When you start gigging, it always seems like someone in the band pipes up to say, “Hey, man, we shouldn’t play so much-we don’t wanna saturate the market.” Bullshit! Gig as much as you possibly can and learn to deal with the harsh world that looms outside of your garage. Performing in front of an audience is a pretty intense experience-especially if they walk away or lose interest and start talking after a couple of songs. Ouch. And then there are the setup issues: every room, stage, PA and monitor system is completely different. And these are just two of a million things that all take getting used to.
To my mind, one live show is worth 10 practice sessions. So, play at your school, play at parties, play in the park…play anywhere you can. Learn where bands play in your town, find out who the owner or booking agent is and drop off your tape. A lot of clubs have what they call “audition nights” (White Zombie’s first gig was at a CBGB’s in New York on “audition night”), which are “off’ nights when business is slow and new bands are allowed to play for free. Like it or not, you’re probably gonna have to play for free for a while. Think about it; until you start making a club owner money, why should he or she pay you?
Two of the most important things about playing live you should be familiar with are transportation and support staff. Luckily, everybody loves to be cool and get into shows for free. So get some of your friends to help you carry your gear in exchange for free admission. Maybe you can even teach them to change strings or drumheads and, if things go well, maybe you’ll eventually pay them. A lot of today’s most sought-after road managers started out as the kid down the street who helped friends in a band carry guitar cases. Along with roadies, you might want to consider getting a soundman too. This is more difficult, because doing sound well is a skill that people expect to get paid for. A good soundman is a very necessary and important asset, because you don’t want to be at the mercy of whatever yahoo is mixing at the club you’re playing. It does you no good if a major label A&R; guy sees you play the best gig of your life if the club’s sound guy makes you sound like shit. If you are at the mercy of said yahoo, keep in mind that tipping doesn’t hurt.
If there are any other bands in your area that play music similar to yours, work together-what the hell. If a local scene doesn’t exist, book your own shows, if necessary, and create one. Teaming up with another band to play gigs can make things easier, because you can share speaker cabs and even a drum kit. This works especially well if you’ve got to rent a van to get to a show. You can cut your expenses in half by putting two bands in it.
That’s enough “real world” stuff for this column. Let’s play.
Playing with a heavily distorted sound can often lend a monotonous sameness to your parts. One interval that really seems to cut through the roar of overdriven overtones is the octave. In the right context, octaves can sound really heavy. A good example of octave usage in White Zombie’s music is the intro riff to “Electric Head” Pt. 2 (The Ecstasy) on Astro Creep 2000, in which I play unison octave notes on the D and low E strings. I fret the low-E-string notes with my pointer [index] finger and the D string notes with my pinkie. I angle my index finger so that its fleshy underside rests on the A string and mutes it. This means that when I play each octave I can hit all three low strings with my pick and not worry about the A strings ringing.
When playing this riff, you should use a downstroke only for the first octave. The rest of the riff is a combination of legato slides and upstrokes as indicated in FIGURE 1. So, it’s downstroke, upstrokes, slide, upstroke, slide, upstroke, and so on. I’ve seen transcriptions of this riff where every single octave is picked, and you totally get the wrong feel if you play it that way.
