Gear Every Gigging Band Should Own:

[buldog5151bass]

Not sure if I saw it here, but I always have a set of guitar strings, and an extra E or two.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Good point. Flyers too. Ideally get a load printed out professionally at a good discount, but with a blank spot and then overprint these with the next three gigs, to hand out. You can then make the flyers relatively small but still legible under most lighting conditions. Small flyers can be put in pockets, but ones of 8x11 inch size won't make it out of the venue, most likely. In my experience handing them out works well as compared to leaving them lying around if you are at a festival scenario as people will at least give them a cursory look and then might decide to keep them, whereas ones on seating will get shoved onto the ground, trampled on, and never read.

 

[Spectrum]

I bring spare guitar strings and batteries because the guitarist never does. When he breaks a string I let him squirm for a while until he starts to panic, at which point I magically produce some spare strings and save the day, like Scotty on Star Trek.