First gig down

[dubtrub]

As some of you already know I started playing with a band after many, many years absence of playing live. We have been rehearsing every Monday since October 20th. It's basically a newly formed band however all the other musicians came from bands that are recently defunct. We are a variety band and focus mainly on 70-90's Rock along with some Country and some Blues. I sent a report to Mel in a PM but thought I'd share this part of the story with the forum.

"Our first gig as a new band was Saturday evening, 8-midnight. It was a 'rockin' party. It was a crowd aged from 25-50, so our 70's and 80's rock list was dominate. On our first set, my fingers felt like they had contact glue on them and I gripped the neck like it was a baseball bat. I was playing the notes but they were lifeless. As expected the next set was a lot better and it continued to improve until the end. I'm glad to have the first one under my belt.

Rob busted a string on one of his songs where he does vocal and takes the first lead. I didn't know he had popped a string and there was a pause when he was suppose to take the lead. Fortunately I've learned most all the lead parts to all our songs regardless of who's playing lead, so I immediately recognize something wrong and covered for him to the end of the song. While he changed the string (he didn't bring an extra guitar, lesson learned) I cooked off with Jimi Hendrix, Red House. Definitely a good time. Plus I got to see our $3000 investment in mixer board, power amp, four floor monitors, and two twin 15" JBL speaker columns in action."

BTW, the name of our band is Old 99. That name was taken from the main route through central Bakersfield, Highway 99, before interstate 5 bypassed the city. Bakersfield was the crossroads of all traffic north, south, east and west. All truckers converged on Bakersfield between the 40's through the 70's. That was the time the Bakersfield Sound was formed. It only seemed right to honor those day's gone by, by naming the band after that meaningful famous highway. We have a web site but not yet open to the public. We will be going into the studio starting next Monday, doing some good quality recordings to post plus we''ll be getting bios and photo's posted. So, it will be the first of the year before we have the web site operational.

Here's our website, under construction.
http://www.old99.com/webfiles/99/html/w ... epage.html

[JimPage]

Hey, Danny!

Great report and congrats!

I loved the part about Rob's broken string! The absolute best "covering" action I have EVER seen was the Beatles' first Ed Sullivan appearance when Lennon's mike went dead. McCartney covered for him perfectly; the only giveaway was Harrison looking startled and then grinning.

That had to be a heart-stopper on a gig as important as that to a band!!!

--Jim

[Johnny]

Hey dubtrub, detected a trojan horse on your site. Might wanna scan it.

[Dennisthe Menace]

Well young man, how does it feel to be back on stage?

Remember, it Takes 2, it takes 2....Guitars that is, one for now and one for later in case you might need it,
I guess your Lead Singer found out the hard way. 2 guitars..."Never Leave Home Without It."

[dubtrub]

Hey dubtrub, detected a trojan horse on your site. Might wanna scan it.

Possibly the problem is with your computer as no one in the band has had any problems. It's not my web site so I don't have any way to scan it. I did pass on the info to the web master and he said it was clean with no viruses. However, we all know anything is possible on the internet. If anyone else receives a virus warning on the Old 99 site, please let me know and I'll advise the webmaster.

[Veenture]

Thanks for sharing and reporting to us Danny; good to know you're not just making guitars but playing them too again -in a band formation, that is!
Yes, the later it gets during performance, usually the better it gets. I always need to overcome my nervousness when playing lead at the start (stagefright, "microphone fear"?) and feel like a 'rooky' but as the gig progresses and the band is warmed up, I start to regain my confidence and really start playing in a way that I feel good myself. I have never taken a backup guitar along; 'must have been very lucky never to have string breakage during play...

Glad you guys found a fitting name for your band. Good luck "Old 99", looking forward to further input

[jnslobaugh]

Well young man, how does it feel to be back on stage?

Remember, it Takes 2, it takes 2....Guitars that is, one for now and one for later in case you might need it,
I guess your Lead Singer found out the hard way. 2 guitars..."Never Leave Home Without It."

Just saying... 3 or 4 sittin on stage always looks cool! That'll be easy for you to pull off, right DUBTRUB?

[dubtrub]

Just saying... 3 or 4 sittin on stage always looks cool! That'll be easy for you to pull off, right DUBTRUB?

I can probably handle that.

However, we play gigs, it's not a guitar show.

[MWaldorf]

I got the Trojan Horse warning too. Malware listed is JS:Agent-BE [Trj]. I use Avast virus protection software. Some info on the malware here:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=41943.0

[dubtrub]

I got the Trojan Horse warning too. Malware listed is JS:Agent-BE [Trj]. I use Avast virus protection software. Some info on the malware here:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=41943.0

For those that are concerned, here is what Old 99's webmaster say's about the virus warning.


There is a program called AVG that is a free "anti-virus" download that people use because they think it keeps their computer safe. (there are about 2 or 3 others that are the same.) They are actually trojans of their own, and do more damage than they ever protect from. It is exactly why Bill (our drummer) couldn't access the website in the beginning.

Our website is encrypted so that search robots can't mine our pages for email addresses, IP addresses, downloads, external links, etc. This encryption confuses the anti-virus programs that are actually designed to mine that data as well, and they report the site as having a virus. Norton and MacAfee (the two main anti-virus programs) have no problem with our website.

We may lose a few visitors, but that will be nothing compared to the potential problems of using unencrypted pages right now. We get scanned by trojan bots about 10-25 times each day. My logs tell me that they are stopped at the first page by the encryption. Because there is no human there clicking on the link selections, their software is unable to read any further page names, so it gives up and moves on to the next site.

This is the same problem that I deal with every day here on our Mosrite forum. Those f---ing spammers screw it up for everybody.