Hey Nate (and Mac...and everyone else)

MP3 players are fine for use on gigs.
BUT.

You've got to turn the backlight on permanently...forget that and you'll be scuppered at a dark gig (done plenty of them!).
You need to get a power lead for them and make sure you've got it. Don't ever rely on the battery.
They are a PITA between songs if you communicate with the audience. If you're not gonna talk they're fine, program a playlist for your set and play! But if you wanna talk, etc, stopping, scrolling to the next track etc becomes a pain.

The most flexible system I every used to provide backing tracks at gigs was a Midi Filer (I think it was a Yamaha, but we're talking 10 years ago plus so I might be wrong) that had a footswitch (that I've got a memory we paid an electrician to fit, like £10 to £15) and the midi files (drum tracks) were on HD floppies. This was connected to a drum module, and the drum module had 4 outputs so we routed the bass drums to channel 1, the snares to channel 2, the hi hats and crashes to 3, and percussion to 4. That way we could EQ snares and bass drums separately, add reverb to snares, and also had individual volume control of the various drum sounds.

We'd soundcheck with the master volume at about half, so we had plenty of head room to turn up as the gigs got raucous and we all started playing loudly. Worked really, really well. The footswitch meant we could have some songs that looped for 7 or 8 minutes (though Mustang Sally at that length must have been torture!) and we could stop with the footswitch.

I'd go down that route again in a flash...except they don't seem to make Midi Filers. You gotta buy them second hand - not reliable enough. And the beauty of MP3 is that once you've got a tune sounding right you can record it and voila, it's like that for ever (not always the case with midi!!!). BUT the Okyweb thing I found is about the only MP3 player I've ever seen designed for gigging.

Just my experiences. might help someone.

Oh, the other thing is that you have an iPod (or other MP3 player) and you use it to also provide background music during breaks you can't leave it unattended. Either somone who's had too much to drink will decide that they don't like what you've put on and start scrolling through your iPod and put somethign else on that he or she likes (Not good). Or someone will try and swipe it (yeah, believe it or not, we had someone try to swipe our 'gigging' iPod, whilst it was playing. And we were on a boat. On the Thames. Man, that guy was stupid AND drunk.)

Hope that helps...




Paul

Paul Wolfe
how to play bass...learning songs, not scales!
http://www.how-to-play-bass.com