Gig Sunday

JustJames

JustJames

Platinum Member
In this company, it's very small beer, but it pleases me all the same.

My band is playing a 30 minute set at my kid's school spring fair on Sunday afternoon.

I'm looking forward to it immensely, and have been hitting stuff pretty much every evening this week.

Blinding flash of the obvious: Playing every evening, even for a little, as opposed to my usual routine of only playing with the band, has brought my playing up a notch. I feel way more in control, in the groove and relaxed. Odd really 'cause I always felt like things were under control.

So, practising improves playing...who knew?
 
JustJames said:
So, practising improves playing...who knew?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've heard that it does.
And someday I'm gonna' start practicing; as soon as I have a reason to do so.


.
 
I always say I think 30 minutes every day is better than 60 minutes every other day. Our brains like things repeated daily, we get better at things we do every day rather quickly, and it seems like there's less "warmup" time needed to play well.
 
So the kids' school fair:

Death metal? A Wiggles set? Prog Rock? Classic 80's? 2015 Pop?

I played a bracket at a high school fair earlier this year and we tried to do 2/3 songs for each age group, inc. Beatles, Abba, Smooth, Livin La Vida Loca, Sway, plus Uptown Funk, Shake it Off & All about that Bass.

Bit of an odd mix really, but it went down well, and we got a couple of paid gigs from it - a 50th and a 60th birhday party.
 
Wiggles songs re-interpreted in death metal stoner jazz rap style, with interpretive dance.

OK, I'm fibbing. Gentle blues/jazzy start getting into standard garage/pub band classic rock stuff.

The biggest challenge I can see is that we are the only rock band performing, so getting levels right will be interesting. We'll play a short 12 bar blues while a friendly person signals whose volume needs to move up or down.

Very much hoping to get some future gigs out of this.
 
It's generally families that come along.

The kids go feral, riding the rides and dosing up on high sugar, high fat content high fun non-foods and fizzy drinks.

The parents, in between running stalls, setting up school bands and BBQing high fat content high fun non-foods, socialise, possibly with the aid of grape or hops-based products. It's acshly a pretty fun day.

We're the last band up, so we have the possibility of earning an encore. For which we will rely heavily on the aid of grape and hops-based products.
 
Know that I am waving my underwear at you from a VERY safe distance ;)
 
Brief gig report:

We were the last act to play, and while we were setting up the school's band equipment was being removed back to the band room, which meant that I kept having to chase down my cymbals which over-zealous helpers kept removing. I had to retrieve my hi hats twice!

Our songs went pretty smoothly. Sure there were mistakes, but no train wrecks. I had a stick go flying out of my hand, but swapped hands to keep the groove going and picked up a spare. None of my bandmates even realised I'd lost half my wood for a few beats. Honestly this has never happened to me before...it must be stress.

Being the last act up meant that we had a very sparse crowd, but WE had fun. It was our first time out since replacing our rhythm guitarist, and we all worked well together as a band, so...good day out!
 
JustJames said:
Being the last act up meant that we had a very sparse crowd, but WE had fun. It was our first time out since replacing our rhythm guitarist, and we all worked well together as a band, so...good day out!
Click to expand...

Cool, you had FUN... that's nice to hear... and well done for the stick drop, if they didn't noticed it means you did a good job recovering :)
 
Been on pins wondering how it went. I'm really glad your new guitarist has settled in so well. I like him: his sense of humour, God help us, seems to fit nicely with yours!

Next gig in October? Crikey. No fair! I have noffing in the offing until next bloody August.

Any photos, artistic or otherwise, btw?
 
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