Had our first corporate gig, ouch...

cvogue

cvogue

Yes, that's Oolong. :)
So we had our first corporate gig, actually the company I work for. CEO found out I'm in a band and we play 80's music and he said "I love 80's music they should play our holiday party!"

The party theme was 70's/80's, lots of people dressed up in flashy 80's garb, they had old school arcade video games very cool. I still suck at Centipede and Defender!

Anyway, seems like a slam dunk that we would have been a hit, our music is right in this wheelhouse.

They had a dance contest for new employees and a couple dozen participated. When it came down to the last one the crowd was cheering loudly. I thought "This is great, we'll get a nicely psyched/warmed up crowd!"

We go on right after and had a few dancers for the first couple of songs and then the floor cleared and that was it. Not sure what happened. We played well and sounded good (better than we did at our usual bar gigs where we have the floor packed the whole night). They had a fantastic sound system and engineer and I stepped out front during the sound check and we've never sounded better. We did our best 80's dance songs.

Maybe they were skittish about actually dancing in front of coworkers/bosses etc... but the new employees did previously. It's an engineering company so quite a few nerdy introverts.

Anyway for you guys who have played corporate gigs have you seen this kind of thing? It was awkward as hell at the end of the first set. We got claps and cheers off and on but still. I'm thinking a band at a corporate gig may not be a great idea. A DJ can customize the music more for what they want.

Still in a bit of shock! Work could be interesting on Monday... :undecided:

Edit: Guitar content! The Wampler mini Ego compressor sounded great! First time gigging with it. Hmm... maybe they hated the compressor?! :wink:
 
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Yeah, that's a situation... We did a set for one of my high school reunions and it was cool to play for people that remember parties I played at when I was younger or people who ignored me for being a weirdo...


... but it was a situation where many people went outside to smoke and chit chat, so we set a speaker outside to keep the music playing, people would come inside and request songs that we would then play for them outside where we couldn't see them react or dance. We treated it like we were playing live music on the radio and made comments like "this one goes out to all of you in the listening area..." :tongue:
 
It’s a hard thing to predict. I’ve left em sweaty, exhausted and wanting more and I’ve been totally ignored.
As long as the moneys the same don’t sweat it and better luck next time.
 
I don't like corporate gigs...no one wants to get silly drunk in front of the boss. Weddings are way more fun. Take the money and buy a new pedal, be happy...
 
Honkridge said:
I don't like corporate gigs...no one wants to get silly drunk in front of the boss. Weddings are way more fun. Take the money and buy a new pedal, be happy...
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Good points. Weddings are a lot more fun. I didn't get paid, since I work there I donated my part of the proceeds to the rest of the band.

But I may buy a new pedal anyway!
 
We used to have a live band at our annual holiday party. They weren't employees, but some "party" band that were hired for a few years in a row. They were quite good and probably played a lot of the same tunes that you did. One thing I noticed though, is that they had a couple of employed dancers (women) that would try to get folks up on the dance floor. It worked. I think the thing about corporate gigs is people tend to be reserved and are reluctant to cut loose among fellow employees....unless there is plenty of alcohol. :shrug:

We haven't had a holiday party since covid. I think it was seen as a cost cutting opportunity.
 
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