how far have you gotten musicians??

[The saYer]

for anyone in a band, what is the biggest crowd you have ever played in front of and what is your goal with the band, is it to mess around, be a local band, open for your favorite band, headline a festival?

I guess mine is to open for one of my favorite bands, and get a pit going at least once, so far zippo.

 

[Hawk]

The band I was in was called Handykept. We played for around 500/600 people. We played together with Heir Apparent and Savage Grace and Agent Steel [with John Cyiris] amongst others.

We almost had a pit every time. That was because the kind of band we were. We were like a mess around version of SOD.

One of our songs was called "Food fight" and we really held a food fight with our audience. We threw eggs, bread, dog food and flour into the crowd. The object was to be as silly as possible. I wore a bathing cap on stage and our most known song was "Rock your badmuts [Dutch for bathing cap] into the ground.

We had quite a Dutch star cast. On guitar we had "Metal Mike van Rijswijk the chief editor of the biggest Dutch Metal mag called Aardschok. On bass we had Andre Verhuysen who would later start organizing the Dynamo Open Air Festival.

Here is a picture of our gig as support act of Agent Steel in the infamous Scum Metal bar in the very religious Katwijk!

From left to right:

Metal Mike [Guitar]
Some fool with a bathing cap on his head [vocals, more or less]
Andre Verhuysen [Bass] doing a very good Rudolf Schenker or Matthias Jabs impersonation.
Eric Veenstra [Lead Guitar] A very good and fast guitar player.
Pim Bouwens [Drums] Invisible!

 

[Greeno]

Do you have any recordings of your band Hawk?

 

[Griffin-]

Haha that is amazing Hawk. Great pic!!
I just started a band, or actually we just found a drummer (been looking for ages) and we'll start rehearsing soon. So never did anything yet, but we're going to do metal in the vein of NWOBHM and Acid, and probably start of with some of those covers (and Manilla Road!)
Oh, and I'll be doing vocals..hehe

 

[carnut]

Cool pic Hawk !!!

I played in an SOD-coverband called Sulfeet (name came from chemical name of Sulfeet "SO3"). There also was some heavy moshing going on, especially on our first gig in a small pub for about 150 people. biggest gig we played was with the opening of a big local metal pub ("Legions of Doom) and there were about 500 people. Unfortunatly only few pics survived from that period, I didn't like posing for pics that much .... This pic is from the first gig in 1986.
Other members were Flip (later with great Belgian Thrash band Exoto) , Peter(unknow wherabouts after Sulfeet, I believe he's somekind of comic drawer now) and Johan (later played in Belgian bands Target and Nation).

 

[Griffin-]

this topic rocks!!!
such a shame about recordings, I'm most curious about those

 

[Hawk]

Thats great news Griffin! I'll be looking forward to hearing you

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaawk carnut. O yea!! Great Old School pic. I wish I could have sen you guys live. That would have been a party

 

[Ayeka]

Only live experience so far has been playing in the corner of the bar at a health club to about 50 disinterested people. So I got them interested by cracking myself in the face with my bass at the end of the show head wounds sure bleed 'alf...

 

[JonnyD]

My Ultimate Goal was to start a band that actually had Intsraments And I did it twice! The First Explicit Noise, We played in Front of a max of 50 ppl which really loved what we did, I think mostly because we were the only band Playing Heavy Metal and NOT Hardcore and Made about a Hundred Bucks as a band ...(Prolly dont sound like Much to old seasoned Vets but it felt pretty good to be paid for doing something we loved) The Other Being Lycanthropy We Played for about 60 enthused people at a Metal/Hardcore Fest I invented both bands are now dead and the former members dont really speak hahaha fuckin band politics! I want more than anything to get atleast one of the groups back together but it doesnt seem Likely

Explicit Noise:

Lycanthropy:

if you want to hear some of our music you can go to http://www.soundclick.com/bands/9/hallowed.htm .. The Production sucks .. naturally since 90% of the tracks were recorded on a 1987 Magnavox Boombox

 

[Bryant]

I played in a local band called Kuff for a short time. They ended up doing a medium sized club tour along the Southeast, but I wasn't with them at that time. It didn't really bother me much as they were a little Dokkennish and I was starting to get into the thrash scene.
I have been in and out of many bands as a guitarist and played some clubs, mostly local/semi-local stuff. I grew bored of them pretty quick because I like writing music and playing my own stuff. There is very little chance of playing that stuff in the Southeast US.
My brother and I have formed three different versions of OUR band as well. We did a 50/50 split of originals and covers. As a two-piece acoustic unit, we worked our way through open-mic nights and opened for some bands at a local club, but few clubs in my area care for original music, so the full band scenario never sprouted into anything serious.
It never bothered me. The pay sucks and the hours are pretty bad playing music for a living. Lugging around equipment and practicing your ass off is also too damend much like work. I'll probably end up just recording some of my stuff as well with some stuff with my brother (who is a vocalist in the Southern Rock style.)


Bryant

 

[SickBoy]

for anyone in a band, what is the biggest crowd you have ever played in front of and what is your goal with the band, is it to mess around, be a local band, open for your favorite band, headline a festival?

Biggest crowd my band Stimulans played was last year's Metal Melting Summit festival, where Helloween headlined, there was some 1500 people there...
Our goal is to finish the new recording finally (which is long overdue...) and then send it to whatever worthy magazine (that excludes Kerrang, "Metal" Hammer and the likes...), webzine and record company... Hopefully get a good contract and play outside our homeland, we can't prosper here. How far we can go time will tell, we consider ourselves good enough for the metal scene today, it's our tough luck we aren't German or Scandinavian, then it would be loads easier for us.

 

[Ayeka]

Location seems to be sadly so important for bands, people down this neck of the woods are so small-time and small-minded

 

[The saYer]

wow, hawk opening for agent steel and sickboy for helloween, I didn't expect that.
I bet bryant is good guitarist for some reason, and jonnyd good luck getting your bands back together I bet they were good.

Amazing stories, but tell me, how did you guys get booked the first time? now there is a source for more stories.

 

[Jean-Pierre]

Haha that is amazing Hawk. Great pic!!
I just started a band, or actually we just found a drummer (been looking for ages) and we'll start rehearsing soon. So never did anything yet, but we're going to do metal in the vein of NWOBHM and Acid, and probably start of with some of those covers (and Manilla Road!)
Oh, and I'll be doing vocals..hehe

You better send me demo tracks, woman.

 

[JonnyD]

wow, hawk opening for agent steel and sickboy for helloween, I didn't expect that.
I bet bryant is good guitarist for some reason, and jonnyd good luck getting your bands back together I bet they were good.

Amazing stories, but tell me, how did you guys get booked the first time? now there is a source for more stories.

I dont know if either band were really that good... but I was proud to be apart of them ... Explicit Noise played alot of Open Mic nights at bars and Drinking parties but the only time we were almost Tecniclly "Booked" was on Febuary 22 2002 ... We were Friends with the Main band for that show and their Vocalist Liked us alot and Did a song with us and thats how we were first "Booked" we also made it into that bands thank you list on their 1 and only Ep

 

[SickBoy]

wow, hawk opening for agent steel and sickboy for helloween, I didn't expect that.

Amazing stories, but tell me, how did you guys get booked the first time? now there is a source for more stories.

Frankly, the thing we played with Helloween was more of participation in a festival than an opening slot IMO. There were 4 bands besides us playing prior to Helloween. And one of the major reasons they came to Zadar to play that festival is that Deris' wife comes from there. As a matter of fact, we got a slot there cause we already played with Blaze in Split, our hometown, and that was organized by the same team.
We'll be playing that same festival this year (it's meant to be held annually), but this time the things get really serious... The main band will be Sepultura , Rage confirmed their arrival , there are talks with Amon Amarth, the reunited Anthrax (with Belladonna, Spitz and Bello ) and possibly Blaze or Lost Horizon, who've found a vocalist, yay! I'd personally go for the latter option...
There will be some 10 Croatian bands playing there including us, I reckon it would last for the whole day... It's nice to see things moving here, there's no better way to get seen by a larger crowd. I also hear there will be a sort of a metal contest held in Zagreb, where scouts from Roadrunner, Nuclear Blast and the likes will come, I sure hope to play there with my guys and give 'em hell. Cross your fingers for us

 

[Griffin-]

You better send me demo tracks, woman.

i will, but not anytime soon

 

[Ayeka]

Amazing stories, but tell me, how did you guys get booked the first time? now there is a source for more stories.

Down here it's open-mic nights in general to get your foot on the ladder, there's also a place that does booking and recording so once you get into the swing of things they can snowball kinda quickly...

Oh yeah, SickBoy, nice little demo your band's got!

 

[carnut]

Hey Sickboy , that soundclip of "Train" sounds pretty good man !!!! I like it !!!!
Wish you good luck on that Festival, if all your guys stuff sounds like the demo,
you gonna be noticed !
Haha, sounds 100 times better than what my band ever produced in the 80's, but
that was more of a fun project...

 

[JonnyD]

Actually Sickboys Band is Great!!!!