BS: Where was your first time

Subject: RE: BS: Where was your first time
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 08:29 AM

I played at a classical "youth concert" in Wellesley, Massachusetts (USA) in 1970. At twelve years old I was the youngest performer, the only classical guitarist (the other performers played piano or orchestral instruments), and the only performer to play an original work. Over the next few years I played many local church services and hired myself out to play background music for private parties; light classical, bossa nova, arrangements of pop tunes, etc. Still amazes me how young I was.

One of the most memorable gigs from these early-teens performances was when I spent a couple of weeks playing in the window of the local music store at Christmas time. The store had extended evening hours for the Christmas season, and I played classical guitar arrangements of Christmas tunes, which were broadcast through PA speakers out on the street. I was thirteen or fourteen years old, wearing a jacket and tie, and people assumed I was a mannequin until they got up close and saw my fingers moving. Had a lot of fun watching their reactions (and then ignoring their attempts to distract me).

Subject: RE: BS: Where was your first time
From: ScottyG
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:45 PM

As a new member of the 1972 Everett High School Chorale (the 20 best voices in the school choir), I had to perform solo at the annual spring concert. I sang, "Teddy Bear" with my best Elvis impersonation. I had lead, rhythm, and base guitar, percussion, piano, and vocal backup. We got a standing ovation. That was my first real performance.

My best performance was while on tour with the young persons' performing arts company, "Suitcase Theater." We went to England, Wales, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands in the summer of '73, doing at least one show in each town we visited. In Burton Upon Trent, England, one show was at an all-girl's school. I sang a couple songs while one of the kids accompanied me on acoustic guitar. Then the curtains closed while the troupe got ready for our showpiece, "Ballad for Americans. It was sort of a pop-rock style operetta giving an historical account of America, from her colonial days to the present. I sang the lead, accompanied by the rest of the cast and some intrumentation. When the curtains opened, I was center stage, and the audience actually started screaming. I was a skinny, long-haired American teenager, singing for an auditorium full of screaming chicks - British chicks, that is. Quite a thrill. I even got stuck signing my autograph for an hour after the show. Kinda silly, now that I think about it, but a fond memory just the same. Maybe I should have stuck with my music as a serious pursuit.

ScottyG

Subject: RE: BS: Where was your first time
From: alanabit
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 04:10 PM

Shucks! Fifty-two replies and stilll no sex...

Subject: RE: BS: Where was your first time
From: Hawker
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 07:47 PM

Alanabit,
You've had 4 days, it must be your technique!
*G* ;0)
Lucy

Subject: RE: BS: Where was your first time
From: GUEST,Ophelia
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 11:55 PM

Although I seem to have been singing all my life it was only through a chance meeting at a folk festival that someone put me in touch with a trade union choir (choirs being very good if you are nervous like me!). Since then I have been singing very regularly and it has encouraged me to sing in sessions with some very lovely and encouraging people.

Prior to that it was at school in a little Aussie town called Bombala (pop. 1500) in year five when I played the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and got to sing "Little Wooden Head". It seemed such a long way to the back of the hall but I made it!

Subject: RE: BS: Where was your first time
From: Oversoul
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 12:43 AM

My first gig was at a university dormitory "coffeehouse" in the very early seventies. I did my silly rendition of "Laughing Rag" and some John Fahey things, in standard tuning. I was scolded by some hippie dude for re-tuning on stage! Later I was invited to a party at a small house by the railroad tracks. I drank more wine and smoked more dope than anybody and was sort of asked to leave about the break of day. Those people really dug Pentangle and Fairpor Convention, now that I remember!

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 05:13 AM

I was in choir in my catholic elementary school beginning in fifth grade, but I didn't really think of myself as "performing" until I led singing at campfires, working my way through college as a camp counselor for five years. Somehow along the way, I earned the name "Crazy Joe."
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 05:28 AM

My first public performance was aged 5, as the Angel Gabriel (typecasting) in the school nativity play (in days when schools still had nativities...). There, they discovered that even at that tender age, I could project my speaking voice to would reach the deaf old granny in the back row so from then on I was always, ALWAYS the bloody narrator.

My first singing performance was about 4 years later when I stopped singing in a whisper and used the projection to sing with. I discovered I liked making noise and joined the church choir, had my first solo (Once in royal David's city) aged 9.

Been kind of hard to shut me up ever since.

LTS

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Deckman
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 05:32 AM

When I was five years old, my Aunt stood me on a dining chair and I recited "The Moo Cow Moo!" (I haven't shut up since). Bob

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Barry Finn
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 07:36 AM

Seems that my experience is a bit different for the rest here. I was 18 & doing a year in prison. I was recruited by a panio player to sing & the 2 of us did "I Wish It Would Rain" by the Temptations. As we took our bows part of the cast poured water over my head. It went over rather well. I soon stopped singing & frequenting this type of venue.
The 1st folk performance was almost 10 yrs later. It was Boston's 2nd "First Night", flubbed the first song by forgetting the words but made up for by the 2 time around. I'm glad I was with a supportive bunch.

Barry

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Scoville
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 08:42 AM

A barbecue joint in town. I was so nervous I kept forgetting songs. I'd say, "Next, I'm going to play 'Spotted Pony'", which I had been playing for four or five years, and then I'd realize I suddenly had no idea how to start it or what the tune sounded like, so I'd have to say, "Actually, scratch that, I'm gonna play something else." And on and on.

It's funny in retrospect.

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Mo the caller
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 10:28 AM

I'm told that I stole the limelight as toddler, from my cousin who was a few months older. Her mother had taught her to join in with the last word in each line of some nursery rhyme, but Maureen buts in and says the lot.

School and sunday school, of course.

Story-telling when I supervised a playgroup seemed like a performance.

Then more recently dance calling (for money!)

And just this year I've started the odd tune at music sessions (in the hope that others will join in before I fall off)

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 11:38 AM

Circa 1960 I had borrowed my brother's arch-top Hofner and learned all 3 chords. My friend Jim Cox started taking lessons on the tenor banjo and knew G, C & D as well. My brother Gary was a better singer than we were and the 3 of us called ourselves the Rovers Three and sang Gypsy Rover, Jesse James and The Sunday School Song in a Boy Scout Gang Show in a church basement. We were Kingston Trio clones (even had matching striped shirts)and we were the stars of the show.
Before we broke up the group, I had a Goya Goliath guitar, Jim had a Harmony five string and a Stella twelve string and Gary had a no-name guitar. We played a few hootenannys in church basements and school gyms. Gary still plays and sings, but I don't know about Jim. We lost touch.

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 12:08 PM

hmmmm...I suppose the first time I ever sang in front of a group was in a song circle held by a newly formed Folk society in about 1961 in Wichita, Kans.....but mostly back then, I just played recorder and sang along. Then I got an autoharp and eventually was leading a few songs.

The first time I was ever on a stage with a mic was by invitation of a band who know me from the folk society. It was in a pub and it was sudden and unexpected and I think I was lousy...*grin*...

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: The Sandman
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 12:21 PM

I can remember my first paid gig it was at Kingston on thames folk,at the fighting cocks club in october 1976. and Jim an Annie MAGEEAN[now FENTIMAN.]were in the audience. The Fee was 20 pounds. Dick Miles

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: GUEST,Paul Stamler
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 01:27 PM

Like a lot of kids, I took piano lessons; when I was about 9, our teacher sponsored a recital featuring all her students, and I played. Probably a Beethoven piece, but it might have been Bartok; he was very big among piano teachers in the 1950s. First *folk* performance, more or less: I was about 23, which is kinda late considering I'd been playing since I was nine, but I was shy about it. Anyway, I backed up a woman named Karen (who is now a psychiatrist -- hmmmm) on "Careless Love"; I was fingerpicking a Telecaster. (Which I still do.) She knew one more verse than I knew, so she kept on going after I'd stopped and I had to start again. We were at a labor rally of some kind, so I also sang Joe Hill's "Casey Jones". They didn't laugh us off the stage, for which I am eternally grateful.

Peace,
Paul

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: leftydee
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 01:28 PM

As a boy of 7 or 8 I would sit on the counter of my Grandmother's store and play cowboy songs for her customers on my ukulele. I learned early that a guy could earn a licorice whip for a song. Now I play for money, which is worth far less than the licorice in my youth.

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 02:13 PM

My first paid gig was playing rhythm guitar for a twelve-year-old guitar/banjo prodigy named Allen Shad at a small festival near Jacksonville, Florida in 1978 or '79. I had jammed with the kid at a few bluegrass festivals and I guess he liked my rhythm work. I was paid $50 USD for playing one forty-five minute set. Pretty good money for back then.

The kid eventually won several major flat-picking contests including the recognized national championship at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas. I, on the other hand, remained a total nobody. So it goes.

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 02:39 PM

First time playing an instrument:- London Schools English Country Music and Dance Festival 1950. Played Rousseau's Dream on the violin at the Albert Hall.

I remember throwing up several times in the morning between rehearsals, then marching onstage like a man going to the gallows. Then it all went absolutely perfectly, and to this day I have never lost the taste for applause that day generated.

First time singing:- 1954. 1st soprano for my grammar school in an inter school competition, singing Gounod's Ave Maria. Won that round, then my voice broke and 2nd second soprano stepped in and went on to win the final, the rat (only kidding, he was very good).

Three years of playing, but not singing, in a youth club skiffle group, then a career got in the way for several years.

First time folking: 1965. Nag's Head Pub in Battersea, London.

Never stopped since.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: jimmyt
Date: 06 Sep 06 - 06:38 PM

I got picked up by a friend's father that played banjo and trombone in a "dixieland" sort of group and played the Junction City Minstral in Junction City, Ohio in the pit band for a real old time minstral still in blackface in 1963. (Later, the movie Brubaker was filmed there) I was 14 at the time and played trumpet by ear. I played with these guys for quite a while many times in some pretty rough bars in southeastern Ohio. Mostly old standards, and dixieland jazz. What a memory I have of this time! Many evenings they would launch into a song and give me a solo on the second or third verse. A lot of time I had NEVER heard the song before. Makes you learn to listen to chord progressions.

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 07 Sep 06 - 03:50 AM

You played trumpet jimmy? Does this mean you an excellent embrasure and can breathe through your ears??

LTS

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Rasener
Date: 07 Sep 06 - 05:16 AM

Up against the wall. Didn't half make the knees tremble.

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Bobert
Date: 07 Sep 06 - 07:28 AM

Summer of '66... Backyard party my parents were holdin'... Played my shiney new Martin D-18 that my parent co-signed on a loan for and was scared to death... Can't remember everything that I played but I know I played "Mr. Tamborine Man"....

Bobert

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: GUEST,dcardinalsin
Date: 08 Sep 06 - 08:18 PM

The first time I sang in public was the usual school play in chorus but nothing compared to my first singaround where i was lured under false pretences to be surrounded by all the local folk luminaries all in full throttle voice and me myself not knowing how to play a single folk song so my rendition of police   pop ditty went down a storm ,luckily it did not put me off though i,m sure it was cringeworthy for everyone else.....

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 08 Sep 06 - 08:31 PM

Easy to remember: A Gaslight Cafe Monday night Hootenanny in 1961, hosted by Dave Van Ronk. Not sure what songs I did. It felt like facing a firing squad.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: GUEST,Songster Bob
Date: 08 Sep 06 - 10:03 PM

Well, not including music class in school (we had 'em! kids these days don't), I guess it was the troop ship coming back from Germany in 1966. They had a talent show, and if you volunteered for it, you got out of other duties. Since those were things like cleanup and such, it was no contest. I played "Don't Think Twice" and one other song, as I recall.

Then, since a troopship isn't "public," in that no one could leave, the first "real" public performance was at a coffeehouse called the Needle's Eye, run by volunteers from the National Presbyterian Church, in DC. After a couple of spots on the show, I teamed with a guy named Al Glassner, and later formed the "Hungry Two" with another guy, named Grant Carrington, who was an aspiring sci-fi author.

Since then, it's been fame and fortune. Not for me, of course, but fame and fortune were there, I'm sure. I saw them in the green room of the Cellar Door, one cold December night, in 1968.


Bob

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Mooh
Date: 08 Sep 06 - 10:43 PM

Not entirely sure. Have sung in church choirs since the early '60s, sometimes as a mock English choirboy soloist (hell, I'm Canadian), so I guess it was in an Anglican church at about 6 or 7 years old. Also did lots of little theatre musicals in my youth.

On piano, some recital somwhere where I came very close to pissing my pants, and pissing off my teacher.

On guitar, it was in another church in another place my father's job took us, at about 15 years old. That was the beginning of my gig life as a mercenary musician. I'm 48 and still doing this stuff...so much for growing up.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Surreysinger
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 06:37 AM

Depends what you mean by first time. I sang in choirs right the way through from primary school up until a few years ago - long gap in years between those two. So there were MANY performances in public over the years -ranging from small primary school choir performances, to more demanding stuff at grammar school, singing in a young person's choir in Guildford under Vernon Handley's baton, through to many years with the local choral society performing locally in Guildford, and then in later years at the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall and in Hyde Park with about 999 others for the VE Day celebrations in front of the Queen. Many "first" memories in there - first concert with an orchestra, first experience of a recording studio, first radio broadcast, first experience of standing with 6 others on the Royal Festival Hall stage in front of a full house, and singing unaccompanied, and then with orchestra in a performance of Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony! (That was a blast, I can tell you!)

But first public performance on my own singing trad English songs would have been about 1989 - in front of other members of my choir who were all sharing a singing training and socialising weekend. An unnerving experience - I remember both legs wanting to disappear out of the room in different directions, and a distinct shakiness about the voice. In those days I played guitar, and I remember noticing in a disassociated manner that maybe I should have tuned it better, as the conductor and accompanist were sitting out there. It was my first experience of people telling me that they liked my singing (not that I believed them at the time - just thought they were being nice), and I remember that I was on such a high at actually having done it that I couldn't sleep until about 3 in the morning. No more singing on my own after that for about 18 months, when I ended up singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" at my friend's memorial service at the request of her husband, and under protest, but only because I knew she would have appreciated it had she still been around.

After that there was a long, long gap until I went to Sidmouth in 1990, went on a Bread and Roses harmony workshop and made friends with the person who was to be my singing partner for a couple of years, who then forced me into singing solo one night when we ran out of new harmony songs to do (I seem to remember that Bread and Roses were performing at the club that night, and anxiously asking Saro at the end whether she thought I ought to carry on singing. I think she said yes!!!)- probably about 1992? After that it's been a long upward and very very enjoyable experience curve (if there is such a thing)to the point where I made my first paid appearance here in Guildford in 2004. The nerves while performing have 99.9% disappeared, but resurface at unexpected moments - the interesting thing is that I find that I can notice my leg shaking, with interest, while the rest of me remains rock solid!!!

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 02:32 PM

Kemsing village youth club, Kent. First gig for my first group: we had about six numbers prepared, and were supporting a seriously impressive group from Dartford. Or so it seemed when they started with a polished and technically perfect version of 'Rhythm of the Rain' by the Cascades, which was high in the charts at the time.We curled up in agony backstage with fear and embarrassment, but then realised they were playing the same song again! Turned out it was all they knew - we came on with the one advantage that we weren't them, and went down well enough to be asked back the next week. Ended up with a twice-a-week residency in Wardour Street, and I'm still annoying people in public all these years late.

Subject: RE: Where was your first time (singing in public)?
From: Genie
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 07:24 PM

Well, the first time I sang in public, I was about 18 months old. LOL

Grew up singing in school and in the church choir and then got a guitar when I was 17 and was soon accompanying myself with it, singing at parties, the occasional "hootenanny," campfires, etc.   

But my first PAID gig as a singer/guitarist was a 15-minute set for The Clay County Coonhunters Association (Clay County, Missouri), when I was a senior in college. My gym teacher was a member and got me the gig - for $10.   

Pretty bad experience, in many ways. First, they fed us -- You guessed it. Baked raccoon was the main entree (and it tasted like burnt rubber). -- and then told me I could either sing right then or go on right after a 30-minute movie on fishing.   I chose not to try to follow the film, lest I push people's attention span too much, but that meant trying to sing right after eating greasy food, so I wasn't in my best voice.

To make matters worse, I totally misjudged my audience's musical tastes. Naïvely, I thought they'd enjoy stuff like Wildwood Flower, Old Blue, and other songs I'd learned from Joan Baez and other folk singers.   Nope. They were probably into current Grand Ol' Opry stuff, which, at the time, was not part of my repertoire.   

I survived it, but let's just say my audience was a bit underwhelmed.

§;-D

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Gurney
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 09:31 PM

Cyril Tawney's club at the Barbican Grecian Club in Plymouth, UK.

Subject: RE: Where was your first time
From: Tim theTwangler
Date: 09 Sep 06 - 10:12 PM

Two years ago at the Tap and Spile in Grimsby UK.
Is very supportive place for newbies.
I did bad version of its all over now baby blue and they were all very nice.
Was last time I did a cover as a solo performer.