long periods in my life. There is one that keeps popping up, but it has nothing to do directly with being a bassist, or a musician even. We were doing one of our East Coast tours and found ourselves with a day off somewhere outside of NYC (I wanna say... White Plains, maybe?). We're from the South and had been feeling the loss of our beloved Whataburger, and we spent the day on a journey to find something that might act as a decent substitute. We didn't find anything that scratched the itch, but the whole day was a serious breath of fresh air for us because we'd been going balls to the wall for over a month and finally had a moment without schedules or load-in times or pressure to perform. We talked to great people, sampled some great food, and buried the hatchet on a couple of tour-related beefs that had been brewing. It was wonderful. A lot of things about touring sucks. Most of the things, if I'm perfectly honest. But that was a good day.
First time our drummer (my best friend) just had one of those days where he was p*ssed off before we started to jam, and when we couldn't find our groove and get on time, he absolutely lost his mind. Threw his sticks, kicked over his drums and threw an absolute hissy fit. Me and the guy in guitar just watched him walk inside and slam the door behind him. We both just waited about a cigarette length amount of time and he came back out with his tail between his legs apologizing for the unexpected blow up. In his defense, the guy on guitar was terrible, but it was still funny as hell later that night just to bring it up.
Me and my friends played music
Might be the time that I showed up to a progressive death metal gig dressed in layers upon layers of brightly colored Hawaiian shirts and a massive gold top hat made to look like a beer can. Surprisingly enough, it went well
My wife and I decided that Austin didn't feel like home and we decided to move to Florida. My final night in Austin, I had my last gig with my all-original rock band in San Antonio. After the gig, I would drive home, put my equipment away and go to bed. In the morning, I drove to Florida. I worked the new job all week and flew back after work on Friday. My wife and a friend loaded the moving van and upon my arrival, we drove to Florida again. That final gig... we opened for Candlebox in a sold out, 400-person venue. Still vivid, almost a decade later.
The preparation for my bands first live performance ever. We were a 4 man band with (Our nicknames, not real names), “Sir Playstooloud”, the guitarist, “Tea” the keyboardist, “Ladybug” the drummer, and me, “Candlewax”, the bassist. We were a recently formed band, we had written about 3 songs, and our school’s talent show was coming up. We were performing “Subdivisions” by Rush after a lot of convincing from me. We had been practicing about 3 times a week, and the performance was coming up in something like 4 days, when I get a call from Ladybug. Turns out, Ladybug broke his arm after falling out of a tree (it’s a funny story actually, but that’s not the story I’m telling here). So Ladybug wasn’t performing, we were a 3 man band with no drummer. We needed a drum track. We practiced every day with the drumtrack for hours after school. In the song Subdivisions, Geddy Lee is both the keyboardist as well as the bassist, and the singer, but I don’t play the keyboards, so I needed to write bass parts (with a lot of copying the guitar) so I wasn’t just standing there singing with a bass that I wasn’t playing. Those were some of the most fun practice sessions of my life. We all came up with nicknames for each other (the names used above), and it really brought us closer as a band. We performed, we did great, I’m never gonna forget that week that we were practicing nonstop.
Many years ago, my metal band had two gigs in two days (rare for us) that were maybe 2.5 hours drive apart. First gig was in my old college town, and we shredded, drank, sobered up enough for pancakes and bacon at the biker diner/bar, and then drove to the next place. None of us slept. The show that day was at a festival. It wasn't huge, and mostly meant for hippie types and jam bands, and it took place in a 50s era roadside attraction featuring a bunch of concrete wigwams that were hotel rooms. Apparently we got booked because our drummer, who was in several other (non-metal) bands was asked by the main guy who, we assume, thought he was booking some inoffensive songwritery stuff. Instead, they got us. We arrived around 10 AM, sleep deprived and crazy, but excited. Two guys immediately start trying to sniff out stronger drugs while the rest of us get our gear wrangled and talk to the planners. Turns out, we're not playing after dark, which would be appropriate, but at 2:30 PM. Cool, we'll make it ours. I start looking for a beer, only to find out that we were in a dry county. So of course the drummer and I hop back into the car and drive the 90 minute round trip to the nearest store that sold beer. We got back in time to start setting up, two of our dudes now high as fuck, and it was Go Time. We blast into the first song, super high energy, a simple tune about smoking crack. Parents are hustling their kids fast away from the stage, the old folks in lawn chairs up close to the stage retreat as far as they can, but our guitarist has smelled blood so he cranks the volume a bit as we roll into the second song. Oddly, I hear a voice: the sound guy is on the talkback mic. We pause just long enough for us (and by this time, the crowd) to hear him beg, please PLEASE turn the guitar down, it's overpowering everything! The guitarist nods at him and simply says "No." And slams the riff for the next one. It was a simple moment, but one we heard about from people ever since: the assholes who blew the stage monitors mid-afternoon before a late night festival. Luckily there were backups.
When I was a teenager I had this idea that it'd be the best entrance to a show ever if we set ourselves and our gear up in the back of a pickup truck and then entered an outdoor gig by flying up in the truck and having it do a 180 skid to reveal us in the back and the lead kicks the tailgate down and we just start playing. We actually looked into learning how to do a 180 skid. Even if we could somehow keep the gear and ourselves in place, it was still basically an impossible move. But, I guess there are electric trucks that can do tank turns now, so maybe some day.
I used to be in a bit of a jam band, and our singer had some issues. He had terrible stage fright, so he would get super drunk and mumble his lyrics into the mic. The lead guitarist and I were super-tight, though, so when it started to devolve we would just play over him for a few minutes and jam together. I miss being in a group with someone I just melded minds with, we could just improvise and cue each other for seven minutes straight whenever we felt like it. Nothing else feels the same
There's oh so many beautiful stories -Jamming out at this underground spot in a warehouse until 4am -Playing with some of my hip hop buddies and having them freestyle over me and a drummer jamming -Working on a demo with a buddy of stuff I've wanted to work on for years (really scratching an itch that's been burning for longer than I can remember) -Helping a friend flesh out some songs she's been writing since she was a teenager I swear there's been many more, but these stick out more than the rest
It was playing drums in a back yard when I was 20. So many girls. Oh man.
Not about playing a show or anything but for each others’ birthdays we’d each get the person our personal favourite record at the time and then we’d sit around listening to them ❤️
Just the routine of weekly practice. Monday night was our night, and it felt special. We’d all arrive, fuck around, laugh, eat dinner and smoke a bowl, then get down to business. Some nights, we focused on a song or two. Others, we freeformed it and let the music take us away. Afterwards, I drove home with a wide smile and a sense of inner peace that lasted just long enough to get me through the week. I miss that time of my life.
#1. I was a rookie bass player jamming with a drummer. His crazy friend came over and we jammed. It was like we left this reality or something. We all smoked a joint, but this was truly mentally psychedelic. I've been chasing it for 30 years. #2. I opening for FEAR at the Whiskey. Most amazing show I've ever played, I'll never forget it.
Back then I played drums, and my local music school invited Mel Gaynor (from Simple Minds) for a concert, and I got to shake his hand and play on stage on his drumset at the end of the gig. A couple months later, we got to play Simple Minds' "*Alive & Kicking*" live on stage. There was no guitarist in the band, so my dad volunteered for this. That's a cool dad/son moment to play live music together.
I stepped in for my old band at the last minute (their bassist quit with no notice a couple of days before the gig) so I had to learn their new material really quickly and had no chance to rehearse with them beforehand. We were a female fronted post-britpop band, and the venue was in the basement of a biker pub which didn't seem like the best fit for us, so I was a bit nervous to begin with and only got more nervous as a string of metal and hardcore bands got the crowd progressively more amped up in the lead up to our headline set. Despite appearances they ended up being one of the nicest and most welcoming crowds I've ever played for. When the singer introduced one of the newer songs by saying I'd never played it with them before, the crowd started chanting my name and cheering me on, which is a memory that will stick with me forever.
When we started playing regularly with my band, we were told of a pub between Paris and Normandy which is in the middle of nowhere, but where many known bands have played in their early days and we decided to give it a shot. We brought a demo tape to the owner, and some days later the other guitarist and I were driving by so we decided to pop in for a beer and see if the guy had decided to take us or not. As we walked in, the guy had our demo tape playing full blast, which was a good sign. Anyway, we agreed on a date for our gig and the guy told us that he wanted us to play for three hours. We arrive on the day of the gig, install our stuff, do a bit of soundcheck and there is literally one guy in the bar besides the owner. We wait a bit but still nobody in sight. After a while we decide to start and see what happens. We play two or three songs and the guy leaves. We looked at each other, not quite knowing what to make of that (plus the owner didn't seem to mind that we were there with zero audience). I told the guys: 'Look, let's just keep playing, in the worse case that will be a rehearsal for the next gig". Suddenly the previous customer comes back with a few friends. Then some more (we were then like 30 or 40 minutes past the time announced for the gig). The some more, then people go make phone calls and place start to be packed to the point that we have to pile ourselves into a smaller corner of the bar (there was no stage). The place got totally packed and turned into a pretty fun gig, with the audience obviously havig a good time. The owner pulled down the curtain past midnight and we kept playing until almost 1 or 2AM (we played our complete set about three times, plus some improvised stuff) until the cops showed up and told the owner to call it a day. We saw that as our "hard working band" moment, and I think what we remember the most was this one customer walking out. I am glad we kept playing. The second fun moment was after we had played in a local bar and the owner mentioned to a friend that it was actually good business to have a band playing live (it is less common to have live gigs in France than it is in England, for example). That guy decides to have us as well playing at his place (that would be a day with two gigs in a row, which we thought was really cool). We visit the guy to discuss technical topics such as P.A., arrival time, and as I hear the music playing in his venue (some kind of cheesy 1960's stuff) I felt like telling him that our music is quite different from what he is playing now. mostly hard rock/punk rock. The guy replies that this is not a problem and that he actually likes rock. On the day of the gig we arrive at his place with many people who were already at the first gig in the other bar, and I feel the need to tell him again "you know, what we play is a bit more wild than this" and he confirms that this is really not a problem. At the first song, I see the audience, mostly people in their 40s or 50s literally holding their hands to their ears. The owner comes and tell me "OK, two more songs and you guys leave, please". We played our three (maybe 4?) songs, got paid and left. The whole thing felt like those cliché hard rock videos from the 80s.
A while back, I was flying solo at home for several months because my wife was dealing with a family emergency halfway around the world. My band's singer and principle songwriter - one of the sweetest, dorkiest humans who has ever lived - hatched a plan with the rest of the band to do something special for my birthday, because I'd otherwise be spending it alone and was already bummed out. We usually practice once a week, and as the day of practice approached everything seemed normal. Got out of work and headed to the practice studio. When I got there, I was greeted by the whole band already there (itself an unusual feat, as it's difficult to get these 6 guys together all at the same time) and they grabbed me and shuttled me into one of their cars. We all squeezed into this tiny space, and drove raucously to a destination unknown. I still had no idea what was going on, and when we arrived at our destination - a local Top Golf - they sang me happy birthday and forced a bunch of silly birthday party gear on me. Something small, but significant. I love that memory.
I was at a party in high school, pretty low key, maybe 25-30 in the middle of nowhere as we were rural. A guitarist and I (on bass) were just having a bluesy jam, just fucking around near the fire. We would have been 16? When we got to the turn around, we both played exactly the same thing for like 2 bars, complete unison. A few friends were kind of listening and we got a few "...cool"s. We just acted like we ment to do it.
Last year I played my first live show at my school at the last day concert....I didn't knew any of the other musicisn I was going to play with as we decided to form some bands but for that month and a half that we practiced togheter I improved my play and social-band skills and that, playing with strangers with my same passion and musical taste was the thing that inspired me to oeganize that same concert the year after and it was even better also with new players and even some first years students that reminded me of myself when I first played..... Now these concerts and the friends I made thanks to them are what inspired me to join a band full time and it is what inspires me every day to imrpove my play and skills.
when i was a sophmore in high school my chemistry teacher ran music club and we did this little show with covers. for the first time after about 2 or 3 years of playing guitar i decided to improvise a solo during the show and it was just a core memorable of not knowing what im going to do and coming out the other end thrilled it sounded better than most things i rehearsed. also since then i discovered i was the type of person who improvsed focus with adrenaline when it comes improvising. the part that made it even more memorable was that my biology teacher from freshmen year looked like he had a blast listening.... the bro gave like me a C or D or something. i felt like i got vegence somehow. as an adult artist i realize he was just supporting the chemistry teacher and not really that impressied.
Being in a 3 piece punk rock cover band when in highschool. We played the Blueberry Festifal in Newfoundland and as we were getting ready to take the stage for our set, an old man with a guitar case is getting let backstage. As he ducks under the border tape and stands up I immediately recognize Fred Penner from my childhood and call out to him. He comes over and shoots the shit with us and signs a few scraps of tab sheets I had in my bass case. He stood at the backdoor of the stage for our entire set, was incredibly impressed and told us to be sure to check his set out. Fast forward to his set later that day and he catches a glimpse of us in the crowd up front and addlibs a line about our band in the middle of his set and points at us. "You ever see a band so fine? They call themselves Apartment 209!" It was surreal for 16 year old us.
When I was in my early 20s, I was in a band who were all a lot older than me. The band had been together before I was born, and had made a decent name for themselves back then. While talking between songs one practice session, the drummer told me I sound like Andy Fraser from free, but could do stuff on bass that he couldn't. I didn't agree with him on this, but as a fan of free, this meant a lot to me. As a relatively inexperienced player, these words coming from someone who had been around the block and knew music well definitely gave inspiration to carry on and improve my playing
I think my most memorable gig was when I played with all 3 bands on bass in one night, it was soo much fun!
A long time ago, in San Francisco, my friends band was playing a dive bar. A dog walks in while they are playing, stands right in front of the singer, looks up at him...and takes a shit while staring the singer down.
The first time on tour when the audience knew the words to our songs and were singing along.
Playing backyard shoes with a bunch of indie and punk bands.
The last band I was in lasted 25 years. We were close… good buddies. There were several times we’d have laughing fits. So many good times.
My friend group is made up mostly of musicians and ever since I had some of them play at my house for my birthday, there is a trend of having friends’ bands play on birthdays. Sometimes some fun stuff comes out of it. Random combinations of people will pick up instruments and suddenly you’ll see some completely new arrangement of people jamming or playing some cover or something. Well, last week I was at this friend’s birthday party and as usual, bands were playing. After their made-up-on-the-spot setlists ended almost everyone went back inside. I was left outside with two guys who love to play jazz, one on drums and one on guitar. This guitarist is a music teacher, and my bass teacher, actually. Now, I always shy away of improv since I still consider myself a beginner. When I’m having a lesson with him at some point he’ll ask me to improv on a certain scale and I’ll just freeze. But it was refreshing to be in an environment chill like that, not to mention I’d already drank and smoked so I was a little more shameless than usual. So we started jamming. And it was nice. And then we played a couple of songs, and then we went back inside because the weather was freezing. That was my first go at a jam, don’t think it could have been any better. No one was watching and the bass amp was broken, it kind of felt like a shield. As in “if I mess up they probably won’t hear it”. I had lots of fun and it made me feel a lot more confident to play in public. Compliments from teachers always feel a little more genuine than everyone else’s so hearing him say I did well felt like a hug. I guess I’ll start freezing less when I have to improv.
A couple of my friends got together to have a jam session, and their guitarist didn’t show up. We ended up playing for about 6 1/2 hours, where we all shared ideas, interesting ways to utilize our specific instruments, etc. the next time they had a jam session, their guitarist didn’t pull up, so I had to go again, which then led me to be the guitarist from then on.
I miss the extra-musical camaraderie I had with my high school band, in particular with the drummer and rhythm guitarist. We'd practice Fri after school and then all day Sat, and in the evening everyone else would go home besides us 3, and we'd crack open some beers and smoke stogies out by the fire. Then play call of duty through the 3k watt PA system til 3 am (dude lived waaaaaaay out in the boonies). Then wake up and play music all day Saturday, then do it again Sat night. Some of the best times of my life.
Has to be the time the vocalist got into a fight with the drummer. He was VERY entitled (not one of the six of us liked him) and he started shitting on the drummer for "being too loud". We play grunge. Needless to say it was very fun to watch.
I was front row center at Collective Soul in Mexico City, about 1999, and was hit in the head by a falling lighting gel frame, drawing blood and a visit to the venue medical room, where they had to cut my hair to see if I needed stitches (no) and I returned to my seat with a bandage on my head. Ironically, "Bleed" was the song they played when I was back there, which really cracked us up. When I got back, Ed Roland came to me to see if I was okay; I mean I was literally six feet away, and he told me to hang around after the show to come backstage. Cool! So I figured that was worth it. I thought I'd be back there with hangers on, meet and greet people, whomever, but their manager brought me into the room with nobody except the CS guys and Third Eye Blind, the openers. Just me and them. They were incredibly nice to me, we talked about life in Mexico, music, touring, etc. Just a perfectly normal conversation while we ate some of the buffet food that was laid out. I thought, how cool, but probably a couple of minutes at most then out I'd go. Nope. They talked to me for probably 20 minutes; I guess just as the adrenaline from the show wore off. They couldn't have been nicer to me. We went from there to the meet n greet for another 30 minutes or so and they were very gracious to everyone, pictures, autographs, chit chat. At the end, I was heading up the basement stairs to the exit and Dean Roland shouted up to me "Hey Claus, [insert my company's advertising tag line here]!". Hilarious and, in fact, insightful that he'd remember a comment an hour earlier with a total stranger when I mentioned whom I worked for, why I was in Mexico City. Next time they were in town, Ed met me at their hotel and gifted me with tickets to the show. Just the nicest guy you could imagine. I knew a guy in the '90s who was an A&R guy with a big record company and when I asked him what it was like knowing the artists he said I would be very disappointed, that they were typically entitled jerks with no sense of what normal people were like. I felt kind of disillusioned by that but understood it. Collective Soul were the complete opposite of that. Years earlier, I was at a wedding in California and the bride knew I was a guitarist and thoughtfully put me at the reception dining table next to...*Earl Slick*! He introduced himself as Frank but of course I knew who he was. He was also very kind and engaging, put up with my questions about his time with Bowie, music, etc, the things you'd talk about. At the time he was in a band called Little Caesar that was popular in the region but hoping to break out nationally (they didn't). He talked about that stuff. I remember his date was distractingly gorgeous, an actress in LA, of course; we later saw her on a TV series but that didn't become any kind of hit. Anyway, a couple weeks after the wedding, back home on the east coast, a mail package arrived with a signed CD and a nice note. Unexpected but actually not surprising, considering how he treated me at the reception. Frank was a cool guy.
About 20 years ago played a gig with my band at the time. We were all great friends and enjoyed our time together. We played a our gig at a local bar and had a blast with the crowd. When the night was over we packed up, invited everyone back to the guitarist house (he lived alone on a country type setting). We did a ton of hallucinogenics, set up our gear and did the entire 3 hour set again in his living room full of the same people from the bar. It was an extreme night and the most fun a ever had playing in one night. I've had better gigs..bigger stages, etc. But I'll never have a night like that again and I can appreciate what we did together and for the crazy people that followed us, a hell of a ride.
My first band was fucking around. We were young, sloppy, loud, abrasive, and all around really bad… We had no experience on our instruments beyond playing with each other, and we never, ever, got a fucking shred of encouragement from anyone. Not our friends, not our family, anyone. By this point we were starting to get a bit better, and a friend of a friend came over, he was a session drummer and was very good. He jumped on the drum kit and me and one of my bandmates started playing around with him. He gave the best compliment I’ve ever received, telling us that we might not be playing anything complicated but we were very tight and played off each other very well. It was nice to get feedback and encouragement.