First gig on an actual bass was with Dredd and the Badass Weeds, as we were known then, must have been early 1985 at a party in Chestnut Avenue, Leeds... I borrowed a short scale Gibson off Jez Utah (I didn't own one, taught myself to play on an acoustic guitar!). We had 4 actual "songs" - a punk thing called "Thatcher's Britain", a bit of metalishness ("Loud and Proud" with the chorus Heavy Metal Music, Loud and Proud! Mysterious goblins, Dressed in shrouds), a funky ditty called "That ain't a thing (it's a thang)" and a reggae thing called "Sex Feeling" (it had inadvertently laugh-out-loud lyrics which I won't repeat 😄). But we played for probably 2.5 hours, having rehearsed at most twice and basically improvised some vaguely funky rocky and occasionally reggae stuff.
And weirdly we got a gig at the University Tartan Bar a couple of weeks later, then at the Warehouse despite a lack of actual coherence and rehearsal.
And in early spring next year, to celebrate 40 years we're releasing our first EP!