Playing live is pretty much the worst thing in the world. Nothing on this Earth is worse than knowing your sound is crap, the rest of the band are playing out of tune, and your fingers are completely divorced from your brain.

As musicians, I venture that we can all agree with both of the above statements. Many of us would probably put it down to luck; the all important “vibe” which either blesses us with its presence or curses us with its absence. While that’s definitely a part of it, there are plenty of more tangible things the working guitarist can do to avoid drooping towards statement B. I’ve assembled a list of seven things to improve your live performances, for you, your band, and most importantly the audience!

1. Practice

This one might sound a bit obvious, but it’s absolutely crucial to the whole deal. Even if you’re performing numbers you’ve played a hundred times, practice makes perfect and can prepare you for the pitfalls that might arise. It’s like a familiar journey; you know exactly where you’re going and how you’re going to get there, but what if a road gets closed off and you don’t know a detour? If someone else makes a mistake onstage, it can throw you off course. If you suddenly find yourself drawing a blank and unable to get your pinky finger to hammer on to that all important G#, you’re screwed. Practice!

2. Prepare your instrument

We’ve all done gigs with crusty strings. We’ve all had slightly dodgy cables or amps that sound like they’re about to fall over. As exciting as living on the edge is, it can ruin the gig. Making sure your instrument and equipment are ready for the gig is just as important as making sure that you are. Don’t leave your strings on for too long – if you’re playing regularly, two or three weeks tops. I recommend string cleaner (Planet Waves makes some good stuff) in the interim. Have a spare guitar if you can! When you’re setting up your amp, check the output jack on your guitar and the input jack on your amp to ensure they’re firmly secure. And don’t underestimate the importance of a good quality guitar cable – they really do make a huge difference to your sound. If something doesn’t sound quite right, investigate and fix or it’ll bug you for the whole gig. Check that you have everything you need (capo, slide, whatever).

3. Prepare yourself

Here’s the important bit. Make sure you’re ready mentally and physically. Stretches or exercises to warm up the fingers can be crucial. I find it helpful to have a practice amp (or my trusty Vox amPlug) backstage to run through any tricky parts or anything I’m worried about in the upcoming set. Talk to the rest of the band, make sure everyone’s on the same page.

4. Just before the performance

Some very simple advice here from personal experience. Make sure you’re not impaired by alcohol. Instead, work off of your current emotional state. If you’re in a good mood, ramp it up to a brilliant one. If you’re in a bad mood, ramp it up to the foulest mood you can muster. If you’re nervous as hell, channel that energy into a confidence booster and try to reach for something new. If you go onstage with extreme emotion (whatever emotion it is), you’ll throw yourself into the performance with everything you have. Some of the best gigs I’ve ever had have been the result of being epically hacked off with something or someone. Who said bad moods aren’t cool?

5. During the performance

You are going to make mistakes. You might as well accept this now, as there’s no way around it. How you deal with a mistake is one of the most important aspects of live performance. This is where how much you practice comes into play. If you know the piece inside-out, you’ll be better prepared to jump back on track quickly. If someone else in the band makes a mistake but you’re all prepared, you will avoid a train-wreck. The best piece of advice I can give is to laugh it off. If you let yourself get pissed off when you make a mistake, you’re going to make a ton more. Hit a bum note, smile to yourself and carry on. Chances are, you were the only one who noticed. If a band mate messes something up, DON’T TURN AROUND AND LOOK! There is nothing more distracting to the people watching than for the whole band to leer at the one guy that hit a clam; it’s unprofessional and should be avoided.

6. After the performance

It takes a while to come down after a good show. You’ll feel untouchable for a couple of hours, basking in the glory of a job well done and, if you’re lucky, drowning in compliments and applause. Let your ego be rubbed, but don’t be fooled into thinking you’re invincible. All too often I’ve come off stage and started throwing pints of beer down my throat, feeling no effect but enjoying the moment. Then the next day isn’t so pretty, and you’ve got to do it all over again. Not fun!

Equally, if you’ve had a bad show (and you will), don’t let it get you down. It’s not worth beating yourself up over. You’ll know what went wrong, and you’ll know what you have to do to fix it. Adopt, adapt and improve (motto of the Round Table!).

7. Repeat

Experience.  You can’t beat it. The more you play live, the better. Every mistake, every train-wreck, every broken string and every dropped plectrum will be a learning curve. If you have a bad gig, get back on the horse.

And there you have it; your first step on the road to the perfect gig. Now it’s your turn – gig, make mistakes, and write your own list!

The Gods of Metal!

We’ve all had them, those Spinal Tap moments where thousands of people (or six in my case) watched in awe as you fell off the stage or set yourself on fire. In fact, I think it’s safe to say no matter how good your performance is, it’s not really perfect unless something completely unforeseen happens that you can tell stories about for years to come.

I’m going to share two of mine with you from when I was in a progressive metal band back in the early 90′s. They may not be the absolute worst you’ve ever heard, certainly not stories of epic proportions, but they are the best ones I have that I’m willing to share with you.

I would love to hear from all you Fretheads about your most embarrassing gig moments. Maybe a prize for the best one? (I’ll have to think about that.)

A Hairy Proposition

That's me on the right with my white Ibanez RG550, moments before "it" happened.

So there I was, on stage for my metal band Amsterdam’s debut show at Bonnie’s Roxx in Atco, NJ. (Back in the day the two xx’s were actually cool, mind you.)  There were maybe 50-100 people there thanks to us being the opener for the most popular metal band in the area – Without Warning.

As you can see from the picture, I was moshing and headbanging around pretty good, getting into the vibe and trying my best to look like I knew what the hell I was doing. Right before my guitar solo on one of the songs, I spun my head around one last time, prepared for my solo and started to right myself to unleash the fury, as it were, but when I tried to raise my head it wouldn’t move. I had no idea what the hell was happening until I looked over and realized that my hair had gotten caught up in the tuning machines of my headstock!

There I was, my first big show, rocking out with my head all cocked to one side because I couldn’t friggin’ move it! Once the song was over it took a good 3 minutes to get my mane untangled before being able to continue with the set. I’m really just glad I wasn’t into the whole “fling your guitar behind your back” thing or I would have been in a world of hurt. I can’t quite remember how long it took me to pick the hair out of my headstock.

A Smashing Good Time

For those of you not lucky enough to be a musician during the late 80′s, you aren’t aware of the most essential piece of gear that every non-drummer musician had – the hatchback car! You have to remember, SUV’s didn’t exist back then, so unless you were going to buy a pickup or a van, hatchbacks were the shizznit! Mine was a black 1989 Ford Escort just like the one on the left.

The most ironic part of this story is that it technically wasn’t even my gig. My friends’ band Ransomed Soul was playing a gig at Bonnie’s Roxx – go figure – and the guitarist, Scott, asked to borrow my 4X12 Ampeg speaker cabinet. I was, of course, more than happy to oblige, as helping out fellow bands was one of the great things about the South Jersey club scene back then.

Anyway, Scott borrowed my cabinet, and when the gig was over I started to load it into the back of my stud mobile to bring it home. As I was putting it in, Scott said, “Dude…”

(As an aside, EVERY sentence had to start with the word “Dude,” otherwise #1 you weren’t cool and #2 we just wouldn’t pay attention to what you were saying.)

“I don’t think you put it in right; I don’t think you’ll be able to close the hatch.”

By now I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this, but for the sake of complete embarrassment I’ll finish it for you.

In a nutshell I told him he was full of crap, it would fit fine as I had stuck it in my car 1,000 times before, and proceeded to close the hatch.

Well…

Yeah, it happened. I completely smashed the shit out of my rear window. I would have been laughing my ass off had I not been chewing on the sole of my shoe so hard from putting my foot in my mouth. I’m sure you can only imagine how funny everyone else around me thought it was.

And for the record, there is absolutely NOTHING more fun than taping up a broken rear window with trash bags and duct tape at 2AM. Seriously, nothing at all.

So there you go. Hopefully you will all feel very sorry for me now and think I’m just the coolest person ever for opening up my heart and bearing my soul for the betterment of the Fretterverse. Yeah, whatever.

As I said in the beginning, I would love to hear your stories, if you’re man or woman enough to share them with the rest of us.