Welcome to Gaia! ::

Playing live for the first time at last year's talent show. God, I was nervous, sweating, and I sucked, but I know that when I'm better and older, I'll be laughing at myself.

There's gonna be a lot of posts in this thread saying "first gig" I imagine. Mines not unlike it either.

It's not my first gig, but one of the firsts. It was a "Battle of the Bands" show between all the local schools. Thing is we were the only band playing, all the rest were female solo artists and a backing track...

We knew we weren't gonna win judging from the competition, so we just thought ******** it! And played for the sheer hell of it. There was quite a small crowd, no more than 50/60, but it was still (two years later) the most fun gig I've ever played. What's more we were on fire, we literally nailed every song, and were jumping round the stage like a bunch of ferrets on speed. I'll never forget that night.

Either that or a gig with another band last year, was the finale to another Battle of the Bands like thing. Though this one much more official, all the best new bands from miles around played. 40 bands entered and we came 3rd overall. Not bad in my opinion. But for this particular gig, we must have been playing in front of 400 people. Was an AWESOME night. >.<

I brought my guitar to school for the first time and learned that all the rumors about getting chicks were true. I'm a pretty unpopular dude who accidentally annoys cheerleaders (then intentionally annoys if they're real cruel to me) but all of them suddenly forgot everything they hated about me when I started playing Van Halen. Now I know if I do something embarassing or something I can bring the ol' Yamaha in and all is forgotten. I may not have a girlfriend because of my guitar yet but I'm a lot better at guitar than I was so it's all a matter of time.

I've got two... the first was my second gig. That was the first gig that we actually got the crowd moving. In every song we got at least three pits.

My second was my fourth gig. There was a tour going on between some national bands (none were signed, by the way) and we ended up getting a show with them. The thing that made it amazing, was how they said we were the best band they had ever played with... that made me happy. I felt like a good musician then.

I was in a downtown jazz club, watching my friend's band. He was a bass player, just back from Berklee. He asks me up and play a song with the band. Doh! I've been playing for a long time and I've got chops, but I get paralyzed with nerves in front of people. But something magical happened that night. I was a little buzzed, and when my turn for a solo came around, I closed my eyes and literally lost myself the music. I wasn't aware of scales, chords, the guitar, my fingers, or how I looked on stage -- the instrument was simply an extension of me, and I was singing with it. Some distant part of my brain was aware that I was squirming around and making wierd facial expressions, but it was entirely involuntary. My buddy later told me, "That was pure emotion, dude. You could have walked out of there with any chick in the place". ^_^

I've never been that "in the zone" before, before or since. But it's something I now recognize when I see it in other musicians. The truly great jazz and blues players are able to get there all the time. Wish I could.