Can you remember your first one?

[Bassman Sam]

I was chatting to the guitarist from the first band I ever played in recently. He reminded me of the first number we ever played, live on stage,  when we were 17 years old. Badge, by Cream. What's yours?

[Lozz196]

First song I ever played live on stage was C’mon Everybody, the Sex Pistols version of Eddie Cochran song. I was 16, on lead vocals and lead guitar.

 

It was a disaster.
 

 

[binky_bass]

Monkey Wrench by The Foos. Aged 15 or 16. School 'talent' show. 

[snorkie635]

Santana's version of Peter Green's Black Magic Woman.

 

Here's the very gig in June 1977

 

 

[fretmeister]

Whole Lotta Rosie. AC/DC. I was on guitar.

Would have been in about 1989 maybe 1990.

[NAS Bass]

I Don't Care. The Ramones. About 1978

[Bassman Sam]

28 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

First song I ever played live on stage was C’mon Everybody, the Sex Pistols version of Eddie Cochran song. I was 16, on lead vocals and lead guitar.

 

It was a disaster.
 

 

Why , Lozz?

[Lozz196]

Well being a punk band - The Squatters - we’d not actually rehearsed, and only met the drummer that evening.

 

I was using the headliners guitar and had never played a Gibson Les Paul type guitar before, having tinkered on Strats, plus really being a bassist I wasn’t that great on guitar, especially one I’d not played before.

 

I was on lead vox but never having really sung before I had a habit of walking around whilst playing so was often away from the mic - probably a good thing thinking about it, Vicious Sidney certainly had me beat on that song!

 

My mate who was on bass - and had agreed to do it with a few run throughs over a couple of weeks - got lost at one point so he played all the notes he’d missed extra extra fast to catch up rather than just play the part where he actually was.

 

Ironically our next number, I Wanna Be Me by The Sex Pistols went ok.

 

 

[Rosie C]

42 minutes ago, Bassman Sam said:

I was chatting to the guitarist from the first band I ever played in recently. He reminded me of the first number we ever played, live on stage,  when we were 17 years old. Badge, by Cream. What's yours?

 

Undertones "Teenage Kicks". I was about 16. On stage at a variety show at high school. The rest of the set was Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" and The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand". 

 

[TimR]

An instrumental version of Money For Nothing at a house party. Aged 17. We unplugged the rhythm guitarist and he played the whole thing without realising.

 

Might as well start as I meant to go on...

 

Although quite possibly it wasn't the first. We also played One Vision, Tie Your Mother Down, a Status Quo Medley, Paranoid, some others and I think a handful of tunes we had written ourselves. 

[chris_b]

The first song I played on stage was Spoonful by Howlin Wolf.

 

The gig came to a crashing halt as we announced the last song. All the lights came on and the caretaker of the youth club was walking up the middle of the the empty hall, saying, "I wouldn't bother. They've all gone home!"

[joeystrange]

3 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

My mate who was on bass - and had agreed to do it with a few run throughs over a couple of weeks - got lost at one point so he played all the notes he’d missed extra extra fast to catch up rather than just play the part where he actually was.

This makes no sense whatsoever! 😂

[NancyJohnson]

Back in the day, we were never about covers, but when we did throw in the odd one while jamming I recall Rush/Bastille Day, Police/Message In A Bottle and an instrumental I thought was based around Frank Zappa's Apostrophe' (never having listened to the original until a few minutes ago, it bears little resemblance to that, so god knows what it was).

 

My first proper band were just original punky material; it was all very XTC, song titles included 'Woggle Your Bunkum', 'Let's Go Disco', 'Applecham' and 'Rosie'.  Some 40+ years on, I could still play them note for note.

 

 

[SteveXFR]

Dirt by The Stooges but a sludge metal version.  Aged 42, Size 11 Dr Martins.

[tauzero]

First song I played at a gig on bass was "Back in the USSR". I'm pretty sure we then did an original instrumental called "I love you so much I can't shit".

[PaulThePlug]

Egg-Bound in E...

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

In my first band that actually got some gigs, I had to sing & play bass on most of the songs so I wrote a bunch of songs that I was able to sing whilst playing bass, plus a few I couldn't sing whilst playing bass that the keyboard player had to sing. I don't remember the title of the first song we played though.

[meterman]

Yes, in my band with some mates from school. We were all only 15 and playing a warm up set for a jazz fusion outfit made up of 40 to 50 year old jazz guys in a local pub. September 1983. We were still at school and we thought it was brilliant to get An Actual Gig! 
 

On the night we only played four original songs before the headliners cut our set short. We'd just recorded an EP in a proper studio and everything, and we were on top form. I can definitely remember us counting in 1-2-3-4 and then blasting the şhït out of the place. And I still play the opening song today. It's in Velvet Underground / Johnny Thunders territory and totally rocks. The jazz fusion crowd didn't know what had hit them, it was a right laugh 👍

[Dad3353]

The first gig, late '60s, was with a few school chums of a younger brother, I played 'bass' using the low strings of my newly-acquired Hofner President into a Watkins Westminster combo. The repertoire was rather 'folky', with a couple of 'originals' (composed by Martin Spicer, who gave his name to the Martin Spicer Band...), notably the Apple Tree Warbler song, with the predictable chorus of...

'I'm a merry little Apple Tree Warbler'

'Who warbles in the apple trees all day.'

'It's because I'm a merry little Apple Tree Warbler'

'That I'm so happy and gay.'

We followed this with our version of the Airplane's 'Fat Angel' and a rather Grateful Dead-inspired instrumental that went on for quite a while. No drums, just acoustic guitars and my 'bass'; I don't remember there being any sort of PA or such, just us grouped into a corner of a pub opposite the tube station, Hounslow East. I think we got paid £5, and left the publican and his clients rather bemused by what they had experienced. It didn't take me long to decide to play drums ... 

[asingardenof]

The first one live on an actual stage was Daytripper. The first one live with a band I can't remember, I just know that Daughter was in the set but that's about it.

[Dazm66]

Masters of the universe by Hawkwind at the Lambourne Room, Ilford Town Hall with ‘Three Minute Warning’ around 83/84

[SuperSeagull]

A punk'd up version of Quos Mean Girl at Oakmeeds School in Burgess Hill sometime in 1978. 

[Leonard Smalls]

It may have been Bob Dylan's "Hard Rain" in 1980... Mr. Quigley, an RE teacher at our school put together a sixth form band to play before a screening of the BBC's docudrama "The War Game". We did two other songs as well, that I have no memory at all of - probably CrosbyStillsNash or somesuch knowing Mr Q. I was on keys, and on bass was the brother of our own @lurksalot - I had a go on his rubber-stringed Hohner violin thing which possibly kindled my future musical direction (and it wasn't Dylan covers, or Hohner basses!).

[Doctor J]

School band when I was 16. We played From Out of Nowhere by FNM, Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen and Solace of You by Living Colour. I was utterly terrified.

[lurksalot]

11 minutes ago, Leonard Smalls said:

It may have been Bob Dylan's "Hard Rain" in 1980... Mr. Quigley, an RE teacher at our school put together a sixth form band to play before a screening of the BBC's docudrama "The War Game". We did two other songs as well, that I have no memory at all of - probably CrosbyStillsNash or somesuch knowing Mr Q. I was on keys, and on bass was the brother of our own @lurksalot - I had a go on his rubber-stringed Hohner violin thing which possibly kindled my future musical direction (and it wasn't Dylan covers, or Hohner basses!).

😂

 

ah yes, the rubber stringed hand-me-down , that I too had played for cool Mr Quigley in  various  folky type arrangements of praising songs at assemblies and the like, prior to our kid picking it up.

my first live performance however , was at Romford working men’s club.

My uncle Dave played Keys in pop covers band back in the 60s and 70s and they would occasionally play afternoons at various social clubs and the like at weekends. On one occasion we were attending and I got thrown up there to massacre Mouldy old Dough when I was about 10 or 11.

I don’t know if that still haunts me or I remember it through pride , probably the former, but didn’t seem to put me off 😂