Rookie

Ruby

On Sunday my band, Llama Sanchez, had its first gig. We rented out a club with a big room and a stage—the kind of place that usually hosts bat/bar mitzvahs and Sweet Sixteen parties—and started setting up around 2 PM. I play only acoustic instruments, so I had no idea that everything could be so complicated—it took like five hours to set up and do all the sound checks for the five bands on the roster. Our band would play second.

When we were done, my band mates and I ordered a pizza and complained about being tired. Then people (not a lot) showed up to watch, and the first band began to play. They were called Real and consisted of three guys—none of them on vocals—playing what sounded like a half-hour song. Some people left.

After what seemed like forever, we got to play. Our set was nine or ten songs, half originals and half covers. Our drummer threw a tambourine into the audience and hit a girl in the head. Our singer’s guitar came unplugged and I compensated by asking the audience how they were doing. I sang the backing vocals to one song in the wrong key. But people liked us, and we had fun. I think most of the reason we got so much applause was that people were getting bored of Real.

Then came the next band (Diatribe, formerly known as the Burning Lights), and then an acoustic pair filling the stage-change gap, and then a band called the Sarcasm Association (their music was a little better than their name).

We called the event Democalypse; it was a good experience. I hope we get to do something like this again. If you’re wildly curious, here’s a terribly shot (and mic’ed) video of a chunk of our set: