#VAGABONDZLIFESTYLE: ROCKNMOB #7. My first live experience.

Greetings to all Vagabonds and readers of VAGABOND'z SPIRIT! I’d like to say you some words about last autumn’s events. The first big event was the flashmob called ROCKNMOB which was founded in 2016 in Moscow, Russia. Nowadays, thanks to promoters this event is popular in many countries. The fact is that professional and unprofessional musicians gather together to play the greatest rock hits, for example, "It's My Life", "Numb", "Enter Sandman", "Zombie". This autumn I took part at ROCKNMOB number 7 which has gathered more than 250 musicians including the members of famous Russian rock band "Slot" and some musicians from well-known bands. It was the very first mob for me and also my debut live performance as a guitarist.

HOW DID I KNOW ABOUT ROCKNMOB: Mailings may be really useful! It was some August morning when I was checking my emails and saw a mailing from NAMM Musikmesse (an exhibition which takes place in Sokolniki Park, Moscow every September). They were inviting to take part in a flashmob. The rock flashmob. I decided to have a try because I’ve never played live before and it always was one of my biggest dreams. I found some info about this flashmob including accounts in social media where I saw the photos from earlier ROCKNMOB gigs. I was really impressed...

PARTICIPATING & REHEARSING:

After putting the form in I was chosen as one of the guitarists of ROCKNMOB #7 in Sokolniki Park. I was added to chat of guitarists and then our coordinators shared the first tutorials. I started to learn my parts. Haven’t told about this yet - my choice was to learn the rhythm parts because there was little time until the gig and I thought that I wouldn’t be able to learn lead parts properly. The last two tutorials were added in the begging of September... I got a fear that I would be playing bad, but happily, I had some time for preparation. The funniest thing was that I’ve learned two last songs for the three days before ROCKNMOB. It was crazy because I was also getting ready to join the university.

THE DAY OF MOB: On Saturday I woke up early. I could sleep because I was nervous and excited. My only wish was to stay in. But happily my mum helped to overcome the fear and we went out to catch transport. We went to the event location at 10.15. When we came I called our coordinator and then he helped me to find out about my space at the stage. I plugged in my amp and pedal and started self-rehearsal and instrument tuning. Then the rehearsal started... I was happy af. It's so f*cking amazing to listen to live drums, bass, and of course, my guitar... It exactly rocked! After the rehearsal we had 3 hours of free time.

FINAL REHEARSAL & SHORT GIG: The final rehearsal started at 14.40. We started playing about 10 minutes later because of technical issues. But then everything was cool. We played The Pretender by Foo Fighters, Sad But True by Metallica, Beat It by Michael Jackson. The fourth song was Бой! (The Fight) by Russian rock band Slot. It was announced closer to the end of August as the last act of the performance. The real surprise was the participation of Slot’s band members in MOB. So, we played their song together with the original band members. Also, the lead singer of LOUNA (one more Russian rock band) was a visitor of ROCKNMOB. The saddest part of the gig was that our playing time was really short. We started the second circle from Sad But True and after finishing this one we had to end our performance.

ROCKNMOB #7 @ Sokolniki Park, Moscow. Photo by Ksenia P Photography

MOB EQUIPMENT: I’m fond of high-quality sound equipment and the thing I really enjoyed at the MOB is monitors, Orange amps and good mixing console. There were so many musicians and sound was really worthy for kinda gig. My own equipment consisted of Marshall Amp (MG10CF), BOSS-MT2 pedal and of course my best guitar Gibson LPJ 2014 Edition.

Thanks for reading! If you wanna be the part of ROCKNMOB - TAKE PART IN FUTURE MOBS!