Gigs Quotations

I've never really been a confident person, except from a musical standpoint. I had to push myself early on, but it got easier with each gig.

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.

The only way to get better at stand-up is to do loads of gigs, and I don't know. I spread myself pretty thin to get the stage time. I'd love to do more, really.

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.

I cannot wait to come back to Glasgow. I know the place like the back of my hand. In fact, one of the jobs I had as a student was in Cineworld. And I was always at gigs in King Tut's, Nice 'n' Sleazy's and the Barras. I played Ultimate Frisbee down on Glasgow Green and pulled pints in O'Neill's on Queen Street.

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.

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 started stand-up in 2007. I'd done a couple of gigs before that, but not much, and I was in a sketch group at Uni from 2005 as well.

I've got about 27 gigs right now. I've got radio, I've got television, I've got The Washington Post.

I can't imagine playing a boring gig. Like, a boring audience without reaction, I will play against them.

When I got started in New York, it wasn't like it is now. If you were different from Miles and Dizzy, it was very difficult to make gigs and make money with your own style.

What you do is, you just do the gig, enjoy, get on with it, and treat the rest as horse doodle.

Like most things that happen with Sabbath, it happened all of a sudden. I was intending on doing some recording, but out of the blue, Sharon called up and said she wanted us to do these gigs with Ozzy. I said that if everybody else was up to it then I would love to do it.

I write in English. My first album came out in Italy, and I toured and did gigs.

You've seen one of the our gigs you've seen 'em all. But if you're into the music, you'll know that we played better the night before or we can play better.

My nerves before a gig got worse; I had terrible bad nerves all the time. Once we started... I was fine.

My gigs are built on improvisation: I go out there and I'm like the Energizer bunny.

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 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 DJ'd for years. I DJ'd in high school, and I think my parents thought it was a passing thing. And then when I was in my second year of college, I was like, 'Yeah, you guys don't need to send me money anymore. My DJ gigs are good enough. I'm selling music; I think I'm gonna have a record deal. I can pay my tuition.'

Just to be around that, to feel a part of it and be able to integrate the experience while I was with the Messengers, of going and playing gigs with other drummers, gave me the chance to realize that it was not just me that was making it happen.

The best part was watching Journey grow into this monster. The band was huge, playing these enormous gigs.

A lot of people don't think they can count on me, but I've never missed a gig in my life.

I hate complacency. I play every gig as if it could be my last, then I enjoy it more than ever.

Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig.

Mary Gauthier's great. Yeah, we've played a lot of gigs together. She's really wonderful.

I went to see John Mayall at the Marquee, with Peter Green on guitar, and that was a particularly good gig.

I had done a couple of plays, but I was a clueless boob. 'Cosby' allowed me to have something on my resume that was real and then the producers of 'Guiding Light' let me play a preppy killer just the following month. Suddenly I had two gigs on my resume that made me look like a real actor, although I was far from it.

Big shows are more like events and small shows are more like traditional gigs.

I entered the work force cleaning breast pumps at a pharmacy! It was a part-time gig while I was at school... no interview required.

For The Truman Show, I worked for a few weeks, do my gig, then I was done.

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.

It's worth turning up to an awards gig if you know you've won one but, since you never do know, it's not worth it.

Every time I do a gig, my goal is getting new fans.

Finding great songs is the hard part of my gig - it's not as hard as songwriting, that's much more daunting - but I love playing other people's music.

All those years we'd spent learning these chops, and all those gigs in Germany where you'd play all night, and along comes punk. It has nothing to do with that. A lot of people went out of business.

Placebo is music for outsiders, by outsiders and our gigs are like conventions of outcasts, which is cool.

People have said I played some pretty amazing gigs in the seventies, but in all honesty, I probably played one good show in three.

The Stones always tried to do the odd smaller gig when they could.

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.

I can do a gig without an instrument

The best practice you can get is on the bandstand, but in between gigs I feel I have to stay in shape.

My first gig was at Radio City Music Hall when I was 13.

I have visualizations where I'm living in a really cool place - probably outside of town - with a really dope studio where I can record music or film things. Just have my own mini production house. That's really the thing I'd love to end up with the most and only do gigs when I needed to and also amass a little bit of a crew around me.

We played some gigs in Switzerland a couple of weeks ago and it was the first time I really felt the group was really a band in the sense of something I could write for.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

One of my first paid gigs was writing psychology quizzes for 'YM,' a monthly teen magazine like 'Seventeen.'

It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.

My most favourite gigs that ever happened were solo, before The Monkees ever happened.

Acting is a plum gig, and then animation is an even more plum gig.

I decided I'd never do a series again, but I was offered a pilot for a series through Eddy Murphy Productions, and that was the gig that got me Parker Lewis.

I really worked with icons in the music business, which really had a strong effect on me. It wasn't just pick-up gigs.

I still do lots of gigs where I'm the support act and people are chatting through my set, but I've got better at grabbing attention. I mean, my parents would play on bills with people like Judas Priest and get booed all the way through. But they stuck it out, got tough.

I still remember the first gig where I got people going, it was Rascals in New Jersey, and the place was packed. I was scared. People were expecting me to be funny. I gotta be honest, every time I walk into a club, it's that same fear.

Well, for the My Generation album, there was nothing to be nervous about in them days. We used to take every day as it came. Every day was just a gig and I think we did the recording between gigs literally.

I was just thrilled to get the gig to begin with. Ten years later to still have it is not only thrilling but also somewhat of a puzzlement.

The more you write tunes, the better they will become. The more you do gigs, the better you will become.

I try to keep performing as much as possible - I just like to. I used to take huge gaps off between gigs, now I just like to do stand-up gigs as much as I can.

Being as versatile as I am, I take offense to the notion that no serious musician would not be doing a late night talk show gig. One has to be open enough in other areas to be able to contribute to a show like this.

I learned so much about playing and touring being on the road and in the studio with Jeff, but I'd always played a lot of gigs in Seattle even prior to joining the Fusion.

You can see girls getting too excited and they start crying or worse. In a lot of these countries they don't get a lot of gigs to go to, so when they get to see their favorite artist they take full advantage of it. Obviously the excitement builds up too much for some on the night and they get a bit... crazy.

I want to have a good time myself. I don't want to dread going to work no matter what the gig is. I think, selfishly, I will make sure that I have a good time; how about that?

I'm not one of those people who sits around knowing all bands and going to gigs all the time.

You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.

I do road gigs occasionally but I don't want to go out on the road for months at a time.

I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.

As my wife says, I'll never fully retire, but it'll start to slow down. I'll continue to do the local gigs or go to Las Vegas. But I won't be going out to Ohio to play an Indian casino anymore. Those will probably go by the wayside.

When I was younger and did a stand-up gig, it would take me two weeks to recover. Sometimes I'd get so panicked that I would stutter.

It's a two-dimensional gig being a singer, and you can get lost in your own tedium and repetition.

Stand-up is the kind of gig that'll show you where you're at.

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.

I learned the songs and played the gigs, and then they called me about a month later. They told me they were like super stoked on me and asked me to join their band.

Writing is a hard gig, and it's hard to convey a lot. That's why scripts tend to be a little bit overwritten.

My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult.

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.

When you go to a concert, part of being there is that you're all hearing the same thing. It's about being in a crowd. If you go to a gig and there are two people there, then it's not the same thing.

I look a lot busier than I am, as I'm actually a rather sporadic, random person and I'll play a few gigs and then disappear for a while.

I used to get nervous about three weeks before a gig... now I've managed to condense it down to a manageable ten minutes.

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.

I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.

I do value the respect I get from my contemporaries, but to have Oasis cover my song, to have Puff Daddy cover a song, to have Goldie come along to my gigs - that's where my ego is at. To have my fellow musicians like what I do, that's very cool.

I don't get much downtime, that's for sure. We generally make three separate tours of Europe each year alone. Then there's Asia and other foreign countries as well as plenty of gigs in the U.S. My son books all my dates and he does a wonderful job, so I can't complain about my schedule.

We've never done a big tour! At the moment we're juggling our gigs around work but hopefully that won't be the case come May.

I see myself as a comic but the acting helps sell tickets for gigs.

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 get nervous about gigs sometimes, but not with records - I always get excited.

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.

I felt (a) it was a great role and (b) I wanted to stay in town. I wanted to stop going to these four month and five month gigs up in Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver or down in Mexico. I wanted to be around my son, Max. This came along and I was like, 'I really want to play this guy!'

My plan was always to leave school and live in a flat with some friends, have a 9 to 5 job, and try to get as many gigs as I could. I wanted to keep writing and then eventually, in my twenties, head to a record label and hope they'd sit down and listen to my book of songs, sign me as a songwriter and maybe an artist in development.

Sure, I was depressed for a while. But I was just happy we had a hit. It was cool to know that the band was still together and had gigs to play.

Peel Day is about celebrating John's legacy and his unrivalled passion for music. It'll be a day of gigs taking place up and down the country, something we feel will be a fitting tribute to John.

I think one of the greatest gigs I played, and we've had many, but to play the opening ceremony at - at the Olympic games in Athens 2004 was pretty special, you know? Because it's such a big deal for the whole world. And the whole world's watching. So that was definitely one of the special ones.

I would never take part in one of those Eighties nostalgia tours, although I've been asked many times, because it's like admitting you have nothing new to offer. As long as I can keep making music I'm happy with, and people want to come to my gigs to hear it, I'll carry on.

The amount of music lovers who have got involved in Peel Day to stage gigs is amazing,

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.

We got Brian Tiskay playing with us; he's Billy Idol's drummer, ... We're rehearsing right now so he can learn the songs. He's doing at least seven gigs with us.

The anxiety of not knowing what my next gig is keeps me hungry.

I did a modeling gig once, but I am not a model. I want to be a model because it's a lot easier than acting.

... I'm not conscious of the speed ... it's not my motive ... my motive is displaying a voice through the fingerboard ... it can get to the point where I don't have control over what I am playing ... I never end the gig until I can't sing anymore

I love the press; I even like the people that don't like me. If it wasn't for those people, no one would know who I was and I wouldn't have a gig.