tl;dr - The story of me flubbing my first live gig/thing of Feel Good Inc. and not letting that ruin the bass for me.
If you have a similar story, drop down below.
P.S I picked up how to play Re-Hash.
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I wanted to write this down before I forget. On Saturday, March 28th, 2026, I had my first live performance and gig. It was a low-key live music jam for a friend’s birthday party, so super low stakes. I’ve also been taking the Bass Buzz course for a few months, and I recently got to the Jam with the Band section. At the time, I was on a bit of a tutorial hiatus and couldn’t practice as much as I wanted to. Life happens. But I knew I could always count on good ol’ “Feel Good Inc.,” especially since that’s the song that brought me to bass.
Anyways, the day comes and it went beautifully terrible. We were out of sync many a time, my hands were cold and I didn’t account for the cold air messing with my strumming, and I hadn’t ever played live before, let alone on one of the more challenging bass-heavy tracks with just a vocalist, a guitarist, and me on bass and no drums. Of course, I was in my feels for a bit because I want to be as perfect as I can be, and I try to measure up to folks that have been playing instruments for the greater portion of their lives. They all kept saying that I did a great job, it was amazing, etc., but the thing is, I know that I could do better, and in time I’ll get to where they are. That shook me away from practicing for a few days yet again.
So, I decided to take a bit of a fun detour like Grand Master Seye A. would, and decided to take some time to pick up one of my other favorite Gorillaz songs, “Re-Hash.” I didn’t even realize it had a bassline, let alone one that I could play. I still have some trouble with it, it’s a fast one, but I say all of that to say, like with the Benchmark “Billie Jean” module, I didn’t want to let a hard time take me out of the running for becoming a badass bassist. I just got done with module 11, lesson 3, with the James Brown “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” song, and that took like 4 days to get the different chunks down lol. But even after stumbling through that and barely making it through, I go try out “Re-Hash” and I’m able to play it just a bit faster and with fewer mistakes.
I say all of this to say, we’re all gonna hit some holes in the road, so we better scrape ourselves off, pick ourselves up, and next time look where we’re going.
