First Band Disaster Stories

JoZac21 · #1 02-14-2011, 06:52 AM

This thread is meant for stories from people who have been in multiple bands over the years, looking back at there first ever band, and how awful it was...

Mt first band was called "Dispossible Heroes"... I was 12 years old... we were supposed to be called "Disposable Heroes", after the Metallica song, but I'm an awful speller lol. We were a cover band, doing the kinds of songs a 12 year old cover band would do... bad versions of "Iron Man", "Smoke on the Water" and "Enter Sandman". I played guitar in the group, since we knew a kid who had a bass (note that I didn't say played the bass) an Epiphone Flying-V, and, more importantly we could practice at his house... sort of... we couldn't set up drums, so our drummer banged away on some textbooks he had found. It was silly to say the least.

We played only one "gig" if you can call it that. Our Jr. High School was having a walk for charity drive and our school band was asked to play (I played bass in that). We asked our music teacher, who still is one of the coolest teachers I've ever had, if our band could play a few tunes... he said yes.

It was bad... just bad. Maybe it would have been a tiny bit better if we had a singer... instead of banging out bad instrumental versions of songs, ignoring the concept of melody.

That was 13 years ago... I've been in close to 15 bands since, every one better than the last (my current band cosmolingomusic.com)... I've grown thousands of times as a musician since then... it's just still a lot of fun to look back on.

What are your first band stories?

Phalex · #2 02-14-2011, 07:26 AM

My first band was a bunch of my friends that still get together for an epic canoe trip. They have the pre party to get people to sign up in the early spring.

They would always rent a hall, and probably get 300 people on average to show up to the party. (Not all of them went on the trip, but it was a hell of a party in its own right.) We formed a band that played the parties, as well as the canoe trip.

These were crazy drunken bacchanals, things got wild!

The whole band had a tendency to drink. A LOT! I used to play either leaning up against a wall, or lying flat on my back onstage because I couldn't stand. Lying on my back onstage was a bit dangerous because people would pour shots into my mouth as I laid there.

88ric2030 · #3 02-16-2011, 01:52 PM

It was December 1981, I was in my first year of college. We had played our high school's variety show a couple times, in fact the drummer was still in high school. We had just added a second guitarist who was more than a little bit of a loose cannon (I was the rhythm guitarist/singer, we didn't have a bass player anymore, the keyboardist played left hand bass on a Farfisa Compact Duo). This girl Michele , who sometimes I drove to school in the morning, who I had been friends with since Elementary School, asks if we wanted to play at this Christmas party that the restaurant where she works is having at a VFW Hall on a Sunday night. We rent a small PA from our local music store, and this other guy who doesn't know remotely what he's doing also brings his and we combine the two for feedback hell. Our new guitarist throws a hissy fit because nobody wants to drive him home, all the way across town to get his other distortion pedal. He plays like total crap on purpose and makes us look awful in front of what turns out to be a hostile crowd of local troublemakers, who probably had no connection with the restaurant where Michele worked. They heckled us and slid across the floor through a lake of spilled beer. It's an old school, redneck, blue collar, classic rock/metal crowd, and we are a mostly original new wave band that plays a few British Invasion covers. Finally we just give up, cut the second set short. Then these kids play, who know maybe 5 songs, badly played Skynyrd, Zepellin, AC/DC, Bad Company were applauded and treated like rock gods. What a degrading experience. We tossed the new guitarist right after the show. Had he not been there, and acted out the way he did, turning his amp up loud enough to drown us all out, and playing a ton of wrong chords, we would've at least sounded tight and professional, even if our material was not exactly the crowd's cup of tea; I think we would have got way more respect.

JohnFrusciante · #4 02-16-2011, 05:41 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQzt4...eature=related

Is this you?

Lazylion · #5 02-16-2011, 07:23 PM

My first band was so long ago that I have no memory of how we sounded. Somewhere around '68 or '69. It was me on a cheap Japanese knockoff guitar and my buddy from across the street, David, on Farfisa organ. I don't remember his amp, but my rig was a Masonite cabinet with an 8-inch speaker, powered by a table radio which David's dad had wired up with input and output jacks. Couldn't have been more than 5 watts, probably less. We played all instrumentals, because neither of us had the stones to try singing in public.

I think it's safe to say that our sound was somewhere between terrible and atrocious. But at least we had a name:
The 25 Hour Day. We had business cards printed with the name and our band motto:

"We may not be loud, but we're sincere!"

I swear I'm not making that up. I wish I was. Insert facepalm smiley here.

PS Today, David is the musical director of a Gilbert & Sullivan production company, with their own theater, in Massachusetts.

My name is Mudd · #6 02-19-2011, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phalex

My first band was a bunch of my friends that still get together for an epic canoe trip.

Why do I hear banjo music in the background?

Downunderwonder · #7 02-19-2011, 07:40 PM

...because of Phalex's sig line. You just know he'd be the one making oinking noises in the woods and getting rescued by some moustachioed dude with a homemade bow and arrow.

My 1st band's name was coined by the evil bandleader lady. Bandleader lady as in director of the school brass band. Brassbanding is really big where I'm from, to the point that orchestral type music is, or was, a real fringe activity. The school had huge resources for the brass band and almost nothing for any other music.

So me and my bro play violin and clarinet. My Dad taught accounting at our school so he could "agitate" for getting a "band" together under the auspices of the school to compete in the regional music contest. So we muster up basically every kid in school who can play a non brass instrument passably well. We have two clarinets, violin, electric guitar, and something else I forget, might have been a flute.

We're playing some show tune or something and bandlady enters room, says "aren't you a motley lot!". Chur evil bandlady, we get named "Motley" by my Mum, our musical director. None of us ever heard of Motley Crue so it was all about sticking one to the evil bandlady by representing ourselves with a stupid name. Curse my Mum's warped sense of humour.

Danhole · #8 02-20-2011, 04:14 PM

My first band was called Egotrip. My brother needed a bassist for a high school show so he gave me my sisters boyfriends bass and two weeks to learn. Not only did either of us know that the bass and the guitar had to be in tune to one another but we didn't really know that you had to tune it up to play it at all. I remember my brother saying "Jim's strings seem to be more tight than yours, maybe we should tighten them up about as much as jim does.".

Phalex · #9 02-20-2011, 05:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by My name is Mudd

Why do I hear banjo music in the background?

I wish! We did do a cover of Rocky Top, but that was as close to banjo music as we got.

JoZac21 · #10 02-20-2011, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnFrusciante

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQzt4...eature=related

Is this you?

Nope, not us... actually, they're probably better than we were, sadly.

Ski3223 · #11 02-20-2011, 10:42 PM

Hahaha we actually weren't that bad. We did our first gig after we had been a band for a month. I had been playing for 3 months (self taught) and our guitarists for about a year each. We did some decent renditions of Are you Gonna Be My Girl? Smells like Teen Spirit, Slither, Get Free (we butchered that one..), Brainstew, I miss you (Blink 182) and some others that I don't remember. It went well enough for the most part!

We actually turned into a pretty good cover band! As a bunch of freshman (together for 4 months by this point) we did the school talent show and we beat a band of seniors that had been playing together for about 4 years. They did a HORRIBLE rendition of The Hell Song. We did Another Brick in the Wall (I changed over to guitar for that song and did the solo, our guitarists couldn't do it. I'd been playing bass for 7 months, and guitar for 2).

Ahhh good times... The whole town is still begging us for a reunion concert. Our singer is a stuck up frat boy now. Won't even admit he was in a band in highschool...

lukelogandennis · #12 02-20-2011, 11:17 PM

My first band wasn't that much a disaster story. I played guitar and my two other friends played bass and drums. We played twice at our high schools talent show thing. We covered various things like Blue Oyster Cult's Godzilla, OKGo's Get Over It, and some green day song.
However Godzilla didn't go over to well, cause I sung that one! Good times.

EdHunter · #13 02-21-2011, 01:25 AM

Mötörchöpf, for an English project to create an artistic response to Romeo and Juliet. I'd been playing for about 3 months, our guitarsit for about 1 and our drumemr had a broken arm. We chose a group of songs which represented certain apsects of the play and played excerpts of each as one medley. Songs included "Surprise, You're Dead", "Metroplis", "One", "Highway to Hell" and what can only be described as the most hideous sound ever, as we tried to give the guitarist a solo. None of us even had a clue what a key was...
We recorded it on the durmmer's videophone, with some Ikea bags over lamps to create mood lighting. At the time we thought it was so good, we decided to follow up by recording a cover of Paranoid. Not good...

JoshM321 · #14 02-21-2011, 05:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EdHunter

We recorded it on the durmmer's videophone, with some Ikea bags over lamps to create mood lighting.

Haha, truly class! Amazing what we're capable of coming up with when we're in the creative element. I can relate to this completely.

My first band was probably when I was about 10 and I wanted us to either be called 'The Golden Eagles' or 'The K9's'. Oh dear...

________________________________________________

Live music online - Justjamit

C47 · #15 02-21-2011, 05:21 PM

My first band was way back in the sixties, just me and my roomate (named Chuck Berry btw), just the two of us, guitar and bass. Called The Balls.
Our break song was "I got You Babe" (by the balls) LOL
We later added a drummer and changed the name to Fallopian and the Tubes.

JoshM321 · #16 02-22-2011, 02:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by C47

My first band was way back in the sixties, just me and my roomate (named Chuck Berry btw), just the two of us, guitar and bass. Called The Balls.
Our break song was "I got You Babe" (by the balls) LOL
We later added a drummer and changed the name to Fallopian and the Tubes.

Haha. Fallopian and the Tubes. That is a great name! I would have bought into that.

__________________________________________________ ____

Justjamit: Play & Watch live music online

Big Brother · #17 02-22-2011, 10:31 AM

My first band was in college, I played keys on about 5 songs and wandered around when I wasn't playing one of them.

Our lead singer was a born-again Christian linebacker on a football scholarship. He could mostly carry a tune but would only sing songs that he didn't think were 'unholy,' which was difficult because he was new to it all. Fortunately he was easily fooled.

Our bass player was about 40 and was great, but had a girlfriend who kept telling him it was time to grow up and quit playing band with the kids.

Our drummer was kind of a cheeseball roommate who had no sense of subtlety with his sticks and called everybody "G", he spent most of his free time playing video hockey and demanded to be paid for his time, which we of course never did. Had a pilots license which shocked us all.

Our lead guitarist was a tiny Vietnamese guy who could absolutely shred, he'd cover Van Halen solos so perfectly you'd swear it was the album - but if he missed something and got off track for a moment, which was admittedly rare, you had to work around it because he'd just add the extra time to the song.

We generally played college parties where sometimes our lead singers fellow football players would come to laugh and heckle him. We went about 6 months without a name, we just played, sometimes for hundreds and it actually sounded pretty decent for a college party band I have to say. We had fun and our guests had fun but it all ended when the lead singer bought a Jeep without a means to pay for it, so 3 months later guess where the PA (and the band) went...

I still talk to them now and then. Good times.

CultofJay · #18 02-25-2011, 07:38 PM

My first band was in high school. We were called Oversoul (this was about 1997) and played radio-friendly covers. We played a "welcome back" party at a friend's house once that was our worst gig ever. First of all, the girl who the party was for never showed up and to make matters worse, the parents wouldn't let us play inside (something we didn't know until we tried setting up). This was around late July in Indiana at night so the whole band was getting eaten by misquitoes and we only had a porch light to see what we were doing. Everyone stayed inside to watch a movie and the 3 or 4 people who liked us got to see our bassist (I was on guitar at the time) stop the whole band in the middle of the intro to Blackbird for whatever reason.

"Wait, wait, waitwait...Let's try this one more time..." *blank stares*

PimasterPearson · #19 02-25-2011, 08:08 PM

My first gig as a bassist was a talent show in 9th grade. The members of two bands at my school got together to form a not-so-super "supergroup," and we decided to play the Guns & Roses version of Knocking On Heaven's Door. I wish there was footage of it, just out of morbid curiosity. I barely knew the notes on the fretboard, our guitarists had mediocre tone, we couldn't hear each other very well, and our singer... thought he was Axl Rose.

He wasn't.

Rockmusician · #20 02-25-2011, 08:20 PM

In my first band we didn't have a bass player. It was made up of me on guitar, a friend of mine on guitar and a drummer. We later added a lead singer. We played one gig, my brother's 13th birthday party. We did all covers. Aerosmith, Queen, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, BTO, Thin Lizzy, Peter Frampton, Bad Company, Grand Funk Railroad, Steve Miller, Foghat, etc. We were actually a pretty good band. We got rid of the lead singer because of his attitude and then the drummer left. A year later, I switched to bass. The other guitar player and I have been playing together ever since. 35 years this year.