Very first band...........

[mambo4]

I got serious about bass at 18, played basements and open mikes around 21,
My first gigging band at 25, doing swing lounge covers with a punk attitude
which excused us form having to compete with real jazz players.

 

[Ggaa]

18, 5 night sit down gig(in residence, I guess)at a dive bar right out of school. Pretty good 4 piece, the other guys were older, 25-30ish. Did it for 2 months or so.

 

[kmon]

lol I was 42 when I joined my first band. Now I'm in my second.

 

[bolophonic]

I was about 16 when I bought my first bass in 1987. I was incredibly fortunate to fall in with one of the most skilled guitarists in my high school at the same time that one of my best friends bought a drum set and turned out to be a decent drummer. We weren't fantastic or anything, but we cut our chops on a bunch of Zeppelin, Hendrix, and Cream, which was a great way to start. The most important factor was that each of us WANTED to be good at what we were doing when we started.

A year or so later, the drummer and I got together with another guitarist and formed a Descendents cover band, which is where I really started to come into my own as a bassist.

I have been lucky enough to have never been a member of a truly awful band in 30+ years.

 

[Dana R Gregory]

I was 14 and a freshman in high school. I was a drummer with a single snare drum and ride cymbal. I used a box for a tom tom with the band name printed on the front of it. The keys player actually played an accordion, and we had three guitars, one of which filled in the bass part. We played all instrumentals. We played one gig, a local teen dance for middle schoolers. We thought we were sooooo cool. LOL Soon after I went from drums to bass as there was a glut of drummers and guitarists in my town. Almost no one played bass or even more rare, keys. This was in the mid 60s and I was attracted to the rhythmic pounding of the bass, especially when I first heard Somebody To Love by Jefferson Airplane. Jack Casady's pounding bass line really got to me and it still does. Ah, the good old days. LOL.

 

[red_rhino]

15. 1970's. I was playing with a high-school friend (guitar player) and a friend of ours introduced us to another guitar player and drummer that were looking to form a band. Not bad for a bunch of high-schoolers. Band lasted about a year.

Stand out moment: Getting arrested for inciting to riot (later reduced to violating the city ordinance against playing live music outdoors after 10pm), after the anti-war crowd we were performing for started trashing the downtown area. (Pretty sure it had nothing to do with our music; we weren't that good. Although when the police handed our drummer a written order to stop playing, he lit it on fire while the guitar player did his best imitation of Hendrix's Stars Spangled Banner. That did seem to "ignite" the crowd. )

Good times, good times.

 

[fishdreams]

1980, HS friend (we were like 15 at the time) who played decent piano started a 'jazz band' and asked me to join on washtub bass, then i got a bass guitar.

First song we learned was Dave Brubeck's Take 5, which we considered the pinnacle of musical advancement. Started out with the Eb-Bb-Db- pattern on the A part. Tuned up the D string to Eb, so that I only had to grab the Bb and Db on the A string. Took us 6 weeks, than on to the B part. Phew!

Band lasted till graduation, expanded to up to 7 people, and waged internal artistic wars between the dixieland section (who only wanted to do foxtrots) and us modernists (that is, Benny Goodman to Errol Garner).

I remember that someone on a record modulated a whole step up in the middle of Sunny Side of The Street, so we modulated twice (or 3 times?) in our version, which therefore made our version superior - but of course.

Fond memories of that combination of innocence and enthusiasm you have at that age.

 

[staurosjohn]

My first real band was ‘Skyline’... I was 16yo (1978)- playing my ‘76 RIC w/Peavey 2x15” cab.

My second venture was with a HS friend... we didn’t have a name- just used her name... drew a crowd!!

 

[QweziRider]

How old were you when you joined your very first band? And how good was that band?

1981, age 15. Southern gospel quartet. Piano, guitar, me on bass, and four singers. Good enough to be working nearly every weekend all over Kentucky and Tennessee.

 

[40Hz]

I’d been playing since I was 12.

First actual band was me with my guitarist cousin’s band in ‘71. I was about a month shy of 16 and replacing their bassist who quit. They were actually really good and had a decent local reputation. Had three or four gigs on average per month. It was the only cover band I was ever an actual member of. Only was a sub for every other. Had a lot of fun.

And the money (usually $300 split five ways) was really decent for those times. Around $1900 in today’s dollars. $60 a gig times three or four…not a bad paycheck for a 16 year old kid living at home with no financial responsibilities. Especially for a job I never considered to be “work.”

Good times!

 

[dave64o]

... As for my very first real gig, on stage, in front of 100's.......I was nervous until the first note hit. Was hooked!

Was definitely true in my case. There were only about 100 people at mine, but I had a similar experience when the nerves went away once we started the first song. One of the best sensations I've ever felt was that rapid transition from the nervous version of "Holy crap, I'm playing in front of people!!!" to the "this is awesome!!!" version of "Holy crap, I'm playing on front of people!!!".

I hope I ever lose that "This is awesome!!!" feeling.

 

[Mike Whitfield]

SNIP
the new guitarist couldn't hold a groove if his entire body was made of pockets. SNIP

Best line ever.

 

[Charlzm]

How old were you when you joined your very first band? And how good was that band?

1973. I was 14. The band REALLY sucked. Drummer was a beginner. Guitarist consistently played the wrong chords and would get mad when I would point it out to him. Keyboardist just wasn't really interested. He had potential but wasn't interested in being a musician. Go figure. I was WAY ahead of them skill wise but I had no other outlet........until I got the call for band #2.....a real band. Only played 2 gigs before I got the call for band #3.....an even better band that lasted 2 years.

It was 1982. I was 17. We were not good. I was a total novice at bass and was the least experienced member - the other guys (guitar, drums and keys) had been playing a year or two. We played old Neil Young, Black Sabbath, first-album Rush, Bad Company, Zep, etc... and not very well.

We recruited a vocalist, played a talent show then lost the keyboard player. Then switched vocalists. Then we switched drummers. Then a new singer. Then I quit. All told, I was in the band from mid 1982 until early 1983, so... a little less than a year.

By the way, we were called No Doubt after something our guitarist used to say all the time. This predated the OC ska band by a few years but I am sure they never heard of us and came up with their name on their own.

 

[Wesley R]

14 if memory serves, with very accommodating parents, paying 1/2 of first bass, 1/2 of first amp, driving to and from practices and gigs. A few years later my dad signed my moms name to some loan papers for a bunch of gear. The resultant band party broke my mothers oven beyond repair, so she got a new stove and oven out of the band and my dad.

 

[ArtechnikA]

62.
I played rhythm guitar in a Sunday church group for a few years in my 20's, but that was not a band.
Fast-forward 40 years, took up bass at 59, spent 3 years in solo practice and blues jams before joining anything with a name and paying gigs.

 

[Florinda4]

First paid gig at 14, 1964, playing upright in a jazz quartet - piano/bass/drums/tenor sax. We wanted to be the Brubeck quartet. We weren't.

Piano player was the best in the group, and Jewish - we played three or four bar mitzvahs at his parents' temple, and a faculty club party at the local university. Also won a local talent show if I remember correctly.

 

[kwdhsk]

The year was 1965. I was 15 and had no experience on Bass when the other members of "The Gentlemen" (Oak Cliff, Texas) asked me to join their group. I replaced Lonnie Taylor and began a two year stint in a great garage rock band. We recorded many original songs and one of them got printed to vinyl: "It's a Cryin' Shame" b/w "You Can't Be True". I played with a pick and was pretty good for my age. My four years of piano lessons came in handy. After the band, I went to college, got married and had a life raising children. After they left home (I was about 55) I picked up my son's cheap Yamaha bass/Crate practice amp, and re-learned the bass. From scratch. No more pick! My teen years were great and memorable in large part because of The Gentlemen.

 

[Hahaha]

My first band was a weird one. I grew up in a small town in Southern Arizona, and my fifth grade school teacher was a sax player who played various gigs. I was always banging beats out on my desk in class, so he recruited me to play drums in his family band. He had an ancient drum set that he loaned me and taught me how to play a fox trot, waltz, and rhumba. I picked it up very quickly, so before I knew it I was playing odd gigs with his family band which included his wife on piano, and son on trumpet. We played a few Mormon churches and some community events. We played songs from the twenties through the forties mostly. I must have been ten or eleven at the time.

One interesting thing we did was play on a recording of a song written by Will Rogers Jr. He lived across the street from the school and had been hired to host a TV show called Death Valley Days. One evening we got together at the school and learned his song. My teacher had a reel to reel recorder that we used to record with as Will Rogers Jr. sang his song. In my young mind I thought that our recording was going to be the actual recording used for the TV show. Of course it wasn't, and it never got used for anything that I know of, but it was kind of cool to get to record with a famous person at that young age.

 

[J-Mags]

Early 80s. I was 15. The Jelly Donuts. I played guitar and sang, my friend Bill played bass, and my other friend Amy played drums. I have never been much of a singer, although that's not prevented me from fronting plenty of bands in the intervening years. We played rockabilly, Buddy Holly, some surf instrumentals, etc. under the influence of the Stray Cats, etc. I heard a recording recently and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. We played a party in someone's attic. I played a cool-looking Hagstrom I guitar:

Alas, Amy decided that she didn't want to be a drummer, so Bill and I went on to form the Cool Jerks, my second band.

 

[DWBass]

This was the 3rd band I was in playing in front of my HS. Had pro level musicians in the band who went on to become professionals. Guitarist (Phil Hamilton) was a member of Unlimited Touch (R&B Band) and also played for Roberta Flack, Vanessa Williams, Luther Vandross and Anita Baker. Drummer (Tony Cintron) played with Unlimited Touch and then segued into the Jazz and Latin world. He did a record with Dave Valentin and briefly played with Spyro Gyra. Sax player (Sandy Anderson) played bass (was a badass too) in Unlimited Touch and has done a ton of studio gigs.