It doesn't always have to be the music you completely wrote yourself from scratch. My band covered the song "Beat It" by Micheal Jackson. I changed some stuff, added a few power slides and made the solo a bit more fun to play (I played the solo by Van Halen, and added a few things at the end, ending in a bridge (power slide and vocal solo) to the chorus It's amazing to see people like your playing. I wonder what it's like to play in front of a huge amount of fans (not the 100 or something who saw us in the local pub).. Concerts with 50.000 people. I'd crap my pants if they were all staring at me
But like Tbird said, the best part of it all is when you're already on stage, everyone is watching you and you just wait for everyone to be ready. A few seconds of complete silence, and then the soft drumsticks clicking 4 times. It's amazing to experience that.
I always think about all kinds of stuff, except for the song we're going to play in those last few seconds. It's funny actually, you hear the drummer say 1...2...3...4 and when he's at the 4th click, you wonder if you closed the front door and if turned off the lights at home.
Oh Tbird, my band tried it out with some classmates. We played a song two times. One where our classmates were just sitting around and watching us play. The second time they acted like they were in a moshpit It's much more fun to play then, though it's hard to concentrate if you see that happen in front of your eyes.