Gimmicks for live shows! what's yours?

[AstralFeedbackM]

When I use to play in a band years ago we had some gimmicks for performing live. Some of them including color scheme outfits (black, red, purple) for everyone. We all picked our favorite color or lack of color and used that. Guitarist has purple pants red shirt, singer/bassist purple shirt and black pants, myself on drums red pants purple shirt. We had a garden gnome as our stage mascot. We had a loop pedal that we created songs/loops/intros/outros so that we didn't have a pause in the set. We had other things as well. Some would stick, some we tried for a few months and threw out.

I'd like to know what your band does as far as gimmicks. What do you do to set yourself apart from other bands that makes a impression on people. I know good music is a must, and I'm sure most of the folks on here have that. I just want to talk about what we all do or in my case did that sets you apart from the pack. It doesn't have to be anything new either. Everything probably has already been done at some point in time, so don't be shy.

[WeHuntKings]

Sometimes we have a good friend of mine do 60s style liquid light shows for us. Looks pretty cool.

[lordgalvar]

I took my shirt off and rubbed all over with the jack on my guitar cord. It signified the show was over and everyone left (actually some people were pretty freaked I think because my tan makes it look like I'm still wearing a shirt).

Our actual gimmick was setting up in under 5 minutes playing 11 songs in under 15 minutes and being outside with all equipment 5 minutes after the show was done. And being as loud and abrasive as possible to make people angry or sick (when it was possible...very rarely were we allowed to use a PA...and there were eras of the band that "didn't" allow my plans to happen). Made a kid's ear bleed once. I miss playing live.

I've always wanted to make a pully system anchored by springs that would bring metal parts to me and I woul[d start by looking like I was tied down and then finish the show looking like Tetsuo the iron man.

Watch old GISM videos. They've got some fun live gimmicks!

[tremolo3]

We didn't tune.
Everything was on 11.

[waltdogg]

I used to smash pedals and cymbals with my Dan Armstrong. People hated me for abusing that guitar and that was our draw. Even though we were show stealing assholes we were literally told on more than one occasion "Oh? You have the see through guitar, you guys are 'cool' with me."

[AstralFeedbackM]

We didn't tune.
Everything was on 11.

Now I like that. If only I could convince the guy I drum for to do that but he is to poppy. I might play a few songs on guitar at the end of his next show so maybe I won't tune and turn it up to the max. Lol JK man I won't steal your shit. Although I mostly play drums and I'm never in tune and always playing loud.

[lordgalvar]

There was a band in my home town that would wrestle on stage in Luchador masks. Like they would actually take each other down. Most of the time they played in a boxing ring. A band I remember growing up used to wear football equipment with giant foam spikes and stuff. Eradicator was based on the Kids in the Hall skit and was kinda funny (same dude that wore football pads). There was a band called Dublin Panik that had an Irish drummer and they made sure everyone knew that between every song (haha).

Roman Gabriel Todd's Beast Rising Up Out of the Sea used to have some shows where they had Uncle Joe I think rant about stuff. They were cool dudes.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXCW2DOV17k[/youtube]

Make all of your songs sing a long and have them on a projector! But you have to refuse to talk, even when booking shows and only wear a gas mask. I never got to make that band happen.

Lyrics in morse code?

[waltdogg]

There was a band in my home town that would wrestle on stage in Luchador masks. Like they would actually take each other down. Most of the time they played in a boxing ring. A band I remember growing up used to wear football equipment with giant foam spikes and stuff. Eradicator was based on the Kids in the Hall skit and was kinda funny (same dude that wore football pads). There was a band called Dublin Panik that had an Irish drummer and they made sure everyone knew that between every song (haha).

Roman Gabriel Todd's Beast Rising Up Out of the Sea used to have some shows where they had Uncle Joe I think rant about stuff. They were cool dudes.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXCW2DOV17k[/youtube]

Make all of your songs sing a long and have them on a projector! But you have to refuse to talk, even when booking shows and only wear a gas mask. I never got to make that band happen.

Lyrics in morse code?

I really like this.

[lordgalvar]

Roman Gabriel Todd's....were super nice and a blast to play with when they came out this way (probably8-9 years ago). I have a couple of their demos and the badge they gave me still!

[tremolo3]

We didn't tune.
Everything was on 11.

Now I like that. If only I could convince the guy I drum for to do that but he is to poppy. I might play a few songs on guitar at the end of his next show so maybe I won't tune and turn it up to the max. Lol JK man I won't steal your shit. Although I mostly play drums and I'm never in tune and always playing loud.

Oh go ahead please.
I was the drummer for the band I was talking to. And of course I didn't tune anything, I just messed with the snare and kick drum to make them sound bigger and tighter..
Sometimes, I had to use the sticks upside down because I couldn't hear myself. It wasn't funny.

[The_Active_Conundrum]

I'm not in a band or cool enonugh for gimmicks. But when I played off and on, I'd have a bottle of bottom shelf vodka or white rum near me and I'd fill it with water about half way. I'd take a swig and make a face and keep playing. I had a papertowel soaked with rubbing alcohol sealed in a ziplock in my pocket, rub my fingers on it and would wipe my mouth with the residue so I would smell more like the part.

Fun times.

[kaeth]

I sang in a band that was 1-3 people, and most of the sound was drum machines and sequencers. Lots of parts where no one was even playing anything, so we resorted to gimmicks to give the crowd something to watch. We also played a big Halloween show every year, so that upped the game. We bolted some steel to the guitar, and the guitarist would play it with an angle grinder. I suspended myself from hooks, and did some weird play piercing. Did a straight-jacket escape. Wore plastic wrap and latex-paint instead of clothes. Lots of fake blood. We painted ourselves into a corner where we couldn't keep up with topping ourselves, so the band faded out, and I kinda went in the opposite direction.

Now I play Nintendo DS or iPhone on stage by myself. My "light-show" is a 10" sparkle lamp on a folding chair (I ask the venues not to use their lights). I don't look at the audience, and I usually don't talk unless it's mumbling things that sound really self-depreciative, depressing, or complaining about trivialities. It's still a shtick, but it's subtle enough that people take me seriously which is funnier from my end.

[Inconuucl]

My band's gimmick is not playing at all.

[daseb]

My "light-show" is a 10" sparkle lamp on a folding chair (I ask the venues not to use their lights). I don't look at the audience, and I usually don't talk unless it's mumbling things that sound really self-depreciative, depressing, or complaining about trivialities.

Haha that rules.

I've got a tonne, so, you can read the post below or you can just enjoy this video of Baader Brains who had 'gimmick' on lock. The word doesn't really apply though because it was a whole part of their entire philosophy around the band.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHzns2LkJIQ[/youtube]



Anyway...

NSFW: show

So in 2003 I played in a Monorchid/Skull Kontrol style trashy, dancey rock band. We went out of our way to do obnoxious jokes at a lot of shows. A younger me would've intellectualised it as shaking punks out of their complacency or some horseshit like that but really it was just about doing dumb shit because we thought it was funny and pranking on our friends. Playing with our mates seriously $krammies white belt band who were notorious for their two (!!) singers never being on stage? We got a wireless microphone and our singer did the entire set from the urinal in the club. Playing with our friends deadly serious Krautrock group that was getting a lot of attention in the local press at the time? Well OF COURSE we dressed up like Kraftwerk and did robot dance moves all the way through our set.

We did a show once with a great band called Jihad Against America, where we changed our name for the night to 'The Coalition of the Willing' and set up at opposite ends of the tiny, tiny bandroom. The idea was we would take it in turns to play a song but it pretty quickly devolved into playing over each other, heckling and trying to interrupt each other's performances, stuff like that. The venue was about the size of the living room and for some reason like 50 or 60 people came and were crammed in between these two bands playing at the same time and trying to disrupt each other's sets. At one point our guitarist picked up their guitarist and bodily carried him into the carpark outside.

The best thing by far was when we would play with tough guy hardcore bands though. We had a song that had a kind of slow, Kyuss-y riff with pauses in it and would have a minidisc (yes this was 2003) plugged into the PA with Nelly's 'hot in here' cued up. During one of the pauses in that riff, we all put our instruments down, started playing the song, and stripped down to our underwear and started dancing around, grinding on uncomfortable mosh bros. Then when the song finished we'd pick our instruments back up and start the riff right where we left off.

After that band I played in a doom band a few people here might know called Whitehorse. For some reason the local vice people loved us at that time and booked us to play a couple of parties. Our gimmick there was to play one riff for as long as possible, until people actually came onstage and turned our amps off. Record was an hour and 12 minutes at their xmas party.

Currently I play in a grind band that more people like for our singer's drunken ranting and abuse of the audience and rest of his band between songs than the actual music. Which I mean, to be fair, it is definitely the best part of our show. We've been talking about getting him to pre-record his standup routine onto a sampler and just press the buttons rather than say anything between songs. I'd like to even make a recording of him talking shit and splice it in with the couple of 7"s we've just recorded and 'play' a set where we just play that through the PA and sit on stage eating burritos and staring at people.

With that band recently we did a show where everyone was having a super dark time in their personal lives. So we just played with our backs to everyone and didn't make a sound between songs, singer didn't say a thing. At the start everyone was heckling as usual and stuff and trying to gee him up but sort of, ten minutes into the set the whole place just felt really uncomfortable. By the time we finished no one in the crowd was even clapping after songs, they were just looking around going 'wtf'. It was AWESOME.

Finally, current other band I play in has been doing the thing where we start off with a tonne of feedback and then drummer starts playing the first song. We're going to do that at a show this friday but while drummer starts song, he's just gonna keep playing the intro beat, guitarist and I are going to put our guitars down and have a pushup competition until one of us collapses.

[goroth]

This thread is good.

Dase is winning.