Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'll do two gigs on a Saturday night until four o'clock in the morning, wake up, and do drag brunch on a Sunday, and then another party Sunday night. I definitely take what I do very seriously.
What actors are good at doing is walking into a situation that should make you incredibly self-conscious and frightened and doing it anyway. That's the gig, pretending that you are comfortable.
I worked with a guy, I can't think of his name, him and his wife, and one of them had a saxophone and the other played drums. It wasn't a regular job but I did a few gigs around home with them.
I don't remember what was going through my mind, but what was going through my body was fear and terror. I had been on the road with Johnny and working gigs and playing a lot of the organ clubs.
Monterey, I remember, but I seem to remember the Fillmore West, that we played the week before Monterey. That was much more memorable for me. The first time in San Francisco. They were good gigs.
As a fanboy myself, one of the fun things about the gig has been every time I get a new script, I get to find out more about his day - to-day life and what goes on and what his relationships are.
Television is where you earn regular money so you can plan a little bit but even then only when you have a regular gig. If you're just doing the odd appearance, you don't know if it will carry on.
I was occasionally getting calls for some things. But I would say, 22 to 29 was a lot of scuffling. Hoping to get called for bad wedding gigs and I did do an off-Broadway show for about 15 months.
I did a standup show called 'Show Me the Funny,' so from that I got some TV stuff and people would book me for gigs. I wasn't really good enough at that point, so had to catch up with expectations.
I started off playing my own songs, just because I saw it as a means to an end almost of, 'Right, if you want to play gigs, you have to write your own songs.' I mean, they were absolutely terrible.
I formed a sketch troupe with two friends, started doing gigs, and dropped out of school shortly after to pursue it full time! Now it sort of has to work out because I have zero other qualifications.
From a strictly business perspective, it's like, 'Even if you leave Eric alone, he'll do stuff. He puts his own album together, he gets his own gigs, he does everything on TV. Let him be, he's fine.'
Each of our 900 shows so far was different - maybe that's what makes the fans come back to our gigs time and again. And that they're always part of the show. Phish concerts are a communal experience.
The friends I knew who tutored were well paid for work that seemed far less grueling than waitressing or late-night newspaper copy editing or all the other side gigs I attempted in my early twenties.
I remember early on, for instance, having to play wedding gigs, that I hated playing the music. Now I don't have to play music that I don't like. I only get to do what I enjoy, so that's pretty lucky.
I've had the pleasure of working closely with Marc Von Em as a singer, but when I heard his original stuff, I asked him to open up a 10,000 seat gig. Just him, his guitar, and his songs. He killed it!
Having drive is a big part of success, along with integrity. You need to have a clear vision of what you want and take the steps to achieve it, even if that sometimes means playing gigs in tiny clubs.
It's always great to see grey hairs in a crowd; people who are older have been to a lot more gigs than the kids; they've seen everything, so seeing them in the crowd means we've earned their applause.
I'm most in my element on tour, with a gig that day, like today. I'm on the road where I am supposed to be. I will be where I'm supposed to be at nighttime, on stage, in front of people, doing my thing.
One of the things I figured out was that I was having good gigs when I wore jumpers. It was because I looked more like an outsider, so they expected me to talk about weird stuff rather than normal stuff.
At the moment I have my family coming out with me on the road. We have our own vehicle and its more like a family vacation. I just stop, do some gigs, and take off. Its a lot more fun now with the family.
I had to figure out how to survive in New York, and most of my time was occupied in getting an apartment and getting money. A lot of older jazz guys looked out for me and found me gigs and places to stay.
One day I woke up, had an early mid-life crisis, and decided it all had to change. I went and did Logan Murray's comedy course for 11 weeks and then started sneakily doing open-spot gigs, and that was it.
If somebody loses a gig because they publicly show up at [Donald] Trump's inauguration, I guarantee you somebody else is going to hire them and pay them more than they were making whenever they got fired.
In my experience, my music has drawn people of all ages, which is a real wonderful thing. And at my gigs you get everyone from six year olds to 90 year olds. And I find that really quite moving, actually.
I realized that performing was what I wanted to do when I did my first professional gig as a dancer with my company Synergy in Canada. I was overwhelmed with how it felt to perform in front of an audience.
I can play the main stage at the Newport Folk Festival in front of 10,000 people and do all the gigs and stuff I want to do. Then I can go home and get toilet paper on a Sunday morning and not get hassled.
At the moment I have my family coming out with me on the road. We have our own vehicle and it's more like a family vacation. I just stop, do some gigs, and take off. It's a lot more fun now with the family.
I was fortunate enough to have my kids early, so being a mom always ended up being a better gig than these other parts that came along. So I always justified not really working a lot because I had a family.
No matter what - rehearsed, under-rehearsed, over-rehearsed, doubts about rehearsing - the first gig is always the first gig, and you put on your little praying hat, batten down the hatch, and do what you do.
I've taken regular gigs, I've worked in grocery stores, worked as a dishwasher, a porter in different places, all for survival. I don't feel bad about doing it. I wished I could have done better. And still do.
No seriously... when there's families, you tend to go back to your room after the gig rather than go for a drink with the other guys. But there's always someone who's got something going, like the tour manager.
I lived in Boston for four or five years and would commute to New York to play gigs. New York City became so expensive, all the recording studios started shutting down because they couldn't afford rent anymore.
I was playing in bands and doing gigs from the age of 14 on. I stopped at the age of 28. Technology replaced me. As soon as I saw what computers can do, I didn't think there would be a point for a live drummer.
I've been to two stadium gigs in my life. One was James Brown and the other was Pink Floyd. They both sounded the same. I couldn't tell the difference between James Brown and Pink Floyd. I've never liked stadiums.
I joined a campus competition, as I felt I could do comedy, and I won. Then I started doing standup gigs in 2009 while completing my law degree, but I never told my parents. They only discovered a few years later.
I had known Hal [Needham] for a while by the time he moved in, so I was sure we'd get along well, and we did. He'd go off and do his gigs and I would do mine, and when we were lucky we got to work on the same ones.
Chris Hillman (of the Byrds) recounts...'What happened to the Buffulo Springfield at the Whisky was similar to what happened to us at Ciro's...everybody wanted to be there. It became the place to be...a great gig.'
My feet never touched the ground. Lots of good groups with crazy and unique images. It was wild. I spent all of my time doing gigs, TV appearances, interviews, or recording. I could write a book - and probably will.
After 'X Factor,' I got loads of gigs. Then I went on holiday just after the tour and bought my Rolex in Tenerife. I needed to go through that phase - splurge and see that it's worthless - to get it out of my system.
The hardest gig there is in entertainment is to be the lead in an hour show, especially if it's a show that's blood and guts and fighting. It's rough. I love to work, but to do something different is really exciting.
I'm not interested in gigs unless I really want to do them. I walked away from music in 1997, and then there was a greatest hits in 2002. Thank God, it didn't do too well because the record company wouldn't promote it.
Because of the way the record business has kind of stumbled and disintegrated, in a way, you're as likely to sell records at your merch table at your gigs as you are to sell them in a regular record outlet or even online.
People from major labels were afraid to go to Black Flag gigs throughout most of the band's existence. They treated our gigs as something threatening. I'm sure that it probably was. They probably had reasons to be scared.
One of the greatest pleasures of working on shows is that I enjoy watching the actors - who are all younger than me now - and their careers. I love seeing how they're doing and seeing them getting good gigs and doing well.
We did a gig at the Marquee and we were supposed to be paid five pounds but we never got it, and it cost us something like 10 pounds in petrol to get there to do it. So what we did was steal some equipment from The Marquee.
I didn't get paid for my first gig supporting Usher Raymond in the Temple in Tottenham when I was 17 or 18. I bugged the promoter to let me play and it went down a storm. And after that I got loads of gigs, which were paid.
It was like an explosion. You just don't get ready for it. I don't even know how you can, because you just don't expect it. For me, up until that point, you would do a gig, and then you'd go out and try to find the next job.
My friends are the ones I've had since primary school. They're really cool and such a good bunch of people. They came to every one of my gigs before all of this happened, you know; they were there in the smoky pubs, wherever.
I went to a hypnotist to learn how not to use drinking a pint before you go on as a way of giving you the confidence to just fly at it, irrespective of the fear. That's not a long-term strategy, when you do as many gigs as I do.