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Mar 14th, 2005 10:23 AM
slavemason Friday's gig at Fred's Speak Easy (Asheville NC) went well enough. Though I think "Sweet Titty" didn't go over as well in their liberal arts community as it usually does in our grease-pit hick town.

We get to play with Trevor Dunn this Wednesday, which should be entertaining. Bass wizardry on the upright bass is always a treat.
Mar 9th, 2005 06:23 PM
soundtest We played a couple of weeks ago. Turnout was the biggest yet but FUCK almost everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, at least for me.

First of all, my bass is a piece of shit... I plug into the bar's amp and play... no sound. Ok, check levels... still no sound... My bass is flakey so I thought that the input had just decided to die at that perfect moment. I switch and use the other band's bass. Great! Got sound... then it cuts out 2 seconds later... shit. Maybe it's my pedal? Battery dying? Doesn't really make sense but sure.. I go direct. Sound? Yes.. We start playing... halfway through the first song I have no sound again. FUCK. 3 songs in we stop and switch bass amps. After that it was alright, but what a load of shit.
Mar 9th, 2005 02:39 PM
slavemason Last weekend we played in Clemson SC at the Joint. It usually has a pretty good crowd but for some reason the place was empty. We later found out that the "Girls Gone Wild" crew were in town at some other bar.

In short, practice all you want but in the end, titties win.
Feb 28th, 2005 01:28 PM
bigtimecow my band's last gig was quite awhile ago, but we're playing a show april 23rd so that'll be good. anyway, it was at this place called drifters in new hampshire and it fucking sucks. the shows there are good (atleast the bands are), the venue's great, but the owner is a douche bag. for one, he brings his like 1 year old kid to every show, so we can't swear or anything. (mind you, he could leave the kid at home with his wife/girlfriend [not sure] but of course, she must come as well). so yeah, the owner, christian, is a faggot. but anywho. we played with our best friends pretty much: on a mission, ransom note, and the virgin suicides. but we played second to last and we did pretty damn good. i got ill sweaty, like, sweatier than usual. so did matt (bass) and shaun (guitar). we played almost all of our songs i think, and we sold a good amount of cd's and crap. but yeah, the show was great. when the virgin suicides went on almost nobody watched them, and there was this big like 10 minutes intermission in the middle of a song because nick had to tune his guitar or something. i dunno, they weren't that great. but yeah, the show was a blast. (and that band ransom note lives in the middle of nowhere [i forget] so it was pretty sweet having them come out and play with us cause they want us so bad). yeah, there's my story. eat shit.
Feb 20th, 2005 12:04 AM
Ninjavenom hahaha : (
Feb 19th, 2005 09:53 PM
soundtest no but we suck dick like real fags
Feb 19th, 2005 07:37 PM
executioneer
Quote:
and now we are known as "FAKE BLOOD".
are you scary like the real thing
Feb 19th, 2005 06:50 PM
liquidstatik I want to hear Helm's band.
Feb 19th, 2005 06:46 PM
slavemason Last night's gig was damn fun. It was in Asheville, NC at a sushi bar called Akumi. Our performance wasn't flawless but it rarely is. I'm not good at estimating head counts but fifty to seventy sounds like a safe bet. We were well received and have another gig there in April.
Tomorrow we head up to Charlotte, NC at the Milestone with several other two-piece bands. I could use more weekends like this one.

http://solidgoldempire.com/
Feb 15th, 2005 02:07 PM
soundtest Imo fucking up sucks

if anything I've ever said is sig-worthy, it's that
Feb 15th, 2005 02:04 PM
soundtest The first time we played live we had a pretty major fuck-up... we each had a set list, but each with a different revision of it - twice we ended up all starting a different song.

After that we made a rule. Make sure we're all looking at the same set list lol and unless it's absolutely impossible, do not stop playing while we attempt to recover (i.e. Helm's point about going back to a main riff). More importantly though, we try not to show that we've fucked up and especially not get pissed off and upset about it! As an audience member, I've seen some bands where members get furious with each other for minor fuck ups, and I felt embarassed for them because they made it an issue. The irony is that it's usually fuck ups only they notice. Imo fucking up sucks, but making a scene and dwelling on it is 100 times worse. If you just laugh it off and not take yourself too seriously it's not that bad, and you don't drag the audience into band drama.

We have a show coming up at the end of this month... and now we are known as "FAKE BLOOD".

my suggestion of "IMMIGRANTS TAKING YOUR JOBS AND WOMEN" for a band name was turned down 2 to 1
Feb 15th, 2005 01:24 PM
slavemason The only time I can think of nearly losing my shit while playing would have been when I played double bass with an acoustic group called Ted Tourette and the Hushpuppies. We played the usual bluegrass, country, ragtime, Irish drinking tunes, and the like.

Most of the time we just played for beer (which turned out to be the best paying gig I've ever had). Well one gig, we were going for broke and we were all pretty shitty. Someone requested "Cripple Creek" but our banjo picker didn't know it. But he quickly reminded the rest of the guys that I knew how to play it.

Well I'm not that good on banjo. I can only play two or three songs and the rest of the time I try to play blues on it because my fingers get confused. Right hand hauling ass, left hand pretty much rooted on a chord.

Needless to say that I butchered it. "Crippled Creek" never sounded so crippled. The guy who requested the song just sat there with a puzzled look on his face. The rest of the band was cracking up. We enjoyed ourselves and didn't really care what people thought. We encouraged people to adopt the way of the tourette and blurt out whatever was on the their minds. Expletives were frequent and appreciated.

Hot damn! Two gigs this weekend, with the rock band!
Feb 14th, 2005 06:06 PM
adept_ninja Doom metal is awesome in the sense like grindcore you could mess up alot and most people wouldnt notice. Im sure even the big bands like shape of dispair just improvise every once in a while. No ones gonna say "hey when you were 8 min into the song you played the riff your suppose to play at the 10 min mark"
Feb 14th, 2005 04:33 PM
Helm haha that bass player stood no chance.

I operate under the dictum that when things go to hell, you go back to basics. If somebody's playing something wrong while you're supposed to lead off it, go back to playing the main riff. Stop singing if you sing, stop doing everything and go back to the main riff. If at least ONE guy stables out, other people will be anchored in. But then again, I've only played doom metal live, and it's so slow nobody actually messes up in a way that the audience can understand.
Feb 14th, 2005 02:56 PM
sspadowsky
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronnie Raygun
"Musicians are, by nature, thieves. What we know, write, and play, is nothing more than a composite of what other artists have done." - Spad

Sometimes that can be really shitty when you have no creativity of your own but I think it's important to learn from what other people have done and improve yourself...
Exactly.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About ten years ago, my old band was playing its second show ever. Due to a major fiasco that's a whole story in itself, we shitcanned our original drummer before we ever played our first show. Due to our first show going well, despite having a fill-in drummer, we were offered another gig at the same club. However, we had to find another guy to fill in on drums. So, through a friend, we found a guy who was an excellent drummer.

And he knew he was excellent. So much so, in fact, that he didn't feel compelled to show up for most of the rehearsals.

So, did we cancel the show and wait until we found a permanent guy? Of course not.

We go over the songs pretty thoroughly with the drummer a few days before the show, and it seems to go OK. We're pretty sure we can pull it off.

Showtime. The first few songs go fine. But my throat is getting pretty dry after about the fourth song, and I can't find my water. Still, we press on. The next song contains a pretty high note, which I can hit when my throat is not like the Mojave. I go for it. It comes out sounding like someone punched me in the throat. There's no way to disguise it.

Everything falls apart after that. The drummer starts forgetting shit. The other guitar player hits 'bypass' on his effects unit, so a heavy metal song now sounds like it's 'MTV Unplugged.'

On the last song, which is a pretty quick number with a lot of double bass, things go to hell quickly. We open strong, but when it gets to the first verse, the drummer breaks into this weird, slow kind of shuffle beat (the beat and tempo are not supposed to change). It's challenging to sing and play guitar at the same time under normal circumstances, but now I'm trying to do it while playing out-of-time and panicking like hell.

We manage to make it through the verse, and I turn around and start screaming at the drummer, "FOUR-FOUR! FOUR-FOUR!" He looks at me for a moment like I'm speaking Japanese, and then he figures it out and gets back to the right beat.

Toward the end of the song, it's supposed to break down to just a bass line. I visually cue the drummer, and rather than smoothly roll into it, we grind to a screeching halt. Our bass player, completely lost, hits one lonely, tentative note: *THUNK*

We get the hell off the stage as quickly as possible.

Thank you, and good night.
Feb 12th, 2005 01:45 PM
Ronnie Raygun "Musicians are, by nature, thieves. What we know, write, and play, is nothing more than a composite of what other artists have done." - Spad

Sometimes that can be really shitty when you have no creativity of your own but I think it's important to learn from what other people have done and improve yourself...
Jan 14th, 2005 09:35 PM
Ninjavenom gimme gimme gimme
Jan 14th, 2005 07:48 PM
Helm No live stories with this band I'm in right now yet but since last night was the most awesome rehersal ever I'll tell you a few (boring) things about that instead ok?

So the drummer was really irritated at something but nobody else noticed and we thought it was our best rehersal so far so much that we were kinda let down the monitor guy messed up the recording (note to people rehersing: record as many sessions as possible). Anyway we hadn't played in a month and it turned out everybody was charged due to that. I was almost error-free which is really really rare with me. I decided to improvise almost all my takes on the second time through the songs with some pretty interesting results. I basically introduced a new theme in the middle of this song and the other guitarist (it's two guitarists, a vocalist and a drummer. Who needs a bassist when you're playing through a bass amp head?) looked at me and slowly twisted his playing around the new theme and we ended up jamming the song to hell for 20 minutes. Much semi-soloing ensued, trade-offs, a thrash polka beat that escalated to a full-blown blastbeat noisefest.

It was ace. Usually we're pretty restrained, we play our songs and fix the wrong bits, but last night was different. The other guitarist played his new song for us and by the second time through the riffs I was already figuring out my counterpoint. By the end of that song there's this really slow doomy part and by accident I accented in synchopation and the thing sounded like an earthquake. The drummer kept adding to the dynamics on the overhead and adding and adding and the thing basically exploded and I was left alone playing the lurking melody for 3 measures in a sea of background screams, cymbals and guitar feedback.

I haven't had so much fun in a rehersal since forever. Seriously, if there was an audience, I'm sure they couldn't tell it was mostly improv material.
Jan 14th, 2005 04:40 PM
opel I'm still listening :/ but I quit this site and am hiding in shame Rock on!!!
Jan 14th, 2005 03:55 PM
slavemason I ran across this sinker while looking for a link to some netradio sites, damn search function doesn't work.

Anyway, our last gig was New Years Eve at Ground Zero again. We were lumped in with a bunch of metal bands, again. Somehow we got the prime slot, finishing just before midnight. I was surprised by how well we were received. It was definitely the biggest crowd we've played for.

I just remembered that one gig since then at the coffee house in Charlotte NC. It was disappointingly empty. The Ethiopian bread was the highlight of the evening.

We get to play with Jucifer at the end of this month and hopefully with Sleepytime Gorilla Museum in Atlanta next month.

I hate booking and hate booking agents even more.

Have the rest of you quit or just lost interest in this thread?
Oct 30th, 2004 03:49 AM
sspadowsky My thoughts on the "cover band" thing: Cover bands, in general, suck. However, I've seen some good ones. Any time you can hear a cover band pull off Rush when the drummer has a 5- or 6-piece set, you're seeing a good cover band.

I think that knowing other peoples' songs is a good and healthy thing. It lends perspective to songwriting. Musicians are, by nature, thieves. What we know, write, and play, is nothing more than a composite of what other artists have done. Knowing what other artists play, and how they play it, shows a true understanding of, and appreciation for, good music. By all means, learn other stuff. But if you're making a living being known as "the world's greatest Pink Floyd tribute band," then, yes, they're warming up a special place in hell just for you.
Oct 30th, 2004 02:54 AM
Pyorrhea i dont gig yet
Oct 27th, 2004 12:16 PM
slavemason
Quote:
Originally Posted by *FARTINMOWLER*
I quit my cover band :/ I suck
I hate to say it but, GOOD! Hopefully you'll find some folk that play the kind of stuff you're interested in.

To each his own, but I just don't understand why anyone would go to the trouble of learning to play an instrument to simply play somebody else's songs. To me, it usually means that there is not one creative person in the band or else they just want to sleep with a different intoxicated slot each weekend. That or they just love "Freebird".

I have no gig this weekend. Next gig is Sat. Nov 6th at the Milestone in Charlotte NC. Any mockers in the neighborhood should come out. The Milestone is a rock and roll dump in the middle of crack town. I can hardly wait. http://solidgoldempire.com
Oct 27th, 2004 06:16 AM
Dole
Quote:
How about a link to some of this madness?
Our website is being done at the mo
Oct 26th, 2004 08:28 PM
soundtest no groupies this time so i was let down (can't win 'em all my name is not matt harty after all!)

turnout was alright, but we've had better.. we were on second and there were at least 3 times as many people in the place when we went on than when the first 2 bands were on, which was a good sign... although the majority of them were our friends
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